Socio-demographic scenarios for children to 2020

This study, part of the JRF’s What will it take to end child poverty? programme, constructs a set of forecast populations for 2010 and 2020, and explores the impact of different policy options for ‘eradicating’ child poverty.

In order to fully understand the impact of policies on the incidence of child poverty in the future, we need forecasts of the main characteristics of families and households that influence the risk that children will be poor. Because the government’s poverty reduction goals refer to the numbers of children in poverty, this study forecasts the numbers of dependent children in 2010 and 2020, combining national and regional projections of the population by age. It also forecast the distribution of households by size and families by number of dependent children across 13 UK regions. Further important variables influencing child poverty are forecast, including the number of lone parent households at high risk of poverty, the number of households without an earner and the number of households in social housing. Finally, the study forecasts the future numbers in different ethnic groups, as the risk of poverty is greater in some groups than others. The regional projections of population composition by ethnicity represent new, innovative forecasts.