Blog

In-work poverty is the most distinctive characteristic of poverty today. For the first time, it outstrips the levels of poverty in workless households.

The Banos seem like a family balanced on the brink. The cost of living is creating such pressure on them, despite the best efforts of both parents to work their way towards affording that talismanic holiday or simply the extravagance of a £20 skirt.

I was a teenage parent, married and unhappily, after a brief but violent period, divorced by the time I was 21, left alone to raise my daughter, who is herself now a lone parent of two daughters, left alone to raise them. Coincidence? Family culture? I am unsure.  

The Government launched its consultation on measuring child poverty today. What should we make of it?