Under embargo until: 00.01hrs Monday 2 July 2007

Poverty and social exclusion in Wales: new report shows unemployment, education and child poverty no better

Steady progress since the late 1990s has now stalled in Wales with both the rate of child poverty and the proportion of people lacking but wanting work being the same as two years ago. These are two key findings of Monitoring poverty and social exclusion in Wales 2007, a comprehensive update of the New Policy Institute analysis published two years ago for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation.

Using the latest official data published this spring, the overall picture on poverty is mixed. On the positive side, child poverty has fallen from 36% in the late 1990s (significantly higher than the UK average) to 28% (just under the UK average), though there have been no improvements since 2003/04.

Pensioner poverty is also down markedly, from 26% to 20%, especially among single pensioners. But among adults of working age, the fall has been much smaller with 350,000 working-age adults remaining in poverty – more than the joint totals of children and pensioners. Worse still, the proportion of disabled working-age adults in poverty has risen, from 30% in the mid 1990s to the current level of 33%.

Commenting on the figures, report co-author Guy Palmer said, “The lack of recent progress on poverty is not confined to Wales. The UK-wide figures for 2005/06 are the first in nine years to show a rise in poverty, with increases for both children and adults.”

Looking beyond income, other key points in the new report concern unemployment, education and vulnerable children, revealing:

• unemployment among young adults remains a major problem, with the rate still standing at around 10%, more than twice that for those aged over 25;
• the overall rate of unemployment was slightly higher in 2006 than in 2005;
• among those who are out of work but not officially classified as ‘unemployed’, more than a fifth of both disabled people and lone parents want but lack paid work and both these proportions have been rising since 2004;
• Wales remains a low-pay economy – 13% of male and 19% of female full-time workers were paid less than £6.50 an hour in 2005/06 (around a quarter more than in England);
• among part-time workers, 48% are paid less than £6.50 an hour in Wales (compared with 42% in England);
• a quarter of 19-year-olds lack NVQ2 or equivalent qualifications, a proportion unchanged this decade (evidence suggests that if someone fails to reach this level by age 19, they are very unlikely to reach let alone surpass it in their 20s and beyond);
• around 10% of 16- to 18-year-olds are not in employment, education or training;
• more than 15% of children live in workless households and more than 20% live with a disabled parent.

Report co-author Peter Kenway said, “Wales stands out within the UK for its high rates of working-age sickness and disability. Given how many children are disadvantaged by this, the new Assembly Government should take the lead in developing a comprehensive anti-poverty strategy that includes working-age adults as well as pensioners and children.”

Notes to Editors:

1. Monitoring poverty and social exclusion in Wales 2007 by Peter Kenway and Guy Palmer of the New Policy Institute is an update the 2005 analysis.
2. 150 updated graphs on Wales can be found at www.poverty.org.uk (along with data on the rest of the UK).
3. A household is defined as being in poverty if its income is less than 60% of the contemporary UK median household income. The actual value of the poverty threshold depends on how many people live in the household: for example, in 2005/06, £108 per week for a single adult, £186 for a couple with no children and £301 per week for a couple with two children. These sums of money are measured after deduction of income tax, council tax and housing costs.
4. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation is one of the largest social policy research and development charities in the UK. It supports a research and development programme that seeks to understand the causes of social difficulties and explore ways of overcoming them.

Issued by Nasreen Memon, JRF Head of Media Relations: 01904 615 919 / 020 7278 9665 nasreen.memon@jrf.org.uk