Child Poverty in Britain

Children, Youth and Environments. Vol 14, No.1 (2004) ISSN 1546-2250 Response to Review of Poor Kids in a Rich Country Timothy Smeeding Maxwell's Center for Policy Research Syracuse University Lee Rainwater Harvard University Luxembourg Income Study Citation: Smeeding, Timothy and Lee Rainwater. (2004). “Response to Review of Poor Kids in a Rich Country.” Children, Youth and Environments 14(1). We want to thank the reviewer for a cogent analysis and policy interpretation of our book. This brief response is to say that policy can indeed make a difference. Figure 1 compares child poverty in the UK and in the USA using similar poverty standards— the U.S. poverty line (about 43-45 percent of U.S. median income in 1997) with the UK poverty line (set at 60 percent of UK median income in 1997). In the United Sates we show both the official series (top line) and one that reflects the Luxembourg Income Study’s (LIS) income definition and the changes in poverty measurement recommended by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences in 1995. Since the UK GDP per person was about 70 percent of the U.S. level in that year, these lines measure just about the same “real” level of living. 279 Figure 1. Trends in Absolute Child Poverty: UK vs. U.S., 19892002 Sources: U.S. Census Bureau; Hills, John and Holly Sutherland (2004). "Child Poverty in the UK and the Blair Government: A Progress Report." Conference on the Support of Children, Princeton University, January. Revised April, 2004. Mimeo, CASE Center, London School of Economics. In 1997, Prime Minister Blair announced his policies against child poverty; in 1999 they began to be implemented; by 2001-2002, child poverty in the UK had fallen below that in the United States measured against the same “real” resource level. Note that child poverty in both nations began to fall without the help of policy in the late 1990s owing to the strong economic growth of the period. But as we entered the 21st century, when both economies turned sour, the UK showed that policy can make a difference. The U.S. poverty decline stopped; the UK’s continues. To our reviewer and the readers 280 of CYE, we close by saying there is hope. But, it may take some time to find a leader who reads all of our books and then decides to run for President, making child poverty a key priority. The Blair government experience in the UK may give her or him some hope indeed. Timothy M. Smeeding is the Maxwell Professor of Public Policy, and Director of Maxwell's Center for Policy Research. He is also the Director of the Luxembourg Income Study (www.lisproject.org), a nonprofit research organization which he co-founded with Lee Rainwater in 1983. Professor Smeeding's research is focused on national and cross-national aspects of economic inequality, poverty, and public policy toward vulnerable groups, such as children, the aged, and the disabled. Over the next eight months he will publish three books: The Economics of an Aging Society (with Richard V. Burkhauser, Robert L. Clark, Marilyn Moon, and Joseph F. Quinn; Blackwell Publishers); Poor Kids in a Rich Nation (with Lee Rainwater; Russell Sage Foundation Press); and Public Policy and the Future of the Family, proceedings of a conference held at The Maxwell School in October 2002 (edited with Lee Rainwater, and Professor Daniel Patrick Moynihan; Russell Sage Foundation Press). Additional unpublished papers and a complete curriculum vitae may be found on his website at http://www-cpr.maxwell.syr.edu/faculty/smeeding/ Lee Rainwater is professor of sociology emeritus and research director of the Luxembourg Income Study. His books include Poor Kids in a Rich Country: America's Children in Comparative Perspective, with Timothy M. Smeeding, Russell Sage Foundation, 2003; Income Distribution in OECD Countries, with Anthony B. Atkinson and Timothy M. Smeeding, OECD, 1995 ; Public/Private Interplay in Social Protection with Martin Rein, (eds.), M.E. Sharpe and Co., 1986; What Money Buys: Inequality and the Social Meaning of Income, New York: Basic Books, 1974; Behind Ghetto Walls: Black Families in a Federal Slum, Chicago: Aldine Publishing Company, 1970; and And the...

