Child poverty in Britain

A UNICEF report on child welfare in twenty industrialised nations paints a depressing picture of the welfare of British children:

"Not only do they drink the most, smoke more and have more sex than their peers, they rate their health as the poorest, dislike school more and are among the least satisfied with life. Their relative poverty, the lack of time spent eating meals with their parents and mistrust of classmates mean that Britain languishes at the bottom of the wellbeing league table."

One of the authors, Professor Jonathan Bradshaw, basically puts the blame on the last Conservative government:

“Between 1979 and 1999, children were relatively neglected in Britain, child poverty rates rose rapidly, those living in workless households soared and the numbers not in education or training also rose.”

Debating the problems associated with child poverty often comes down to "the chicken or the egg", but I think Professor Bradshaw is being overly simplistic in deciding that relative poverty is the sole "chicken". Britain having the highest rate of single parenthood is a major factor, it also has the lowest number of children that said fellow children were "kind and helpful", is this merely because of material welath, or the lack of? If I can quote Iain Duncan Smith:

"Many of today's children have more material possessions than the post-war generation could even dream of. Whilst some are still in material need there is a deeper poverty. Times may have changed but children's fundamental needs have not. Children are essentially the same at every time and in every place. Deeper than their material needs is a hunger for identity and security. To be part of a loving home where they can become more than they could ever be on their own. The state cannot provide such a home."

George Osborne is right to point the finger at Gordon Brown:

"This report tells the truth about Brown's Britain. After ten years of his welfare and education policies, our children have the lowest wellbeing in the developed world. The Chancellor has failed this generation of children and will fail the next if he's given a chance. We need a new approach."

Brown's policies have done little to get to the roots of these problems, Cameron's talk about General Well-Being and the family unit promises to do more.

Deputy Editor

Comments

[William Norton]

Cursory reading suggests that this report surpasses even UNICEF's usual standards for blathering drivel. I imagine Tim Worstall will be kicking it to death sometime this afternoon. Wouldn't place a great deal of weight upon it - but it will be entertaining to watch a horde of rent-seeking parasites use it to demand more dole from the Exchequer for some pet project or other.

[Martin Wright]

As I listened to the section about this on the Today programme, my first reaction was to think “I hope they’re not going to reduce this issue down to money alone”. As an aside it was good to hear the Anglican vicar question some of the structuring of the survey.

But if we accept that there is a problem (and I think that that is plausible), then I don’t think either godless socialism or radical Thatcherism will help. Much of the deprivation present is deprivation of the spirit. Our society has become too materialistic, too selfish. I sympathise with your quotation from IDS and hope that compassionate Conservatism will be able to bring forward ideas that will address many of the social ills affecting our young.

[Michael McGowan]

If you have s society where violent crime is largely ignored by politicians; the tax and legal system encourages family breakdown; uncontrolled immigration drives down the wages of the bottom third while enriching the top third; and there is effectively unlimited access to alcohol, hard drugs and tobacco, then none of this is a surprise. Add on top of that lowest-common-denominator state education which leaves children totally ill-equipped to compete with well-educated motivated migrants from Eastern Europe in particular. But don't expect any of this to change much with any Government, least of the all the left who have a vested interest in growing a taxpayer-dependent underclass.

[HF]

The report states that in the UK the bottom income group produces proportionately more children than the other countries compared.

We need policies that encourage families to stay together as that improves incomes in those families. (IDS report refers).

We also need to make it unfashionable for very young women to have children. Delaying that until they are in their 20s would reduce the % of children born into the bottom income groups.

Also the blunt truth is that the people that have the least income are the most adversely affected by mass immigration as they compete for the jobs and houses that are in limited supply. (Basic economics law of supply and demand).

A full employment market should have driven up wages, it has not because of immigration (Bank of England said that).

The young, unskilled people are the most adversely affected of all groups by immigrants. That is why unemployment in this group has increased in recent years. Children know what is happening to the older children in their area and they reflect those unsatisfactory outcomes in the report.

