Europe’s social and economic future depends on tackling child poverty and breaking the ‘transmission of disadvantage’ across generations, according to an official advisory report.

The poorest households now pay nearly one-third of their income in indirect taxes, according to the latest official figures. The poorest fifth pay 31 per cent on taxes such as VAT and alcohol and fuel duties – much higher than the 13 per cent paid by the richest households.

Public service workers face pay freezes and redundancy threats caused by austerity measures, according to a new report. The result is worsening personal finances, rising debt and cuts in spending on essential items.

There is little evidence to support the idea of a growing ‘culture of dependency’, according to a study of the causes of poverty. The evidence instead highlights the important role for policy – especially on family-related benefits, work incentives and job creation.

The Poverty and Social Exclusion in the UK (PSE: UK) survey will re-interview respondents to the 2010/11 Family Resources Survey (FRS) who have provided permission to be contacted again.

How poverty and/or low income are mediated and affected by family considerations are considered. These could be through practices, exigencies or condition, resources, processes and relations.

Intra-household poverty has generally been conceptualised as a matter of gender inequality, with differential access to resources within the family/household leading to underestimation of the extent of poverty generally, and hidden or invisible levels of poverty within the family/household.

Support for most local services, in the sense of seeing them as being essential, remains very high and has in some cases increased since 1999.

This conceptual note considers the measures specifically for older people that could be used in the PSE: UK survey.

There is a great deal of academic debate around the measurement of child poverty.

Improved parenting is currently often advocated as the best route to improve outcomes for children and, explicitly, as a better alternative than reducing poverty.

A general increase in the wealth of society does not inevitably ‘trickle down’ to individuals and communities in poverty, according to a Welsh Government five-year action plan on poverty.

The benefits system is unaffordable, traps people in poverty and encourages irresponsibility, according to the Prime Minister. In a speech on welfare he called for a debate about the fundamental purpose of the benefits system, and put forward a wide range of possible reforms.

The recession is having a negative impact on the lives of children, says a cross-party group of MPs and peers. They highlight cuts to services, squeezed charity and community group funding, and increasing strain on family budgets.

Current government policy on social justice hinges on the claim that there are 120,000 ‘troubled’ families in Britain.

This report describes the results of a series of fourteen focus groups conducted as part of the development work for the PSE: UK research that explored perceptions of poverty, social exclusion and living standards in the UK today.

In this consultation response, the PSE: UK research team is highly critical of the Coalition government’s social mobility strategy and, in particular, its claim that the best way to tackle intergenerational mobility is to break the ‘the transmission of disadvantage from one generation to the next

This working paper presents the opinions of the general public as to which items and activities are believed necessary in Northern Ireland today to enjoy a decent standard of living. It is based on an analysis of responses to a module in the Omnibus survey conducted in Northern Ireland in 2011.

In this consultation response, the PSE research team welcomes the emphasis on early years in the Field Review’s report, The Foundation Years: Preventing Poor Children bec

Recent austerity measures in the UK have resulted in major reductions in spending on local public services, which will have a significant impact on both the level and quality of local service provision.

Disabled people have yet to feel the full impact of the government’s programme for benefit cuts, a think-tank report highlights. Budget cuts have already had a significant effect but the Welfare Reform Act 2012 means more cuts are on the way.

The paper welcomes the initiative to set out a child poverty strategy, and its recognition that addressing these issues requires a long-term and wide-ranging strategy as well as a commitment to monitor this strategy with targets and indicators.

In this consultation response, Professor David Gordon and the PSE: UK research team recommend that a national ‘service deprivation’ measure is produced based on a social survey question module.

The government’s social mobility strategy is based on a flawed understanding of the available evidence, according to a think-tank report. Britain is not a meritocracy but it does no worse than the average internationally.

Any cuts to council tax support in Wales are bound to hit lower-income households, says a think-tank briefing.

Families on benefits are neither better nor worse off if they separate, finds a new research report. This finding is contrary to the frequently heard view that the benefits system encourages and rewards couples who live apart.

