INSPIRINGSOCIALCHANGE

Monitoring Poverty & Social Exclusion

Breaking the Cycle of Child Poverty ConferenceNE Child Poverty Commission

Chris Goulden13 January 2012

• Annual review of progress made in fighting poverty and other forms of exclusion in the UK

• Range of indicators from low income & worklessness to ill health and homelessness

• Uses official statistics & datasets – therefore retrospective

• 2011 the first report to fully summarise Labour’s record

• Also the first that can look at the Coalition’s agenda on poverty and exclusion

Monitoring Poverty & Social Exclusion

BackgroundAbout the “MOPSE” reports

Monitoring Poverty & Social Exclusion

Contents of this presentation

• Poverty, focussing on different risks by age group

• Work and worklessness

• Broader issues of exclusion− including health, housing and education

• Finally, looks at the Coalition’s child poverty agenda

Key points on poverty

• Child poverty (AHC) fell by around one-seventh under Labour

• The poverty rate for working-age adults without dependent children rose both in 2009/10 and over the last decade. It now stands at 20%

• The pensioner poverty rate, at 16%, is now around half the rate it was in 1997

• Now a sizeable (5% point) gap between poverty measures before and after housing costs

• Half of children in poverty are in working households

Monitoring Poverty & Social Exclusion

Monitoring Poverty & Social Exclusion

Monitoring Poverty & Social Exclusion

Monitoring Poverty & Social Exclusion

Monitoring Poverty & Social Exclusion

Key points on work & employment

• By mid-2011, 6 million people were unemployed, lacking but wanting work or working part-time because no full-time job was available

− “Underemployment” was 2 million higher than in 2005 

• The number of households where no adult has ever worked has never been higher

• The proportion of low paid jobs fell from 1997 to 2005, then stopped falling

• Young adult unemployment has been rising since the mid-2000s and is now higher than any time in last 20 years

Monitoring Poverty & Social Exclusion

Monitoring Poverty & Social Exclusion

Monitoring Poverty & Social Exclusion

Monitoring Poverty & Social Exclusion

Monitoring Poverty & Social Exclusion

Education, health & housing

• Education− Proportions of children at all ages not attaining

expected standards have fallen− Gaps between FSM and others have closed, if slightly

• Health− Infant mortality down, adult mortality (pre-65) down− But health inequalities persist and geographical

differences are stark

• Housing− Homelessness down compared to a decade ago but

up in most recent year− Repossessions lower than early 1990s but rising again

in most recent figures

Monitoring Poverty & Social Exclusion

Monitoring Poverty & Social Exclusion

Monitoring Poverty & Social Exclusion

Monitoring Poverty & Social Exclusion

Looking forward

• Child poverty strategy− Acceptance of 2020 target and measures− Explicit recognition of in-work poverty a step forward− Focus on gaps in education attainment− Are there other areas (e.g. health) where gaps are

marked?

• Social mobility strategy− Clear overlaps with child poverty

• Similarity with last Government’s approach− Explicit focus on children− Heavy (?over) reliance on tax, tax credit and benefit

systems

Monitoring Poverty & Social Exclusion

Key questions

• How to address poverty of young adults – who were children themselves when war on child poverty was first declared?

• How to balance the different roles of a social security system – and the different bases of entitlement to benefit?

• How to prevent welfare reform from being over-burdened by problems whose roots (and remedies) lie elsewhere?

Monitoring Poverty & Social Exclusion