Samantha Callan

The poverty of the UK poverty measure

It’s sad to see so many genuinely well-meaning people judge the fight against poverty by the publication of a massive spreadsheet, but that’s the trap the UK government has been caught in for years. The Child Poverty Act is about income redistribution, and success is judged by how many people are seen to be below an arbitrary threshold: 60 per cent of average income. The figures came out today, and show that the number in poverty has barely shifted – which will surprise those who thought government cuts would push poverty figures higher.

But is this really much cause to celebrate? There are still 2.3 million (17 per cent) of children in households deemed to be ‘in poverty’ – but, more importantly, this measure is pretty appalling. If a parent’s income rises by £1 a week above this poverty line, the children are deemed ‘lifted out of poverty’ – if asked, they’d be amazed to find themselves so described.

There is an urgent need to move away from narrow financial/material measures. Paradoxically, in 2012, 300,000 children had been moved out of relative income poverty largely because of a fall in the national median income. Such statistical anomalies are only one reason why veteran poverty-fighting politicians from across the spectrum agree the measures need a serious overhaul.

The myopia they induce in government action means they are ‘fatally flawed’ in the words of Alan Milburn, the Government’s Social Mobility tsar and lead to a ‘straitjacketed understanding of poverty’ according to Frank Field MP, former leader of the Child Poverty Action Group.

Iain Duncan Smith’s work in Opposition with the Centre for Social Justice led the way in forcefully arguing that the obsession with income and how much ‘stuff’ people have (the material deprivation measure) ignored the drivers of poverty: entrenched worklessness, family breakdown, problem debt, substandard education and drug and alcohol dependency.

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