Married or cohabiting couples enjoy large-scale economies in living costs, new research finds, but substantial diseconomies when children or further adults are added.

Sixty-two per cent of all households (or ‘benefit units’) get at least one form of state support, including tax credits, retirement pension and child benefit, according to the latest official survey results for 2010/11. This is broadly similar to the previous year.

‘Hidden’ workers employed by public service contractors are often trapped in low-paid, insecure jobs where being badly treated is a normal part of working life, according to a trade union report.

The report summarises a two-year project to help the workers involved.

Average incomes have fallen by near-record amounts in the aftermath of the global economic recession, according to a think-tank report. Inequality has fallen back to levels last seen in the mid-1990s but only because the ‘poverty line’ has also been falling.

Consultation has started on draft regulations designed to introduce the new universal credit system – a key part of the government’s strategy for social security reform.

The government’s austerity strategy is disproportionately hurting those on the lowest incomes, according to an Oxfam report.

Reductions in relative poverty continued in 2010/11, according to the latest official figures. But unlike in previous years, this did not reflect rising absolute living standards among poorer households – instead, it reflected big falls in median incomes.

The statutory target to halve child poverty by 2010 was missed, an official report has confirmed. The government immediately announced plans to change the target measure – to include income, but providing a ‘more accurate picture’ of the reality of child poverty.

Government guidance has been published on how to help families, parents and children overcome the causes and consequences of disadvantage and poverty. It is based on evaluation evidence from the child poverty pilots conducted between 2009 and 2011.

Just over two-thirds of housing benefit claimants in the private rented sector (and 8 out of 10 new claimants) face a ‘shortfall’ between their local housing allowance (LHA) and their rent, according to new research.

There is no evidence that social housing harms social mobility, according to a taskforce of MPs and peers. Nonetheless, there are risks in stigmatising social housing and the people who live in social houses.

Vulnerable groups in the EU have experienced a considerable drop in their well-being during the economic crisis, according to researchers in Dublin. The worst affected are those who are unemployed, elderly or retired, as well as those already suffering material deprivation.

As background to the Budget, the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) published a summary of recent analyses looking at the likely trends in household incomes over the next few years and, in particular, how they are likely to be affected by tax and benefit changes that are currently planned for 201

Labour governments cut child poverty on a scale and at a pace unmatched by other industrial nations during the period 1998–2010, campaigners have concluded. But they warn that the government’s policies since 2010 risk wiping out all the gains made.

The relative income measure of child poverty – and the role of income more generally – should continue to be the focus of anti-poverty strategies, a leading charity has said. The report also looks at some of the ways the relative income measure has been misrepresented by critics.

This paper explores poverty measurement in South America using the example of Brazil because its magnitude and heterogeneity allow commenting on a broad spectrum of situations that give a good picture of what happens in many countries.

This paper provides a review of various measures pertaining to older people used in the 1999 Poverty and Social Exclusion (PSE) survey and offers suggestions for improvement.

This paper discusses both poverty and social exclusion as they have been configured, measured and ‘packaged’ in EU policy discourse and practice, and looks at both the content of policy and developments in relation to measurement and monitoring.

This paper presents indicators relating to public and private services, focusing particularly on services relating to health, services for specific groups such as elderly, disabled and young people and public transport.

This paper discusses indicators relating to Domain 4 (‘Cultural Resources’) and Domain 7 (‘Cultural Participation’) of the revised Bristol Social Exclusion Matrix (BSEM) for use in the current Poverty and Social Exclusion survey.

This paper discusses indicators to housing and the living environment, Domain 10 of the Bristol Social Exclusion Matrix (BSEM), for use in the Poverty and Social Exclusion survey.

This paper aims to provide a critical review of the children’s items used in the PSE 1999 survey and to provide suggestions for improvements in the current survey.

In June 2010 the European Union adopted its first anti-poverty target and radically changed its poverty measurement methodology. These changes have significant implications for the Poverty and Social Exclusion in the United Kingdom project, which are considered in this paper.

The aim of this paper is to provide the rationale for the aspects of work that need to be covered, and to identify suitable questions for the main PSE survey to gather the required data.