This paper presents a methodology for the incorporation of poverty related concepts into the goal programming paradigm. The concepts of poverty line, absolute poverty and relative poverty are discussed in the context of their potential usage in the field of Operations Research. The synergy between goal programming and poverty lines is examined. Two additional meta-goals are proposed for inclusion in a meta-goal programming framework based around absolute and relative poverty respectively. The resulting poverty incorporating meta-goal programming model is compared against other goal programming variants over a test set of school budget allocation models. The results demonstrate how the incorporation of poverty principles allows for greater modelling flexibility in the goal programming framework. This in turn allows decision makers to avoid solutions that are below threshold levels for a subset of stakeholders in either a relative or absolute sense. Appropriate conclusions and suggestions for future research are given.

Poverty is a complex issue that involves more than just income levels, affecting various aspects of life such as health, education, and living conditions. The ongoing discussion about how to measure poverty, whether through absolute or relative terms, reflects the challenges in assessing it. Absolute poverty is based on a set standard that focuses on meeting basic needs for survival, while relative poverty looks at income disparities within a society. This study explores existing research on multidimensional poverty and examines the debate between absolute and relative poverty measures, considering their respective advantages and disadvantages. A notable conclusion from the research is that multidimensional poverty indices (MPIs), like the Multidimensional Poverty Index, provide a broad view of deprivation by including multiple factors. MPIs help policymakers design more targeted interventions in areas such as education, healthcare, and living standards. However, absolute poverty measures, such as the World Bank’s $1.90-per-day threshold, are still essential for tracking extreme poverty in developing nations, offering a clear benchmark for international comparisons. In contrast, relative poverty measures are particularly relevant in wealthier nations, where inequality and social exclusion are more prominent factors in poverty. This study highlights gaps in how these different approaches are integrated and calls for further research to improve models that address both absolute and relative poverty. The findings suggest that combining multidimensional, absolute, and relative poverty measures is important for fully understanding poverty and creating effective strategies to reduce it, adapted to the needs of specific regions and contexts.

Subject. This article discusses the economic opportunities of households and the issues of population welfare. Objectives. The article aims to identify the main causes of child poverty and analyze the programmes implemented in the Samara Oblast to support various population groups. Methods. For the study, I used statistical, dynamic, structural, and comparative analyses. Results. The article finds that a significant number of households with children fall into the low-income category in the Samara Oblast. There are many factors affecting the level of child poverty. The article emphasizes that strengthening the targeting of social assistance, improving the social contract system, and digitizing social services should be the main areas for developing social policy to alleviate child poverty. Conclusions. The proposed measures implementation can help improve the efficiency of the social assistance system, reduce child poverty, and improve the quality of life for families with children.

The study aims to analyze the prevalence of absolute and relative care poverty among community-dwelling older adults with functional limitations in the Republic of Korea. Absolute care poverty is defined as the proportion of individuals who do not receive any formal or informal care despite needing assistance. Relative care poverty refers to the proportion of individuals who receive care but perceive the amount of care as insufficient. Data were drawn from the 2017 National Survey of Living Conditions and Welfare Needs of Korean Older Persons (n=2,608), the 2020 survey (n=1,233), and the 2023 survey (n=1,873), conducted by the Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs. The care poverty rates were analyzed using SPSS 26.0. The results show an increasing trend in absolute care poverty, rising from 28.6% in 2017 to 45.0% in 2020 and 52.8% in 2023. Relative care poverty increased from 14.3% in 2017 to 23.8% in 2020, then slightly decreased to 18.3% in 2023. The findings suggest that expanding the coverage and adequacy of care services is necessary to alleviate care poverty among older adults in Korea.

The National Income Dynamics Study offers important new opportunities for exploring the dynamics of poverty in South Africa. This paper provides a largely descriptive overview of the situation of children in South Africa, drawing on the first wave of the panel study. It finds that children and households with children remain disproportionately represented in rural areas under traditional authority, and that children have proportionately lower levels of access to services and adequate living environments than adults. Many children live in households where their parents are absent, for a range of reasons including orphaning and adult migration. These children are cared for almost entirely by relatives, highlighting the importance of extended kinship networks in providing family care, particularly in the context of high mortality and labour migration rates. The income poverty analysis applies a range of poverty lines and finds that children are, on average, poorer than adults. Even using a relatively low poverty line equivalent to R515 per month in 2008, two thirds of children live in income poverty, and this rate increases substantially for children in rural areas. The severity of child poverty is related to the fact that over a third of children live in households where no adults are employed. While social grants are critical for reducing poverty levels, the widest reaching grant – the Child Support Grant – makes a relatively small impact on child poverty because the amount of the grant is set very low. Larger grants, such as the Old Age Pension and Disability Grants, have a far greater effect on reducing child poverty even though they are not intended for children.