What we have is a growing under class, suffering under these pressures. That is why the situation is getting worse. It is a reality that all parties need to recognise and have policies to address.

Of course the difficulty for politicians is that in all 3 main parties they are predominantly now in middle to upper level income brackets and are somewhat divorced from the realities of life at the bottom. That is also why the BNP is thriving in some areas because life is getting tougher for those in the bottom half.

[Mark Wadsworth]

William Norton 09.48 "it will be entertaining to watch a horde of rent-seeking parasites use it to demand more dole from the Exchequer for some pet project or other"

They beat you to it.

Kate Lawton of IPPR was on BBC Breakfast before 8 o'clock saying "Ah yes, this goes to show that we need more state funding for schools'n'hospitals to improve the life chances of the most disadvantaged blah blah blah". (The word "vulnerable" as a euphemism for "under class" seems to have gone out of fashion again).

Michael McGowan, good summary, but you missed off the WELFARE system from factors that Nulab have designed to deliberately undermine marriage and/or encourage single parenthood.

[DavidDPB]

i We need policies that encourage families to stay together

Except Sweden, rather high up on the report, also has a high proportion of single parent families. Suggests less of a correlation between child poverty and single parenting.

However it's can't all be down to having a high level of social welfare, since there are some odd placings if that were to be the case, such as France way down in 16.

[Richard]

The children of the poor are much better off than any generation before them. Yet the Left still seem to think that these children are entitled to even more money.

Strange that there was more social cohesion amongst the working classes when the welfare state was smaller...

[Sean Fear]

As far as I can tell, there is no correlation at all between levels of taxation and a country's ranking. Spain, Switzerland, and Ireland are all low tax countries that rank highly.

[Scotty]

I thought that the report was about child poverty and wellbeing in the UK, everyone is concentrating solely on the poverty aspect and trading the blame with the last conservative government vs the present Labour incumbents.

"Of course the difficulty for politicians is that in all 3 main parties they are predominantly now in middle to upper level income brackets and are somewhat divorced from the realities of life at the bottom." HF, family breakdown, drugs/alcohol addiction etc which are the biggest factors in placing the UK at the bottom of this report are not the preserve of the poor. Far from it, and unless we recognise that many of the issues highlighted are just as common in middle/upper income families then we are not going to address the real problems of why are children are so unhappy and without real optimism for their future. Until we do that we can't produce real solutions that will work, the newsnight debate last night is worth watching. Maybe Tim or Sam could provide a link?
I noticed that the Labour minister did the usually, "look we have won the war on statistics line" and trotted out a figures which although comforting to him are not born out by the reality on the ground of life in the UK today.

[jimS]

Scotty, middle and upper income folk do divorce but they rarely have teenage single mums.

They rarely have to work in minimum wage sector.

They rarely have to rent houses from the council/housing associations.

[Scotty]

"Scotty, middle and upper income folk do divorce but they rarely have teenage single mums
They rarely have to work in minimum wage sector.

They rarely have to rent houses from the council/housing associations."

So on that basis their children don't suffer from family breakdown, drug/alcohol abuse, become involved in crime, debt, mental health problems or suffer from a poor state education?
As I pointed out, the report was about poverty and well being of children and you cannot address both without including all children of different social backgrounds.

[Peter Hatchet]

I think that the real reasons for some persistent, sometimes worsening (and always shocking) child poverty are twofold:

(1) Traditional Family Breakdown
(2) Poor State Education System

You could also add heavy immigration in some areas breaking up established communities.

These have hit the poorest hardest.

Comprehensive education has been a dismal failure and it is very sad (though how do we change it?) that marriage and commitment are no longer valued as they once were.

But it is interesting to note that all these trends have been evident since the 60s and no government (Tory or Labour) has done much to reverse it.

These issues are not directly related to money, but more about social attitudes, the system of laws we have put in place, the incentives within the social security system, the lack of choice in the education system, too much immigration (though maybe not *quite* as significant as the others) and the decline of civil society networks (such as friendly societies and charities) that used to make a real difference.

