You can tell the paleolithic right is feeling frisky when the old nonsense about lone parents starts up again. You know, the rants we used to get from Michael Portillo and others about feckless teenage girls getting themselves pregnant (amazing how they manage it by themselves, but there you go).

Of course, its all the fault of our ludicrously generous benefit system. And who wouldn’t get pregnant when there’s Income Support on offer?

There’s a prime example in today’s Metro that manages to draw the wrong conclusions from an opinion poll the Metro itself commissioned. Read more »

   Filed under: Child poverty, Inequality, Social exclusion, Welfare | No Comments »

At single parent charity Gingerbread, we’ve been researching how single parents’ incomes and spending patterns compare with families with two parents. Our new report ‘Family Finances’ shows that lone parents’ poverty and struggles to get by can’t simply be blamed on bad choices about money.

In doing the research for this report, we were interested in finding out whether single parents were lacking key financial products, and what patterns there were in their attitudes towards money and their ‘financial capability’. We also wanted to know what their priorities were for Government action to improve their financial situation, and how they thought banks and building societies could help.  The report presents the full analysis but here’s some of the highlights. Read more »

   Filed under: Child poverty, Earnings | 2 Comments »

New Policy Institute produced its first Monitoring Poverty and Social Exclusion report for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation in 1998. Entitled “Labour’s Inheritance”, it was the first independent attempt to bring together indicators on low income, unemployment and low pay as well other aspects of social exclusion, such as low educational attainment and poor health.  This year we published our twelfth annual report – the first to be written during an economic downturn.

And whilst the recession forms a large part of the discussion in the report, the key findings focus on what was happening before the recession began.  What is clear is that problems of rising poverty, debt and unemployment did not begin with the sub prime crisis, and had certainly began before the economy started to shrink. In fact, 2004 looks like the turning point, where trends that were previously positive either stagnated or turned for the worse. Read more »

   Filed under: Child poverty, Recession, Social exclusion | 1 Comment »

Britain is the sixth richest country in the world yet around 30% of our children (over 4 million) live in poverty; in a report released by UNICEF in 2007 Britain came 21^st out of 21 of the world’s richest countries in terms of child wellbeing. If we are to take seriously the issues of child poverty and child wellbeing then we need to tackle the high levels of inequality in this country.

In a recent blog post for the Institute of Economic Affairs, Kristian Niemietz was critical of Child Poverty Action Group for an article in the Autumn 2008 edition of our membership journal “Poverty”. In it, Polly Toynbee argued that we should tax those who earn over £100,000 fifty pence on every pound they earn over that amount, to pay for improving services and reducing inequality. Read more »

   Filed under: Child poverty, Inequality | 4 Comments »

David Cameron’s Hugo Young Lecture is the closest any Conservative has come to explaining how they expect reactionary methods to achieve progressive ends. He fails, but the speech should not be written off and it shows that he has – at least rhetorically – broken with the Conservatives of the 1980s and 90s, who didn’t give two hoots about inequality. Read more »

   Filed under: Child poverty, Inequality, Politics, Welfare | 1 Comment »

Read the TUC Recession Report for October 2009

Today we have published our 12th recession report, which considers the labour market figures for June-August 2009. The second part of the report looks at child poverty and the recession, considering what the implications of the recession could be for poverty and inequality.

The labour market data suggest that while unemployment is likely to continue to rise into 2010, the rate at which levels are increasing may be starting to slow. In addition, despite the largest falls in GDP on record, unemployment and employment have not been as badly affected as in previous downturns.

Read more »

   Filed under: Child poverty, Labour market, Recession, Recession Report | 2 Comments »

Earlier this week David Cameron told us that the Conservative Party was committed to to “fight for the poorest“, and that he wants every child to have the same opportunities that were afforded to him. He is concerned about the problems of “poverty, crime, addiction, failing schools, sink estates, broken homes.” And at a conference fringe Andrew Selous (Shadow Minister for Work and Pensions) reportedly informed attendees that the Conservatives would be focused on dealing with “the root causes of poverty in a rigorous ways”. What does this mean? Read more »

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The Institute of Directors was always the most Thatcherite of the employer organisations when there was a Conservative government. Under Sir George Cox in particular they tried to lose this image, particularly after Ruth Lea left.

But their new alliance with the TaxPayers’ Alliance, from whom they have recruited staff, suggests that they now want to perform the same role under a future Conservative government too. Read more »

   Filed under: Child poverty, Economics, Politics, Public services | 4 Comments »

A big eye-catching proposal from Demos’s Progressive Conservatism project today: roll-up five years worth of future housing benefit into one lump-sum payment of £17,000 and give it to people in poverty to use as a deposit on a house.  Sounds neat – the average price of a terraced house is about £170,000 (thus requiring a deposit of £17,000) and it would give poor people some asset based wealth.

In reality, I can see lots of potential problems with this but one big issue immediately strikes me: how will these proud new homeowners service the mortgage costs?  Read more »

   Filed under: Child poverty, Earnings, Housing, Inequality | Comments Off

The latest child poverty figures were very disappointing; it is time to insist that there is no solution to children’s poverty that ignores the poverty of their parents.

Last week the newspapers gave the Government a kicking thoroughly examined the figures from the latest Households Below Average Income report. The focus for the comments was on the child poverty figures – understandably so, given the Government’s high profile commitment to end child poverty by 2020. But the report also provides the ammunition to back up the case for the TUC’s campaign for a large increase in Jobseeker’s Allowance, the main benefit for unemployed people. Read more »

   Filed under: Child poverty, Inequality, Labour market, Welfare | Comments Off