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. Although many such services are ostensibly ‘universal’, both the quality and the quantity of services are typically lower in poor areas, and families in poverty may face additional barriers when accessing services. This paper argues that there is a need for some innovation in the public and private service questions on the PSE survey due to the changing nature of public service provision.
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. Six measurement areas were identified: deprivation; social capital; limitations in activities of daily living; receipt of informal care; receipt of health and social services; and provision of unpaid care.
The Coalition government risks repeating the mistakes of the previous Labour government by focusing too much on tax and benefit incentives as the only solution to poverty, argues a budget briefing from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, What will Budget 2012 Mean for UK Poverty? The briefing also argues that while, taken in isolation, the impact of the Coalition government’s aim to raise the tax threshold to £10,000 could help those on low incomes, it must be seen in the context of overall tax and benefit changes.
The briefing notes that for families with children the raising of the income tax threshold by £1,000 in April 2011 more than outweighed the gains created by freezing child benefit, reducing tax credits and reducing child care reimbursement.
The briefing draws on evidence from the organisation’s previous research to show how potential policy decisions in the Budget would affect poor places and people in the UK.
Improving the quality of part-time opportunities for second earners is crucial to reducing child poverty, according to a new report from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, Building A Sustainable Quality Part-time Recruitment Market.
The report shows that the part-time recruitment market is skewed strongly in favour of vacancies with salaries below £20,000 full-time equivalent earnings. It found that resistance to part-time recruitment was highest among employers who had not previously recruited part-time staff at over £20,000 full-time equivalent earnings. The report argues that:
Figures compiled by the Daycare Trust for the annual Child Care Costs Survey, 2012, show that 44,000 fewer families will be getting help with childcare costs following the April tax credit cut. The survey also finds that nursery costs will rise by nearly 6 per cent, and that there are major gaps in childcare despite legal duties on local authorities. By cutting the maximum level of support available through the childcare element of Working Tax Credit from 80 per cent of costs to 70 per cent, the average claim has fallen by over £10 per week, costing the low-income working families that receive it more than £500 per year.
The survey, which is sponsored by Computershare Voucher Services Ltd, finds that average childcare costs now exceed £100 for a part-time place (25 hours) in many parts of Britain with the average yearly expenditure for a child under two standing at £5,103.
The Coalition government’s proposed ‘reforms’ to the Disability Living Allowance (DLA) lack support and credibility and are ‘highly misleading’, says Responsible Reform, a report written by sick and disabled people, their friends and carers. Based on an analysis of 500 responses to the UK government’s consultation on its planned changes to disability living allowance, this report argues that the decision to reduce DLA expenditure by 20 per cent may have been based on misleading data about the reasons for growth in DLA. It is estimated that the proposed changes could lead to 500,000 disabled people losing entitlement to the benefit. The report found:
Tax revenue generated by working mothers would far outstrip the cost of free nursery places for all argues the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) in its latest report, Making the Case for Universal Childcare.
At just over 60 per cent, the employment rate of women with children in the UK is much lower than in many other OECD countries. It ranks 19th behind countries such as Iceland, Sweden and Denmark, which tend to have affordable, high-quality childcare provision. Many women in the UK, especially those on low to middle incomes, stop work after having children because of the high cost of childcare. In the UK a couple who are both earning average wages spend 27 per cent of their income on childcare while the average for the 34 developed nations of the OECD is 12 per cent.
The government will miss the legally binding target on reducing poverty by 2020, warns Alan Milburn, head of the government’s review on social mobility and poverty. In a speech to the Children's Society, Milburn called on the Coalition government to set out a long-term plan to deliver free childcare for all families, arguing that Britain under-invested in children. He also called on the forthcoming White Paper on social justice to make the case for cutting child poverty.
The full text of Milburn’s speech is available from The Children’s Society.
Households with low to middle incomes (LMI) are more dependent on female employment and on the benefit and tax credit system than in the past, finds the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) in Why did Britain’s households get richer? The IFS analysis, conducted for the Resolution Foundation, found that among low- to middle-income households:
Warning of six more years of austerity, the Chancellor’s package of measures included a number of provisions that, on the Treasury’s predictions, are likely to increase the numbers of children in poverty.
Key points in the statement include: