Child Poverty in Britain

Soon after being
elected in 1997, Tony Blair pledged to halve child poverty by 2010 and to
abolish it by 2020. However, even ‘experts’ are predicting the Government is
not going to meet these targets.  The
Government states that since coming to power they have taken three-quarters of
a million children out of poverty. The Work and Pensions Secretary John Hutton
boasted, ‘We have made considerable progress against our historic goal to end
child poverty’ (BBC News 27.3.07). However, the Government’s own target of
taking 1 million children out of poverty has been missed.

Child Poverty in the UK

Since 1979 UK child
poverty has doubled. In 2006, 3.8 million children were living in poverty in
homes on less than 60% of average income. Although this is a fall of about
600,000 since 1998, this still leaves 500,000 children above the Government’s
own target. This is not the whole picture either – poverty in the whole
population is increasing. Between 2005 and 2006, the number of people living in
poverty in the UK increased by about 750,000 and the fact is that in one of the
richest countries in the world, almost 13 million people (22%) remain in
poverty.

Only a tenth of
children living in poverty have mothers under 25 and one in fifteen children
are born to people under 20. Regardless, New Labour would have us believe that
the best way to lift children out of poverty is to get parents, especially lone
parents, off benefit and into work. Yet the value of social security benefits
for working age adults continues to fall even further behind wages. Therefore
the present welfare ‘reforms’ will make things worse, not better, for children
living in poverty.

The impact of low pay

16% of children
live in homes that earn half the average national wage. The Joseph Rowntree
Foundation highlighted that half of all children living in poverty live in
working families and that one and a half million children live in households
that pay full council tax. Gordon Brown’s announcement when Chancellor to give
an extra £3 a week per child to families on low incomes through the Child Tax
Credit is a drop in the ocean. The Institute for Public Policy Research
estimates that to lift children out of poverty would cost a further £3.8bn.
This is reflected in the reality that that inequalities in earnings are widening and the gap between benefits and
wages is also widening.

Children in low income households

Source: Households Below Average Income 2005/06, DWP; UK

Bottom of the league

Last
year UNICEF – the United Nations children’s organisation – concluded that
children growing up in the UK
suffered greater deprivation than those in any other wealthy country in the
world. The UK came bottom of
the league of 21 top capitalist countries, trailing the USA which came
second last. Looking at material well being on its own, UNICEF showed that only
Ireland, Hungary and Poland
came below the UK.
Overall, the Netherlands
came top. While nine countries in Northern Europe brought child poverty down to
below 10%, in the UK, Ireland and the USA it remains at 15%. The UNICEF
report was scathing and clearly highlighted the long term effects of children
living in poverty,

"The evidence
from many countries persistently shows that children who grow up in poverty are
more vulnerable: specifically, they are more likely to be in poor health, to
have learning and behavioural difficulties, to underachieve at school, to become
pregnant at too early an age, to have lower skills and aspirations, to be low
paid, unemployed and welfare-dependent".

One of the report’s authors from York
University put the UK’s poor
ratings down to long term under investment and a ‘dog-eat-dog’ society (BBC
News, 14.2.07) What an indictment for ten years of a Labour government!

Marx highlighted
the accumulation of colossal wealth at the top, while at the same time an
accumulation of "misery, agony of toil, slavery, ignorance, brutality,
mental degradation" at the lower end of society. Banks are reporting
record profits at a time when millions of working people (whose labour produces
the real wealth of society) are forced to live in constant debt and get by on
minimum wages. We must be clear that capitalism will always put material
success above all else. It is the price paid by a sharply divided class
society.

Worldwide,
1.1 billion people continue to live on less than $1 a day with 30% of these
being children. Child
poverty, therefore, will always be an inevitable consequence of capitalism and
we must fight to end capitalism and rid the world of child poverty once and for
all.