Child Poverty in the UK

In 2019-20 4.3 million children (defined as people under 16, or aged 16 to 19 and in full-time education) were living in households in poverty. 

They accounted for 31% of the UK’s 14 million children.

But there was a wide variation among ethnic groups.

Bangladeshi children are the poorest, with 61% of them living in a poor household. In 2010-11, 61% of Bangladeshi children were living in poor households – exactly the same figure as at the end of the decade.

The figures for the other groups were: Pakistani children (55%); black African or Caribbean or black British (53%); other ethnicity (51%); other Asian (50%); mixed ethnicity (32%); Indian (27%); white (26%); and Chinese (12%).

There are 2.9 million white children living in poverty, making them by far the largest ethnic cohort, comprising 68% of all children living in poverty. 

Black children are the next biggest group: with more than 400,000 living in poverty, they comprise 10% of the child poverty total.

More than half of black children in the UK are now growing up in poverty.

Black children are also now more than twice as likely to be growing up poor as white children.

 The proportion of black children living in poverty went up from 42% in 2010-11 to 53% in 2019-20

Over the last decade, the total number of black children in poor households more than doubled

Halima Begum, chief executive at the Runnymede Trust, said: “These are not cyclical inequalities that are being flagged, but systemic shortcomings that must be reversed quickly.

“But the problems are nuanced. Black children face racism and poverty. But poverty is not defined exclusively by race. So, for more than a decade, the Runnymede Trust has argued that you can’t simply solve the issue of racial inequality without also addressing socio-economic disparities.”

More than half of UK’s black children live in poverty, analysis shows | Race | The Guardian