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Benefits
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01/12/2011
Iain Duncan Smith rejects benefits as way to tackle poverty
Tackling child poverty by boosting family income through benefits is a narrow approach that ‘looks set to have failed’ said Ian Duncan Smith, the Work and Pensions Secretary, in a major speech. The speech followed the government’s Autumn Statement, which included welfare measures that on the government’s own projections would lead to an increase in child poverty – another signal of the government’s intentions to develop a new approach to poverty less dependent on benefits.
Duncan Smith claimed there are problems with officially classifying child poverty as a family on 60 per cent or less than the median income, as this had pushed governments into introducing policies with ‘perverse incentives’. He argued that this target created a ‘poverty plus a pound’ approach – where authorities did only enough to keep some families just above the 60 per cent mark without really changing lives, while those at the very bottom could be left behind.
Category: News stories -
07/11/2011
Incapacity benefit reforms will hit claimants
The government reforms to incapacity benefit will result in severe hardship for hundreds of thousands of households living outside the south of England, according to research published by Sheffield Hallam University in Incapacity Benefit Reform.
The report by Christina Beatty and Steve Fothergill of the Centre for Regional Economic and Social Research finds:
Category: Reports -
01/10/2011
Low pay underpins child poverty
Work in itself is not a solution to poverty, in part because of the spread of low pay work over the last 30 years, argues Richard Dickens in the latest National Institute Economic Review (vol. 218, no. 1). In his article, ‘Child poverty in Britain: past lessons and future prospects’, Dickens examines the impact on child poverty of changes over the past decade in wages and work, tax and benefits, and demographics. He finds that benefit reform increased work among families with children but this did not translate into large falls in child poverty – those entering work depended on substantial increases in benefits to lift them over the poverty line. Changes in the wage structure and demographics increased poverty, while changes to benefits (and, to a lesser extent, taxes) over that period had reduced poverty by making the tax/benefit system more progressive and by favouring families with children over those without children.
Category: Reports -
10/12/2010
All in this together?
by Stewart Lansley
The government has consistently argued that under the government spending review those with the broadest backs would take the heaviest burden – that the package would conform to the principle of 'progressive austerity'. However, two independent studies, the first by the Institute for Fiscal Studies and the second by Tim Horton and Howard Reed for the TUC, challenge this assessment, finding that the overall impact of the spending review is regressive.
The government's plans, as announced in the 2010 spending review, involve a number of tax rises – especially the rise in VAT to 20 per cent from January 2011 – and an £81 billion package of spending cuts.[1] These are needed, the Coalition argues, to close the fiscal deficit inherited from Labour.
Category: Articles -
29/11/2010
UK poverty set to rise in next three years
Child and working-age poverty in the UK is set to rise in the next three years, according to projections from the independent Institute for Fiscal Studies in Child and Working-Age Poverty from 2010 to 2013.
Category: Reports
