tag:theconversation.com,2011:/au/topics/child-poverty-9395/articlesChild poverty – The Conversation2024-03-15T13:32:02Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2236062024-03-15T13:32:02Z2024-03-15T13:32:02ZChild health is in crisis in the UK – here’s what needs to change<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/581689/original/file-20240313-18-eed233.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=5%2C0%2C3489%2C2331&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/hungry-child-big-clear-eyes-eating-210938179">Slava Samusevich/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>A <a href="https://acmedsci.ac.uk/more/news/urgent-action-needed-on-failing-child-health">new report</a> from the Academy of Medical Sciences highlights the “appalling decline” in child health and a need for “urgent action”. In recent years, child vaccination rates have fallen well below World Health Organization target levels, creating a resurgence of outbreaks of <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-00265-8">serious disease</a> such as measles. </p>
<p>In England, more than one in five children are <a href="https://www.rcpch.ac.uk/news-events/news/rcpch-responds-latest-childhood-obesity-figures-england-202223">overweight or obese</a> by age five and <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/oral-health-survey-of-5-year-old-children-2019">one in four</a> children have tooth decay. Demand for child mental health services <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/feb/07/childrens-emergency-mental-health-referrals-in-england-soar-by-53">has surged</a>. Perhaps most worryingly, the rise in infant mortality means that UK is now <a href="https://data.oecd.org/healthstat/infant-mortality-rates.htm">ranked 30 out of 49</a> OECD countries – well behind other European countries except Bulgaria, Romania and Slovakia.</p>
<p>One of the most important drivers of this crisis is the number of children in the UK living in extreme poverty, which <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/poverty-children-dwp-energy-bills-food-b2434506.html">tripled</a> between 2019-2022. </p>
<p>The early years, the period from pregnancy to the first five years of life, have historically been overlooked in research and policy. More recently, the <a href="https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/605c5e61d3bf7f2f0d94183a/The_best_start_for_life_a_vision_for_the_1_001_critical_days.pdf">first 1,001 days</a> from conception to age two has been recognised as a critical period in which the building blocks for lifelong emotional and physical health are laid down.</p>
<p>Investing in the early years is one of the most important things we can do as a society to build a better future and promote the nation’s health, wellbeing and prosperity. There is clear evidence that such investment will be cost-effective in enabling future adults to live long and productive lives. </p>
<p>For example, data from the Royal Foundation and the London School of Economics has shown that the <a href="https://assets.ctfassets.net/qwnplnakca8g/2iLCWZESD2RLu24m443HUf/1c802df74c44ac6bc94d4338ff7ac53d/RFCEC_BCCS_Report_and_Appendices.pdf">cost to society</a> of addressing issues that might have been avoided through action in early childhood is more than £16 billion each year – <a href="https://centreforearlychildhood.org/report/#:%7E:text=This%20sum%20of%20%C2%A316.13,specialist%20perinatal%20mental%20health%20support.">nearly five times</a> the total annual spend in England on early education and childcare entitlements. </p>
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<h2>How to reverse the decline</h2>
<p>So what can be done to reverse these worrying trends? </p>
<p>The Academy of Medical Sciences’ report outlines several recommendations to improve the health and wellbeing of children in the UK and the adults they will become. </p>
<p>The first recommendation is to implement effective early years interventions. One example of such an intervention is the Family Nurse Partnership (FNP), an intensive early home visiting programme for first time teenage mothers. The FNP aims to improve birth outcomes, child health and development, and promote economic self-sufficiency among young mothers. </p>
<p>My colleagues and I recently <a href="https://bmjpublichealth.bmj.com/content/2/1/e000514">evaluated outcomes of 26,000 mothers</a> in England participating in the FNP from 2010-2019. We found some evidence to suggest that children born to mothers enrolled in FNP were more likely to achieve a good level of development at school entry (age five), supporting findings from a <a href="https://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/12/2/e049960">previous trial</a>. Mothers were engaged in the programme, with the majority meeting fidelity targets (Figure 1). </p>
<p>However, in local areas where the FNP was offered, <a href="https://jech.bmj.com/content/76/12/991">only one in four mothers</a> are enrolled due to insufficient places on the programme. In areas with high numbers of teenage mothers, enrolment rates are even lower. More needs to be done to ensure that when interventions are implemented, they are offered to all those who could benefit from support. </p>
