JRF response to Households Below Average Income (HBAI) figures released today
Following the release today (7 May) of the 2007/08 HBAI figures on the official levels of poverty in the UK, Julia Unwin, Chief Executive of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF), said:
"Today's figures show that even before the recession began, significant pockets of the population were still experiencing poverty. These are challenging economic times, and our research shows that, in the longer term, the whole of society benefits when people are lifted out of poverty. It is vital that we do not let more people slip into poverty."
Child poverty
No further progress has been made on reaching the Government’s target of halving child poverty by 2010. Our research suggests that allowing high levels of child poverty to continue costs the UK at least £25 billion per year.
The extra money pledged in the 2007 and 2008 Budgets should lift around half a million children out of poverty by 2010. However, this will still leave the government 600,000 short of the target of halving child poverty by 2010. The absence of any major new steps in the 2009 Budget makes it highly unlikely that the 2010 target can be met, making the final goal of ending it by 2020 even more challenging.
It is vital that the government now intensifies its efforts to improve matters by improving childcare, parents’ skills and the availability of good quality, part-time and flexible jobs.
Poverty among working-age adults with no children
Poverty among working-age childless adults remains static, which is worrying given that the impact of the recession on jobs is not yet reflected in the current figures. The recession will be especially harsh on unemployed childless younger adults, because out-of-work benefits are lower for the under-25s.
We need to pay more attention to the incomes of adults without children. Recent research published by the JRF has questioned whether unemployment benefit for adults should now be raised, given how far behind most measures of adequacy they have fallen.
Pensioner poverty
The government has put significant effort into ensuring poorer pensioners get all the benefits they are entitled to. Our research shows that even a relatively small rise in the incomes of older people can make a large improvement to their quality of life. If older people claim all the benefits they can, many of them should not be in poverty.
