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Housing association tenants in Scotland stand to lose up to £228 million by 2017 as a result of the government’s reforms to social security benefits, according to a report.

In Poverty in the United Kingdom (1979) Peter Townsend examined relative deprivation covering a wide range of aspects of living standards, both material and social.

Food stamps have failed to make a significant dent in the economic insecurity of families in poverty in the USA, according to new research.

Poverty affects different communities in different ways. In 2009, people living in deprived areas of Glasgow were invited to take part in a new Scottish initiative called The Poverty Truth Commission.

Inequality undermines social trust, which in turn weakens popular support for income redistribution, according to a new study.

This bulletin reports on the PSE research project, well-being indicators and North/South of Ireland poverty measurement.

This bulletin reports on OECD measures of inequality, the rise in income poverty, the final report of the High Pay Commission, fuel poverty, the Family Resources Survey deprivation indicators for Northern Ireland, HM Revenue and Customs child poverty measure, and the Child Poverty Act.

Household finances across the country are weaker than at the same point last year, according to a new survey. More households are ‘struggling’, with income not sufficient to pay bills, and fewer households have income that exceeds bills and debts.

Amid concerns that disability hate crime is being fuelled by government rhetoric over benefit ‘scroungers’, a newspaper has discovered that only a very small proportion of disability hate crimes are actually reported to the police.

Basic deprivation is the key dimension associated with economic stress, according to a study funded by the European Commission.

Parental wealth is positively associated with a wide range of outcomes for children in early adulthood, according to a paper from the London School of Economics.

Income inequality contributed to the outbreak of widespread social unrest in English cities in the summer of 2011, according to a new briefing paper.

The High Court has ruled that two welfare-to-work schemes do not breach human rights law by requiring claimants to undertake unpaid work placements.

People in the Greater Manchester area need to earn £7.22 per hour, working full time, in order to enjoy a reasonable quality of life, according to a think-tank report.

Children’s perceptions of life satisfaction are not directly linked to conventional income-based measures of poverty, says a research paper from Essex University.

Oxford, Oxford University Press, 176 pp, ISBN 978-0-19-959152-7 (hbk)

Household incomes fell in real terms in the first quarter of 2012, according to official statistics, leaving them at their lowest level since 2005. The figures confirm gloomy data on economic growth published a few days earlier.

Politicians must ‘grasp the nettle’ of tax reform, according to a think-tank report. The existing system of redistribution through tax and benefits is inefficient, and needs to be replaced by one that provides ‘redistribution at lower cost’.

People in developed (OECD) countries are more likely to support redistribution measures if inequality is high, according to an academic study. But it goes on to suggest the link is not a simple one, and that certain ‘fundamental country characteristics’ may also play an important role.

Developed countries were busy cutting top rates of income tax in the run-up to the global recession, according to a paper from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in Paris.

Inequality has reached extreme proportions in many countries - but, according to campaigners, the problem is far worse than anyone has understood it until now.

The personal histories of ‘troubled’ families are presented as ‘chaotic’ in a report by an official adviser. The government has pledged to turn around the lives of 120,000 such families in England by 2015.

Author/s:
Ruth Levitas

On 18 July, Louise Casey, head of the Troubled Families Programme, published a report called Listening to Troubled Families.

Many of society’s most vulnerable people have been left in a ‘fragile’ state by the economic downturn and cuts to public services and benefits, according to a new study.

The government has been found guilty of acting unlawfully in failing to establish a Child Poverty Commission in time to advise on its child poverty strategy.

The Europe 2020 project has so far failed to promote coherent anti-poverty strategies, campaigners say. And the UK is ranked below the average on its approach to most poverty and social exclusion issues.

Unemployment benefit conditions in the UK are ‘relatively tight’ compared with other EU countries, according to researchers in Germany.

The researchers propose a methodology for benchmarking EU unemployment benefits systems, to help assess how well they achieve their objectives.

Sharp inequalities persist in the distribution of household wealth, according to the latest official statistics.

Warning bells have been sounded by MPs over progress in overhauling the PAYE system, with potential implications for plans to introduce universal credit from October 2013.

As many as 42 per cent of potential claimants of universal credit say switching to a system of monthly payments will make life harder, according to a new Department for Work and Pensions study.

Most aspects of the new universal credit will succeed in driving the ‘desired user behaviours’, according to a research study published by the Department for Work and Pensions.

Tens of thousands of disabled adults and children will be much worse off when the new universal credit comes into force from 2013, says a new report. The scale of cuts facing disabled people has not been properly understood because the changes have so far been viewed in isolation.

Tens of thousands of disabled adults and children will be much worse off when the new universal credit comes into force from 2013, says a new report. The scale of cuts facing disabled people has not been properly understood because the changes have so far been viewed in isolation.

A lack of affordable and accessible public transport is having a serious effect on low-income households and reducing people’s ability to find work, according to campaigners.

A government-appointed commission has invited views on whether socio-economic rights should be included in any future Bill of Rights for the UK.

Local housing allowance (LHA) is inadequate to cover even the lowest private sector rents in many areas of England, according to a new study. This contradicts government claims that at least 30 per cent of local rents will be affordable with the new rates.

Renée is 40 and works long hours for low pay to try to provide for her four children, aged 3 to 14, and her 80-year-old mother. The three generations of the family share a damp and overcrowded three-bedroom council flat in Hackney, in inner London.

Rosaleen is 75, single and lives in south Belfast where she is active in the local community. Having worked all her life, she had thought that her state pension and a small occupational pension would be sufficient in her retirement. But, increasingly, she finds paying the bills difficult.

Older people need to shoulder a bigger share of public spending cuts, according to an influential Conservative MP.

There is ‘a snowball’s chance in hell’ of meeting the statutory target of ending child poverty by 2020, according to the government’s official adviser on social mobility.

Between 16 and 20 per cent of London’s workforce earn less than the ‘living wage’ for the capital, a study for the Greater London Authority has found.

A couple with two children need to earn £36,800 each year to have a socially acceptable standard of living, according to a Joseph Rowntree Foundation study. This is up by nearly one-third since a similar study in 2008.

Early results from the Work Programme show ‘promising signs’, the government claims. The Work Programme is the government’s key welfare-to-work scheme, relying heavily on private contractors paid according to results.

Wage moderation, pay freezes and sometimes pay cuts have been experienced in most EU member states in recent years, according to a report. The global crisis has hit vulnerable groups particularly hard.

The number of children living in vulnerable families will rise to over one million by 2015 unless urgent action is taken, a new report has warned.

Benefits cheats should have their photographs pinned to ‘every lamp-post in the streets where they live’ in order to shame them, according to a senior official in the Department for Work and Pensions.

The Scottish Parliament has unanimously approved a Bill designed to limit the impact in Scotland of UK-wide social security reforms, including plans for a new universal credit.

The vote follows a parliamentary committee report expressing ‘grave concerns’ over the reform plans.

Improving people’s skills over the rest of this decade will cut both absolute and relative poverty, according to three linked reports.

The Joseph Rowntree study looks at the relationship between income inequality, poverty and skills.

Tax credits have not had the effect of forcing down wages for low-paid workers, according to a think-tank report. Overall, tax credits have had a number of successes and are popular with those who get them.

The government will have to spend an extra £8.13 billion on housing benefit for pensioners each year by 2060, according to a think-tank report. The rising number of older people, and changes in the housing market, are the main factors.

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