Child Poverty Action Group

In June 2012 when the government published the Households Below Average Income dataset for 2010/11, it announced at the same time that it would revisit the question of how we measure child poverty in the UK. In November 2012, a public consultation on the topic was launched when the Department for Work and Pensions issued the document Measuring Child Poverty: a consultation on better measures of child poverty. Jonathan Bradshaw looks at the key aspects of the various dimensions that the government has selected for inclusion, assesses their appropriateness for inclusion in any metric of child poverty and presents the shortcomings of the proposed new measure.

In December 2012, at the tail end of the parliamentary session, the government laid before the House of Commons a new piece of legislation. The Welfare Benefits Uprating Bill 2012 has a clear objective: to legitimate the Chancellor’s decision in his Autumn Statement to uprate key in- and out-of-work benefits by just 1 per cent for the next three fiscal years. Lindsay Judge explores the likely impacts of the Bill on the fortunes of children growing up in low-income families in the UK today, and subjects some of the rhetorical claims surrounding it to further scrutiny.