The replacement of the Child Tax Credit (CTC) with a child allowance has been advocated by numerous policymakers and researchers. We estimate the anti-poverty, targeting, and labor supply effects of such a change by linking survey data with administrative tax and government program data which form part of the Comprehensive Income Dataset (CID). We focus on the provisions of the 2021 Build Back Better Act, which would have increased maximum benefit amounts to $3,000 or $3,600 per child (up from $2,000 per child) and made the full credit available to all low and middle-income families regardless of earnings or income. Initially ignoring any behavioral responses, we estimate that the replacement of the CTC would reduce child poverty by 34% and deep child poverty by 39%. The change to a child allowance would have a larger anti-poverty effect on children than any existing government program, though at a higher cost per child raised above the poverty line than any other means-tested program. Relatedly, the child allowance would allocate a smaller share of its total dollars to families at the bottom of the income distribution-as well as families with the lowest levels of long-term income, education, or health-than any existing means-tested program with the exception of housing assistance. We then simulate anti-poverty effects accounting for labor supply responses. By replacing the CTC (which contained substantial work incentives akin to the EITC) with a child allowance, the policy change would reduce the return to working at all by at least $2,000 per child for most workers with children. Relying on elasticity estimates consistent with mainstream simulation models and the academic literature, we estimate that this change in policy would lead 1.5 million workers (constituting 2.6% of all working parents) to exit the labor force. The decline in employment and the consequent earnings loss would mean that child poverty would only fall by at most 22% and deep child poverty would not fall at all with the policy change.

Poverty is rather high in contemporary Russia: every eighth Russian was poor according to the official statistics in 2018. Fighting poverty is among the top strategic development goals for the period till 2024. The paper studies gender disparities in poverty among Russian adults. Better understanding of gender structure of poverty in Russia would facilitate poverty reduction via better targeting and better tailoring of policy instruments. We utilize micro data of the Survey of income and social program participation by Rosstat as of 2017 for our statistical analysis. Two alternative poverty concepts are used: absolute income poverty (the official methodology of poverty measurement in Russia) and poverty risk and social exclusion index (the key component of poverty monitoring indicator in the EU). The latter index is a composition of relative poverty and deprivation poverty measures. Our results indicate that, on average, there is no gender poverty gap in Russia when absolute poverty concept is used: poverty rates among males and females are the same on average. Hence, we find no statistical support to the widely used by the media thesis of poverty feminization in Russia. Absolute poverty rate, however, is found to vary significantly across different gender-age groups: absolute income poverty among females is higher than among males in young and senior ages, while males are poorer in mid-age groups. When multiple criteria definition of poverty and social exclusion (AROPE) is applied, we find clear signs of feminization of poverty in Russia. Multidimensional poverty is much higher among females, and this is observed in all age groups. The highest gender poverty gap is observed in senior ages. The age-gender poverty structure changes dramatically when we move from absolute poverty concept to the multidimensional one: we observe higher share of females in poverty, and higher share of senior people in poverty. The key determinants of higher multidimensional poverty of females is their relatively (to males) lower wages, and relatively lower pensions.

In the 1980s there was an increase in cross-sectional wage inequality while simultaneously there was a decrease in the time series volatility of aggregate output. This paper argues that increased efficiency of the labor market may help explain both features of the data. Increases in labor market efficiency or equivalently reduced search frictions increase wage inequality by increasing the degree of positive assortive matching. Simultaneously, aggregate volatility of output decreases as labor market efficiency increases since reduced frictions insulate the economy from shocks that affect employment. In a calibrated model the improvement in labor market efficiency explains around 20 percent of the decline in output volatility and roughly 40 percent of the increase in wage inequality after 1985.

