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.

According to the Save the Children report:

• Income matters because it is central to the experience of poverty. The correlation between living in a low-income household and poor outcomes for children is ‘strong’.
• More needs to be understood about the impact income has on children’s life chances but there is a clear causal link between low income and educational attainment. There is a danger the impact of life-chances interventions will be weakened if families are becoming increasingly poor.
• Considerable progress has been made in cutting child poverty over the past 12 years, with almost a million children lifted out of poverty (a fall of 26 per cent). It is wrong to say, as some have, that recent efforts to reduce child poverty have been a failure.
• Child poverty is expected to increase considerably by 2020, returning to 1999 levels. Nonetheless, the target to reduce child poverty to 10 per cent or less of all children by 2020 remains achievable with the right policies.

Source: Graham Whitham, Ending Child Poverty: The Importance of Income in Measuring and Tackling Child Poverty, Save the Children

Link: Report