There’s much talk of “fiscal pinch points” driving economic policy decisions. But there are moral pinch points, too. Not least when it comes to our children: for many in larger families, we have now come close to creating a poverty guarantee.
Since 2017, the two-child limit has prevented families from receiving child-related benefits for a third or subsequent child, worth about £3,200 per extra child. The result? Half of children in families with three or more children are now in poverty vs a third in 2011/12. And that’s before the policy’s full bite has been felt (by 2035, 750,000 families will be affected, vs 420,000 last year). These statistics risk sounding abstract, but the reality they reflect isn’t. While one in three smaller families are materially deprived, that proportion rises to three-quarters of larger families.
New work from the Nesta charity brings this home. In interviews with 35 parents affected, participants explained how it has cratered their finances, but also the impact it has had on children who go without the “toys and books” their elder siblings had. Parents report it harming their mental health, as well as their children’s .
The policy’s goal was for “families on benefits [to] face the same financial choices about having children as families supporting themselves through work”, the target being fewer births in bigger, poorer families. There’s little evidence this has happened. It’s made families poorer, not smaller. People either don’t know of the policy when making family decisions, or aren’t on benefits before sickness, unemployment or family breakdown changes their situation. The limit has to go. The costs are real (£2.5bn a year), but small compared to the damage. Abolition would lift half a million children out of poverty.
• Torsten Bell is chief executive of the Resolution Foundation and author of the forthcoming book Great Britain? How We Get Our Future Back
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