Current benefit payments are at their lowest level since 1948, finds a new report from the IPPR. Further analysis suggest it could even be relatively lower than the Elizabethan Poor Laws.
On this World Children’s Day, please see this important report focussing on the role of child rights in addressing child poverty: ‘Protecting the Child from Poverty: The Role of Rights in the Council of Europe’.
This statistical briefing note explains the research behind the BBC1 Panorama programme 'Too poor to stay warm' broadcast on 21 March, 2016. The programme highlighted the problems of fuel poverty in the UK and was based on calculations produced by the PSE project team. This outlines how the results, discussed in the programme, were produced.
Poverty as measured by material deprivation through lack of economic resources remains absolutely central to understanding the causation of most aspects of social exclusion and a range of social outcomes, concludes the 2nd of the two-volume PSE-UK study.
Read more about the first of the two-volume study based on the PSE-UK survey. Find out how poverty affects people from different groups within the UK: young and old; men and women; different ethnic backgrounds; those with disabilities; and others.
The human cost of government imposed austerity should be a key issue, argue Vickie Cooper and David Whyte. Drawing on their new book, 'The Violence of Austerity', they set out how austerity is shaping people's lives and deaths.
In this section you will find details of the official measures used to monitor child poverty in the UK under the Child Poverty Act, adopted by the Labour Government in 2010. Following the formation of the Coalition government (2010 to 2015) and then the election of the Conservative government (2015-), there were moves to replace these measures with other broader ones. These proposal were widely criticised by an overwhelming majority of poverty experts - see, for example, the PSE: UK team’s response to these proposals in Tackling Child Poverty and Improving Life Chances and Social Mobility and Child Poverty Review).
The government wants to redefine poverty to be a measure of workless homes and educational attainment. But most children in poverty live in households where at least one adults works. Gill Main questions how this proposal helps tackle child poverty.
OUT NOW - the two-volume study based on the findings of the Poverty and Social Exclusion in the UK research. Volume 1 examines the extent of poverty and volume 2 the different dimensions of disadvantage. Published by Policy Press on November 29, 2017.
It has long been recognised that extreme inequality has many serious social consequences, as well as causing economic fragility and weakness - now the time has surely come to act.