The report not only proves to be an acute embarrassment to Tony Blair’s government, but also puts Britain below countries such as Turkey, Poland and Hungry, which suffer less relative poverty than the UK.
According to the report the UK fails on five key indicators of childhood poverty. The childhood poverty rate is high, the number of lone parent families suffering from poverty is high, and the number of workless households is high, as is the number of people who suffer from low wages or have low benefits. Although the government has taken action to lift more than one million children out of poverty, it is argued that there is still a huge amount to be done and as a result may reignite the debate on Britain’s poor.
Inquiries by the Observer published in the article “shame of child poverty in UK” (2000) discovered the true cost to children of living in households without enough money.
Children are eating main meals which consist of little more than toast and beans and rice pudding. Many live in terrible surroundings, with damp running down the walls and inadequate heating. Parents often cannot afford to buy new clothes as the little money they have is spent on food. Some lone parents have less than £100 a week with which to bring up their children and pay the bills.
Poor nutrition leads to bad performance at school and worse health, with associated costs to the national health.
It is not just the large number of children who are touched by poverty that are a problem, but also the numbers who are always poor. Data tracking child poverty over time also reveal that significant numbers of children are living in poverty year after year. Being poor year in year out may result in serious implications for a child’s well being and future life changes. The longer a family stays poor, the harder it is to manage by drawing upon savings or by going further into debt for the more socially excluded the children become. In this way a life or poverty can be a self-perpetuating cycle of deprivation which people have very little power to change.
In this country however poverty is not the kind that children experience in developing countries where war, starvation and disease make suffering obvious. In Britain, children face “relative poverty”, which means they are poor relative to-or compared with-other children (Monahan, 2001). Life is fairly comfortable for most people in this country so something that may seem a luxury to an orphan living on the street in South America is a necessity here. Living without them in Britain is a sign of being deprived (poor).
In year 2000 the insurance company Legal and General calculated that in an average family, children under 18 have £109 a week spent on them. This includes £37 on food, £9 on entertainment and £23 on clothing. But this is a lot more than many children receive. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation recently reported on the other hand that four million UK children grow up lacking at least one thing from a list of 27 items that most people consider to be essentials. The list included new, properly fitted shoes, a warm, waterproof coat and daily fresh fruit and vegetables.
Of course, poverty is much more than just missing out on certain bits of clothing or household equipment. There is also poverty of health and opportunity. These can be caused by poor housing, poor parenting, dropping out of school without qualifications or living on dangerous estates. Poor children often become poor adults, working for low pay, facing conflict with the police and greater chances of problems with drug and alcohol abuse. It can therefore be stated that poverty is a many-sided problem and therefore needs many-sided solutions.
This has been accepted by the present government who have promised to wage war against poverty by creating routes into employment for families with children, improving childcare provision, financial support through the benefit system and tackling educational disadvantage (Sure Start and EDA) and poor health.
The charity Child Poverty Action Group remains concerned that taking 20 years (a promise made by Tony Blair) to eradicate the problem of child poverty is not ambitious enough. It points out that it is far too early to know if many of the current government policies are actually working. Something only time can tell.
