Child Poverty

This issue brief relates to a developing news event. For full details of the 2008 Budget visit our in-depth Budget section.

What is Child Poverty?

Child poverty, as with poverty itself, is a complex notion to define precisely.

A typical holistic measure of 'poverty' is the standard of life enjoyed by an individual, measured principally by their level of income, and then incorporating a number of factors, including environmental, social, material, health and educative indicators.

Child poverty is widely perceived as a particularly problematic and disturbing facet of poverty, as the innocence of youth and helplessness of children to change their situation generates particular social concern.


Background

Historically the welfare of children was felt to rest with the parents, family and then the local community. With the development of the welfare state after 1945, there was an increased belief in state responsibility for child welfare.

In Britain today, there is a vast array of legislative measures designed principally to ensure the welfare of the child is protected.

In particular, the Government has used reform of the tax and benefit system to guarantee family incomes and tackle child poverty. The Child and Working Tax Credits, launched in April 2003, are central to the Government’s efforts to tackle poverty and aim to support families and children in need.

The centrepiece of UK legislation on children is the Children's Act 1989. The Act emphasises parental responsibility and the duty of local communities and social services to protect and promote the child's' best interests in their development stages.

The domestic provision for childcare, education and healthcare also derives impetus from international obligations ratified by the UK through multilateral institutions such as the United Nations. The 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child is an important document and represents the most universally adopted resolution in the United Nations system, with only the United States and Somalia failing to ratify it.

In 2002 a Special Session of the UN General Assembly resulted in the official adoption by some 180 nations of 'A World Fit for Children'. The new agenda for the world's children included 21 specific goals and targets for the next decade.


Controversies

Despite the wealth of most Western countries and the consequent social support available to children in these states, vast numbers of children worldwide continue to suffer from devastating levels of poverty, many without basic food, education or health care.

There are many reasons for this child poverty, and famine, international trade, corrupt governments, prolonged wars and crippling debts ensure it persists.

Despite various multilateral commitments to reduce child poverty since the early 1990s, a wide-ranging 2004 report into global poverty by UNICEF found that over half the children in the developing world live without basic goods and services, while 640 million are said to be in absolute poverty.

In the UK, the Government's stated objective is to halve child poverty by 2010 and to eradicate it by 2020. The Government failed in its aim to reduce the number of children in poverty by 25 per cent by 2004-2005 from 1998-1999 levels, but insisted it could still meet its final target.

Although the official definition of child poverty includes both an absolute and a relative factor, the test of 'material deprivation' is controversial because it stipulates, for the first time, a range of social factors contributing to child poverty - including owning a bicycle, going swimming at least once a month and being able to invite friends to tea once a fortnight.


Statistics

The Government set out a Public Service Agreement after the 2004 Spending Review, which commits it to “halving the number of children in relative low-income households between 1998-99 and 2010-11, on the way to eradicating child poverty by 2020”.

Between 1998-99 and 2003-4, the number of children in relatively low-income households fell from 3.1 million to 2.6 million before housing costs and from 4.1 million to 3.5 million after housing costs were taken into account.

27 per cent of children live in a Household Below Average Income (HBAI) after housing costs.

At the top of the child poverty league in rich countries are Denmark and Finland with child poverty rates of less than three per cent. At the bottom are the United States and Mexico, with child poverty rates of more than 20 per cent.

Around 270 million children, just over 14 per cent of all children in developing countries, have no access to health care services.

Some 13 per cent of children aged seven to 18 in developing countries have never attended school. This is 32 per cent among girls in sub-Saharan Africa (27 per cent of boys) and 33 per cent of rural children in the Middle East and North Africa.

Statistics 1 and 2 (Source: HM Treasury); Statistic 3 (Source: Department for Work and Pensions HBAI report on figures for the 2004-5 milestone); Statistic 4 (Source: Unicef report on Child Poverty in Rich Countries, 2005); Statistics 5 and 6 (Source: Unicef).


Quotes

"There can be no task nobler than giving every child a better future."

World Declaration on the Survival, Protection and Development of Children 1990

"Our historic aim will be for ours to be the first generation to end child poverty... It is a 20 year mission but I believe it can be done."

Prime Minister Tony Blair, 2000

"Poverty is not about survival any more, it's about being able to participate in the society in which we now live."

Jonathan Bradshaw, University of York, 2003