Child poverty
What can we do to end child poverty?
Latest: Over 30% of children in Wales live in poverty.
Contacts
What is needed to eradicate child poverty by 2020.
The Joseph Rowntree Foundation's child poverty programme focuses on four key questions:
- What will it take to end child poverty?
- What will policies to end child poverty cost?
- Will current policies eradicate child poverty by 2020?
- What will happen if we don't end child poverty?
Key issues
- The proportion of children living in poverty has doubled in the past generation.
- The UK has proportionally more children in poverty than most rich countries.
- In 1999, Tony Blair committed to ending child poverty by 2020.
- In 2006/7, 2.9 million children were living in poverty.
- 600,000 children were lifted out of poverty between 1998 and 2006.
- This compares with a government target of 850,000 to be lifted out of poverty by 2004 and 1.7 million by 2010.
- In addition to the human cost to families and children of allowing high levels of poverty to continue, our research estimates that child poverty costs £25 billion each year in costs to the Exchequer and reduced GDP.
- Eradicating child poverty requires action in a wide range of policy areas including childcare; skills; the availabilty, quality and flexibilty of jobs; and benefits and tax credits.