UK's child poverty goals unattainable, says report

http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/jun/09/child-poverty-goals-unattainable-report

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Fresh evidence that the government will fail to hit its child poverty goals has emerged in a report showing 3.5 million children are expected to be in absolute poverty in Britain in 2020 – almost five times as many as the target.

The Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission said the absolute child poverty goal was "simply unattainable" and that this was on course to be the first decade since records began in 1961 not to see a fall in absolute child poverty.

It said there was a credibility gap at the heart of the government child poverty strategy and simply focusing on trying to get more people into work was not the answer.

Under the Child Poverty Act 2010, passed by Labour just before it left office, the government is committed to getting relative child poverty (the proportion of children living in households on below 60% median income) below 10% by 2020 and absolute child poverty (the proportion living in households below what 60% of median income was in 2010-11, uprated for inflation) below 5%.

The commission, chaired by the former Labour cabinet minister Alan Milburn, with Gillian Shephard, the former Conservative cabinet minister, as deputy chair, has repeatedly warned that the targets have little or no chance of being met.

on Monday, alongside its formal response to the government's draft child poverty strategy for 2014-17, it publishes research on how many parents would have to find work for the child poverty targets to be met.

Iain Duncan Smith, the work and pensions secretary, argues that addressing poverty by just increasing benefits is flawed and the root causes must be addressed by getting more parents into jobs. But the commission says "ending poverty mainly through the labour market does not look remotely realistic by 2020". In too many cases it simply moves children from low income workless households to low income working households.

"The reality is that too many parents get stuck in working poverty, unable to command sufficient earnings to escape low income and cycling in and out of insecure, short-term and low-paid employment with limited prospects."

To hit the relative child poverty target, parental employment rates would have to reach almost 100% – "far beyond what has ever been achieved anywhere in the world". Hours being worked would have to increase substantially. Current policies would not enable this to happen.

Even if parental employment reached almost 100%, the absolute poverty target would be unattainable because of the way earnings fell relative to inflation from 2010 to 2013.

The Department for Work and Pensions said it was committed to ending child poverty by 2020 with plans to tackle the root causes of poverty, including worklessness, low earnings and educational failure.