Unicef will ignore all this though. They enjoy a partisan swipe at Thatcher much, much more.

[Sean Fear]

Such problems are certainly less common in middle class families, than in working class families. Middle class families lead lives that are closer, socially, to the way their counterparts lived 50 years ago, than working class families do.

[Michael McGowan]

Correct, Sean, and in response to Scotty, perhaps we can agree that while the middle classes are not immune from these problems (I am a single parent myself), they are much more likely to have the choices, the financial and the intellectual capital to shield themselves from these adverse impacts. The bottom third disproportionately bear the brunt of the factors I listed at 10.26.

[TomTom]

Can we forget the party politics and simply get on with dealing with the problem ?

The newspapers are full of a 2-year old murdered in Gipton. It was probably predictable - the 20 year olds, unmarried, unwaged, two children <3 years, and probably funded by the taxpayer.

At what stage were they going to become self-supporting with a normal family life ?

That is where we should start - how do you stop irregular households funded by the state from starting at 18 with children and no other thought beyond day-to-day ?

As for children how are they to be induced into community football and other games; and why should anyone want to be involved in such projects when Capita has to pronounce any adult as "safe" before he/she can volunteer ?

The System has driven out individual initiative and rendered everyone a subject or a case-file for The State Bureaucracy as if Life is some gigantic experiment for sociologists.

Maybe this is what IDS was trying to show...if so let us move forward rather than argue over the past in typical British navel-gazing fashion.

[Scotty]

"Such problems are certainly less common in middle class families, than in working class families. Middle class families lead lives that are closer, socially, to the way their counterparts lived 50 years ago, than working class families do."
Being middle class today does not bequeath you an automatic sense of parental responsibility which was prevalent in all area's of society 50 years ago!

[Soupy Twist]

"Except Sweden, rather high up on the report, also has a high proportion of single parent families. Suggests less of a correlation between child poverty and single parenting."

There is big difference between single parenthood in Sweden and in Britain -- particularly in regard to the fathers of those children who find it very hard to escape their responsibilities in Sweden, whereas theit British counterparts are ignored or even deterred by our welfare system. Then there's the small matter of Sweden not abandoning their kids to drug dealers.

[Angelo Basu]

I thought that George Osbourne was disappointing on Newsnight in his unwillingness to address Paxman's question about "so this is all Thatcher's fault". In fact, I think that Paxman thought his question actually had a good Conservative answer and was himself disappointed that the Shadow Chancellor wouldn't give it and didn't appear to know or care what it was.

As wealth and whether children are in single parent families weren't essential elements in the poor finding against the UK (poorer countries and ones where there were more single parents scored higher) surely the real thing highlighted was that governmental actions are not the key determinant of child well-being. Sure, there may be some things that can be done to alleviate the symptoms, but the causes are, in my opinion, down to parents first and foremost.

The much traversed Thatcher line about there being no such thing as society is actually correct and a useful tool for analysing this problem. In the interview where the comment was made, (I paraphrase as I don't have it in front of me), Mrs Thatcher was quite clear that government can't make a parent love and care for his or her children. Government can help to remove distractions from this and can punish those who don't love or care, but it can't make them provide the right upbringing, which is something quite independent of their means.

Perhaps I'm a pessimist though, as I also don't really think that faith based groups can do this either. The Christian faith is not important enough to enough people for it to do the job. Islam is, but its agenda is not one focused on temporal well-being or any of the secular aims of the report.

[Denis Cooper]

Little to do with "relative poverty", more to do with parents being told that children should be allowed to express themselves freely and to do more or less whatever they want. It started in the 1960's, and we're now on our third or fourth generation of increasingly ill-disciplined children with increasingly ill-disciplined parents.

[DavidDPB]

"Then there's the small matter of Sweden not abandoning their kids to drug dealers."

That doesn't work either, since the Netherlands is top of the list.

