The news that more than one in three children in the UK are now living in poverty should shock everyone but surprise no one.
Nearly three years into the cost of living crisis, we know that young families and disabled people have been among those hit hardest by the biggest fall in UK living standards in half a century.
The latest estimates, by the non-partisan Social Metrics Commission, show that the number of people in poverty has risen to 16 million, or nearly one in four of the UK population – its highest level since records began in 2000.
The findings use a broader definition of poverty, based on a household’s available resources, than the official one used by the government. Monday’s figures show that, under the latter measure, the number of people in deprivation – 12 million – is, at best, a huge underestimate. At worst, the official tally is in effect meaningless.
The figures published by the SMC are the result of eight years’ work by some of the smartest poverty charities and thinktanks in the UK, including the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, the Institute for Fiscal Studies and the Sutton Trust.
The government approach measures deprivation based on average incomes and housing costs, known as “households below average income” (HBAI). The new approach – called “below average resources” – includes both of those metrics plus “inescapable costs”, such as childcare and costs associated with disabilities, and liquid assets, the value of items that can readily be exchanged into cash.
The result is that millions more people have less money to spend when these other costs are included. It means an additional 4 million people, including 1.6 million children, are defined as living in poverty compared with the previous government estimate.
To its credit, the then Conservative government said in June that it planned to adopt a version of the below-average resources measure pioneered by the SMC.
Indeed, its first analysis of poverty in the UK based on this new approach was quietly published on the Department for Work and Pensions website in January. By way of example, the data shows that the proportion of the population in poverty rises from 17% under the government’s HBAI measurement, to 22% under the new metric in 2021-22.
Experts believe the Conservative government is to be commended for publishing data that more accurately reflects the state of poverty across the UK. It is now for the new Labour government to tackle the crisis head on.
