Iain Duncan Smith, Work and Pensions Secretary, is seeking to redefine poverty. The main official definition puts the poverty line at 60% of median income. It a benchmark that is applied across Europe, and indeed the OECD. In a speech, he claimed poverty was due less to a simple lack of money than a range of factors including family breakdown, debt, low educational attainment, drug and alcohol addiction and even child abuse. The government is rewriting the rules on measuring poverty, which is very likely because they don't like what the poverty numbers say. The Government is struggling to end child poverty (Labour also found it difficult - missing its target to half the problem by 2010.)
Drug or alcohol-addicted parents account for just 4% of poor households. 62% of poor children live in households where at least one parent works but cannot earn enough to live on.
That year witnessed a drop in average incomes of 5.7%, the biggest such drop since records began in 1962. It is a statistical oddity the decline in figures of poor children came about because the official poverty line is pegged to typical prosperity across the whole population, which declined faster than the incomes of the poor (a 1.1% drop)
The Independent Institute for Fiscal Studies estimates that the number of children in poverty will rise by 800,000 by 2020 on the current trajectory.
The charity Church Action on Poverty's national co-ordinator, Niall Cooper, said poverty today was "much worse" than in the early 1980s and was due to get worse, as the impact of the Government's spending and welfare cuts began to bite. "People are more willing to judge people and see them as the cause of poverty," he said. "Much needs to be done to challenge these perceptions."
Drug or alcohol-addicted parents account for just 4% of poor households. 62% of poor children live in households where at least one parent works but cannot earn enough to live on.
That year witnessed a drop in average incomes of 5.7%, the biggest such drop since records began in 1962. It is a statistical oddity the decline in figures of poor children came about because the official poverty line is pegged to typical prosperity across the whole population, which declined faster than the incomes of the poor (a 1.1% drop)
The Independent Institute for Fiscal Studies estimates that the number of children in poverty will rise by 800,000 by 2020 on the current trajectory.
The charity Church Action on Poverty's national co-ordinator, Niall Cooper, said poverty today was "much worse" than in the early 1980s and was due to get worse, as the impact of the Government's spending and welfare cuts began to bite. "People are more willing to judge people and see them as the cause of poverty," he said. "Much needs to be done to challenge these perceptions."
1 comment:
It is so interesting how poverty can be redefined because as what I have understand of this term its presence make’s the wealthy noticeable. It is just like you can’t talk of poverty without talking about the wealthy individuals. Vice versa!!!
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