Liberalization and Wage Inequality: Evidence from Indian Manufacturing Industry - A Critical Review of Literature

Poverty lines are typically higher in richer countries, and lower in poorer ones, reflecting the relative nature of national assessments of who is considered poor. In many high-income countries, poverty lines are explicitly relative, set as a share of mean or median income. Despite systematic variation in how countries define poverty, global poverty counts are based on fixed-value lines. To reflect national assessments of poverty in a global headcount of poverty, this paper proposes a societal poverty line. The proposed societal poverty line is derived from 699 harmonized national poverty lines, and has an intercept of $1 per day and a relative gradient of 50 percent of median national income or consumption. The societal poverty line is more closely aligned with national definitions of poverty than other proposed relative lines. By this relative measure, societal poverty has fallen steadily since 1990, but at a much slower pace than absolute extreme poverty.

Examining the Spatial Structural Determinants of Child Poverty in Nigeria

The chapter presents Sustainable Development Indicators (SDIs), particularly in the social domain, with a focus on education. It connects the research to global and European policy agendas, such as the UN 2030 Agenda and EU Sustainable Development Goals monitoring. Poverty is defined as living in households with income below the poverty line, which often results in material deprivation, limited access to education, and social exclusion. In the EU context, poverty is measured by indicators such as the at-risk-of-poverty rate, severe material deprivation, and low work intensity, based on EU-SILC data. Education is considered both a personal asset and a social factor, represented by indicators such as tertiary education attainment, early school leaving, continuing education, and adult educational attainment, monitored by Eurostat. This study examines the role of education in reducing child poverty in the EU. The chapter uses statistical analysis, focusing on non-linear regression. Eurostat data are used for the year 2022. The relationship between educational attainment and child poverty in EU regions is estimated. These results have policy implications for stakeholders who aim to reduce child poverty through improved education.

This study examines the economic and structural determinants of premature mortality, measured in years of potential life lost. Using county-level panel data from 2014–2020, covering 2,880 U.S. counties and over 20,000 county-year observations, this study employed an instrumental variables approach to address endogeneity and estimate causal effects. A ten-day increase in mentally unhealthy days per month was associated with a 1.29-year reduction in life expectancy, driven by increased mortality from suicide, drug overdoses, and alcohol-related diseases. A five-percentage-point rise in child poverty led to a 0.72-year decline in life expectancy through food insecurity, adverse childhood experiences, and long-term chronic health conditions. Increasing primary care providers by one per 10,000 residents extended life expectancy by 0.91 years, with larger effects in economically distressed and racially segregated counties. The analysis explored underlying mechanisms linking these determinants to mortality outcomes, including subgroup analyses across counties stratified by racial composition, poverty levels, rural – urban classification, and U.S. census regions. Mental health distress amplified the negative effects of economic deprivation on mortality. Limited healthcare access constrained preventive interventions. These findings highlight the need for integrated policy solutions to expand mental health services, reduce child poverty, and improve healthcare accessibility in vulnerable communities.

An additional 100,000 children were lifted out of poverty on the most commonly cited of the government's relative poverty measures between 2000-01 and 2001-02. The most recent figures show 3.8 million children (roughly 30 per cent of all children) in Britain in households with income below 60 per cent of the median income after housing costs. Although this means that almost one in three children in Britain live in poverty on this definition, this is the lowest level recorded since 1991. Since the Labour government came to power, the total drop in the numbers in child poverty has been around 500,000. In 1998-99, the government set a target for child poverty in 2004-05. If the rate of decline in child poverty observed since 1998-99 continues for three more years, then the government will miss this target. Indeed, it is now further behind schedule than it was based on figures from 2000-01. The rather slow decline in recorded child poverty is due, in large part, to the fact that the government is targeting relative, rather than absolute, poverty. Income growth has been particularly strong across society since 1998-99, and this means that the poverty line has risen significantly over this time. Although the government is continuing to increase the living standards of low-income households with children, the gap with the rest of society is not closing as fast as the government would like. Rectifying this may require additional resources to be directed to families with children in the forthcoming Budget, on top of measures already announced.