What do the poverty numbers really show?
Poverty numbers can easily become a source of confusion – as demonstrated by the recent debate over the latest figures issued by government. However, help is now at hand in the form of a major new website being launched this week: www.poverty.org.uk.
The site, provided by the New Policy Institute with support from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, provides a comprehensive and up-to-date presentation of what has been happening to poverty and social exclusion in the UK, from income and work to health and education.
Since 1998, a series of Monitoring Poverty and Social Exclusion reports issued annually by the two organisations has become established as an authoritative and independent guide to trends under the present government. But the website will offer graphs and text that are updated whenever new data becomes available, as well as a comprehensive set of links to other relevant documents and sites on the Internet.
To coincide with the launch of the site, the New Policy Institute is publishing an analysis of how the poverty numbers changed during Labour’s first term and why. The headline figures showed that the number of people in households below the most commonly used ‘low income threshold’ fell by 1 million between 1996/7 and 2000/1, from 14 million to 13 million. The number of children in low income households fell by half a million over the same period. The new analysis shows that:
- The main reason for these falls was that many more people went out to work in 2001 than in 1997. However, paid work does not guarantee an escape from poverty. Leaving aside pensioners, almost half of all adults and children below the low income threshold were living in households where one or more adult had a job.
- As well as counting the number of people below the threshold (the breadth of poverty), it is necessary to look at how far their incomes fall short of it (the depth of poverty). While the breadth of poverty declined, the depth of poverty did not.
Peter Kenway, Co-Director of the New Policy Institute, said “The Government’s anti-poverty strategy rests on the idea that employment should be the way out of poverty for all those who can work. These figures show that, for millions, work is not yet providing an escape from poverty.”
Guy Palmer, Co-Director of the New Policy Institute, added: “It is vital that the poverty debate is driven by an understanding of what has actually been happening rather than by sound bite and prejudice. Our new website, and associated analyses, will help achieve this by providing a resource for journalists, politicians, researchers and the general public alike.”