[Neville]

Well done TomTom.
An excellent contribution I endorse 100%. It is typical that the reaction to the report is so defensive.eg-they ask the wrong questions ect. I assume the same questions were addresed in the other Countries too? Lets stop the blame game and get on with providing positive policy solutions.

[Rachel Joyce]

I was frustrated this morning by the reception on the news of this issue. Nick Ferrari on LBC was scratching his head in disbelief that kids were more impoverished than in other Western countries, as it just didn't make sense. What the reporting did not make clear is that the measure is being 60% away from the average IN THAT COUNTRY - therefore our kids could all be richer than in Italy, but the report would say they are more impoverished (in relation to their country, not to other countries)- the only way to eliminate child poverty with this definition is only for middle income and above families to have children!
The issue is therefore really 2-fold:
1. Lower income families are more likely to have more children - particularly those on benefits where there is no real financial loss if you have more children, when there is for people on no benefits at all.
2. The real poverty our children are suffering is broken homes, lack of social cohesion, dumbing down of education, lower social mobility than ever before - all of these have worsened under labour. IDS's work is looking at all of these issues. It is likely to be a brave but compassionate Conservative Government that offers the only real chance of turning this around.

[Yet Another Anon]

Wellbeing and poverty are not the same things though; plenty of children in relatively well off households drink, smoke, bunk off school and are unhappy as well - in fact some studies have shown that poor people in some Indian villages were actually far happier than people in materially far wealthier but relatively poor areas in the UK, and if anything India has greater inequalities between rich and poor, a lot of it is down to a culture largely driven by advertising and the need to buy goods - and the government is on the wrong track, rather than encouraging gambling and introducing ever more complicated welfare and tax systems it needs to simplify tax and welfare, reduce means testing and taxes, say that the state will not get directly involved in people's lives in a socio-economic manner as much as it has done in the past century, also it needs to reverse extensions in gambling and abandon vague arty public projects and focus on R&D, the military, infrastructure, strengthening the fight on terrorism and taking harsh measures to deal with criminals and expanding the police; a much more disciplined society where there is a premium on learning something useful at school or university and the role models are scientists, military officers, police, teachers, doctors - not Beach Bums, Porn Queens and those who have been on reality tv. This is why India, China, Malaysia, Singapore and Iran are all thriving and the UK isn't - anybody in this country is thought weird if their ambition is other than to make money fast whether or not they actually achieve anything doing it, indeed even if in doing it they are actually making the world worse; all these quiz programmes with prizes and celebrity this and that programmes! The UK and most of Europe seem to have gone to the devil!

[malcolm]

Interesting that the two countries that finished bottom of the poll (USA and Britain) are the two countries that are most desired by immigrants. So we must be doing something right! It is also true that in the last 25 years the lives of ordinary Britains have been transformed economically and most people are materially much better off. Comparisons with Eastern European countries in particular indicate that economics and child poverty in the sense that the UN means are not the same thing.
And yet and yet I have much sympathy with this report and believe that George Osborne was wrong to seek to play party politics with this issue. There should be no glib answers but our failure (Conservative and Labour) to build a decent education system and the poverty of aspiration which pervades within it together with our failure to curb increased drinking and drugs must be contributory factors in seeing Britain at the bottom.

[Peter Hatchet]

Yet Another Anon: "Wellbeing and poverty are not the same things.."

Spot on.

It is also interesting to note that the BBC discussion board on this issue - which is often saturated with comments by disillusioned left wingers - is dominated by comments blaming family breakdown, lack of discipline and proper parental responsibility for the problem.

Trouble is, I've always thought it's very difficult for government to reverse this.

How can we stop more families from breaking up? How can we ensure parents bring up their kids properly?

[Bruno Prior]

This report is a very convenient hat for opportunists (Osborne and most other commentators of all persuasions) to hang their hat on, but it would be sensible first to check whether it holds water. As Wat at Burning Our Money and I (at pickinglosers.com) have argued, the report is actually riddled with holes. What it measures is not childhood well-being, but compliance with the continental, egalitarian, social-democratic model. It is hardly surprising, then, that the countries come out in the order they do.