Child poverty in Britain: recent trends and future prospects

Robert Joyce ()
Additional contact information
Robert Joyce: Institute for Fiscal Studies and Institute for Fiscal Studies

No W15/07, IFS Working Papers from Institute for Fiscal Studies

Abstract: This paper analyses the key trends in child poverty in Britain, with particular focus on changes since the late 1990s when the issue was promoted towards the top of the policy agenda. The position of low-income families with children in the income distribution improved considerably in the late 1990s and early 2000s, recovering much – though not all – of the ground that they had lost on the rest of the population during the 1980s. I show that these gains were heavily dependent on large amounts of additional government spending on cash transfers. Since the mid 2000s, the absolute living standards of poor families with children have stagnated or declined: further reductions in the headline relative income poverty measure since the recession were driven only by falling median income and by the failure of this measure to account for the higher inflation rates faced by poorer households over this period. Looking ahead, it is not clear what mechanisms could bring about the large additional reductions in child poverty that are in theory legally required under the Child Poverty Act, in light of the heavy reliance of past gains on cash transfers, the current fiscal climate, and the current government’s lack of a clear and effective child poverty strategy. A version of this paper appeared in Spanish in the December 2014 issue of Panorama Social, available here.

JEL-codes: I32 I38 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015-02-13
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.ifs.org.uk/uploads/publications/wps/WP201507.pdf (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 404 Not Found (https://www.ifs.org.uk/uploads/publications/wps/WP201507.pdf [302 Found]--> https://ifs.org.uk/uploads/publications/wps/WP201507.pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ifs:ifsewp:15/07

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
The Institute for Fiscal Studies 7 Ridgmount Street LONDON WC1E 7AE

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IFS Working Papers from Institute for Fiscal Studies The Institute for Fiscal Studies 7 Ridgmount Street LONDON WC1E 7AE. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Emma Hyman ().