LONDON: Child poverty remained at a high of 2.3 million in 2014, according to the latest figures released by the Institute of Fiscal Studies, reversing the fall in child poverty between the late 1990s and 2010.
The Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG) predicts that it will rise to 4.7 million in 2020, the year it was supposed to have been eradicated according to a pledge contained in the 2010 Child Poverty Act.
It is under these conditions that the incoming Conservative government of Prime Minister David Cameron has pledged to scrap the child poverty reduction and eradication targets in Britain, one of the richest countries in the world.
Child poverty is defined in relative terms as children living in households with an income 60 percent below the median income. The CPAG describes child poverty as “being cold, going hungry, and not being able to join in activities with friends.”
Children suffer from both material poverty and hardship, whereby they are denied an income sufficient for housing, transport, food, household goods and toiletries, clothing, household services and personal care, as well as poverty of opportunity that deprives them of access to the broader social, educational and cultural activities of modern society.
For example, they say that “61 percent of families in the bottom income quintile would like, but cannot afford, to take their children on holiday for one week a year.”
The Children’s Commission on Poverty reported last October that millions of families were struggling with the hidden costs of schooling. According to a recent survey on the cost of education for 2014, published earlier this year by the teachers union, NASUWT, nearly a quarter of children over 11 years old were unable to take part in educational trips and activities due to the cost.
The number of children growing up in poverty has stayed fairly constant since 2010, largely because the median income, the threshold for defining poverty, has fallen. Since 2010, Britain has suffered the longest period of declining real wages in modern history. So while the recession and falling wages have masked relative poverty, the situation is worse than official statistics suggest.
A staggering two thirds of children growing up in poor households have at least one family member in work. This is no accident.
Labour Chancellor Gordon Brown introduced means-tested Child Tax Credit, Disabled Person’s Tax Credit and Working Tax Credit in 2003 that saw a meagre rise in the income of the poorest families. The purpose was threefold: to drive people off benefits, reduce the benefits bill, and force workers to accept low paying jobs—thus paving the way for the low wage economy which is the norm today. The tax credits were nothing other than a subvention to the giant corporations and medium and small businesses that pay poverty level wages. The Conservative-Liberal Democrat government continued this policy, increasing tax credits in 2010.
Now, following the total refusal of the trade unions to lead any opposition to poverty wages and austerity, and in line with the deep austerity measures demanded of the Greek working class by the International Monetary Fund, the European Union and the European Central Bank, the incoming Conservative government will cut both benefits and tax credits. This is aimed at creating a huge reservoir of desperately impoverished people that will work for a pittance and boost corporate profits.
Chancellor George Osborne announced a big cut in tax credits, expected in the July 8 budget, as part of a drive to slash welfare by £12 billion, affecting the poorest and most vulnerable in society and exacerbating the already dire circumstances facing many families with children. It is estimated that a low paid family with two children could lose up to £1,690 annually.
In a speech in Runcorn, Cameron refused to deny the possibility of cuts in disability benefits for those in work. Tax credits will be cut, he revealed, in order “to move from a low wage, high tax, high welfare society to a higher wage, lower tax, lower welfare society.”
