Child poverty is rising. Real action is needed to help our poorest kids. It's not just because we care and it's the right thing to do. It is also key to social mobility, enabling anyone to be anything - even to reach out and touch the stars. Andrew Lilico's post yesterday contains important ideas on how to reduce child poverty and is a must read.
Yesterday, the OECD published a report that I described as garbage. It claimed the rich / poor divide has been shrinking since 2000 which is blatantly untrue. It also claimed the Government has had great success in fighting child poverty. This is also garbage as the chart below shows. 3.9m children are in poverty after housing costs (AHC) on the Government's measure and the trend is now upwards. Child poverty has hardly fallen since 2000.
