Successive generations of children may be 'learning to be poor'

The ways that children’s experiences of poverty affect their future welfare are examined in two research reports published by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. They consider how children respond to growing up in a low income family, and analyse the risks that high levels of relative poverty among today’s children may carry for future generations.

Taken together, they highlight many of the pressing problems that must be tackled if the Government’s 20-year goal of overcoming child poverty – set earlier this month by the Prime Minister – is to be reached.

Poor children’s attitudes to money
A study based on interviews with more than 400 children shows that those who live with a lone parent or in families claiming Income Support are more likely than other children to be frequently told that things they want are unaffordable. It found that:

• Children living in households claiming Income Support (42 per cent) were five times more likely to think that their family income was inadequate than other children (8 per cent). Children in lone parent families (39 per cent) were four times more likely to believe it than children in two-parent families (9 per cent).
• Children living in lone parent and Income Support families were more likely to have been involved in family discussions about money and spending. Two-thirds said they were often told that their family could not afford what they wanted, compared with less than half other children.
• Asked which presents they would like if it was their birthday next week, the children in lone-parent and Income Support families listed items that were significantly less expensive on average than those identified by other children.
• Children in lone-parent and Income Support families were less likely to receive regular pocket money than others. Although children in low income families were less likely to have part-time jobs, those who did worked for longer hours and lower rates of pay than other children.

Children in lone-parent or Income Support families had much lower expectations about their future careers than their peers. They were more likely than other youngsters to want jobs that required few qualifications and little training. And they were less likely to aspire to attaining professional qualifications or occupations.

Sue Middleton of the Centre for Research in Social Policy at Loughborough University, the study’s co-author said: “As children learn about their family’s financial situation, so they form views of where they stand in relation to other families. Our research suggests that children from low income families are learning to expect and accept less from an early age and to find ways of covering up their disappointment.”

She added: “It seems entirely possible that for some children it is early learning of this sort that reduces both their immediate expectations and their future aspirations. There is a real sense in which they are learning to be poor.”

Child poverty and its consequences
A study by researchers at the Centre for Economic Performance at the London School of Economics, shows how the number of children living in homes that are relatively poor is dramatically higher than 30 years ago. As many as one in three children (over 4.3 million) were living in households with less than half average income in 1995/96 compared with one in ten in 1968.

It also finds that spending by the poorest fifth of the population on toys, children’s clothing, shoes and fresh fruit was no higher in real terms in 1995/96 than it was almost 30 years earlier. This evidence suggests that increasing inequality in expenditure has had a direct impact on the well-being of children and served to exclude them from the rising living standards of the prosperous majority.

Data from large-scale national surveys enables the researchers to calculate that a fifth of the rise in child poverty is attributable to an increase in the number of children living in lone-parent families. However, they find that a more important factor has been unemployment and the increasing chances that children find themselves in ‘work poor’ families where no adult has a paid job.

Using results from a long-term survey that has traced the development of children born in 1958 through to adulthood, the researchers demonstrate how social disadvantage during childhood has been linked to an increased risk of low earnings, unemployment and other adversity by the age of 33. Among family-based measures, poverty has been by far the most important force linking childhood development with later social and economic problems. Growing up in a lone-parent family has only been a significant factor when associated with family poverty.

Pursuing the links between poverty affecting one generation and the next, the study also finds that 33-year old parents in the survey who were, themselves, disadvantaged as children are more likely than other parents to have children who were performing poorly in school at an early age.

Stephen Machin, co-author of the report, said: “Our study shows how the economic position of families strongly affects the present and future welfare of children. It suggests that today’s high level of child poverty is likely to have continuing negative effects as the present generation of children in low income families grows up. Conversely, any measures that successfully address child poverty, especially by giving more households access to jobs, are likely to have wide-ranging, positive effects that go beyond improving the immediate welfare of children.”