<p>A further recommendation is to address the decline in the child and family health workforce. Health visitors are trained nurses who are <a href="https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/960708/Commissioning_guide_2.pdf">uniquely placed</a> to influence and work with the whole family in the interests of children on social, psychological and health choices. Years of austerity, cuts and a depleted workforce have meant that since 2015, the health visiting workforce has <a href="https://ihv.org.uk/news-and-views/news/health-visitor-workforce-numbers-in-england-reach-an-all-time-low/">decreased by 37%</a> (from 11,193 to 7,030 in 2022). </p>
<p>The real term value of the public health grant from which health visiting is commissioned <a href="https://www.health.org.uk/news-and-comment/charts-and-infographics/public-health-grant-what-it-is-and-why-greater-investment-is-needed">has fallen by 27%</a>. In the context of this disinvestment, there is huge variation in how local areas are delivering their services. For example, <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35193912/">our research</a> has shown that the number of children receiving their (mandated) 2 to 2½-year review ranges between 33%-97% depending on in which area they live (Figure 2).</p>
<p>Investment in targeted interventions and universal services in the early years is key to supporting the health and development of children and the wellbeing of their families in the critical period before school. </p>
<h2>Children need joined-up thinking</h2>
<p>However, such interventions and policies should be underpinned by high-quality research and evaluation. We need to consider the wider determinants of health and wellbeing across the lifecourse, such as education, social care income, criminal justice and the environment, to support a more joined up and cross-government approach to improving outcomes. </p>
<p>Historically, linking cross-sectoral data in this way has been challenging. However, there is promising progress in this area. One example of this is <a href="https://www.ucl.ac.uk/child-health/echild">Echild</a>, a national resource linking together data from hospitals, schools and social care for 20 million children in England and their mothers (Figure 3). </p>
<p>This unique data set represents a significant step towards a more holistic approach to understanding the <a href="https://www.adruk.org/news-publications/news-blogs/how-administrative-data-can-uncover-the-relationship-between-childrens-health-and-education/">many factors influencing child wellbeing</a>, including maternal mental health, childhood chronic conditions and school absences.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/223606/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Katie Harron does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Children are bearing the brunt of austerity. From obesity to infant mortality, child health is affected by sustained under-investment. What can be done to reverse the decline?Katie Harron, Professor of Statistics and Health Data Science, UCLLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2219392024-03-08T13:38:13Z2024-03-08T13:38:13ZTeenagers often know when their parents are having money problems − and that knowledge is linked to mental health challenges, new research finds<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/576103/original/file-20240216-28-neuioj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=120%2C77%2C5609%2C3736&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Teens are more clued in to family finances than many people think.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/single-working-mother-and-her-teenage-girl-talking-royalty-free-image/1457103190">Olga Rolenko/Moment via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>When parents try to shield their kids from financial hardship, they may be doing them a favor: Teens’ views about their families’ economic challenges are <a href="https://doi.org/10.1017/S0954579423001451">connected to their mental health and behavior</a>.</p>
<p>That’s the main finding of a study into household income and child development that I recently conducted with my colleagues.</p>
<p>As a <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&oi=ao&user=--zcHSQAAAAJ">professor of psychology</a>, I know there’s <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s10964-020-01210-4">a good deal of research</a> showing that young people who experience more household economic hardship <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s13524-019-00833-y">tend to have more behavioral problems</a>.</p>
<p>But most studies on this issue rely heavily on caregiver reports – that is, what adults say about their kids. Fewer researchers have asked young people themselves. </p>
<p>To fill this gap, my colleagues and I asked more than 100 Pittsburgh-area teenagers, as well as their parents, about their family income, their views about their financial challenges, and their mental health. We checked in with them multiple times over nine months. </p>
<p>Doing this, we found a few important things. First, we found that many families’ economic situations varied over time – they were doing fine with money in some months and struggling during others. And second, we found that when teenagers said they and their family were experiencing hardship, those teens had more behavioral problems.</p>
<p>For example, many teens said that they couldn’t afford school supplies or that their caregivers worried because they lacked money for necessities. In the months when teens reported experiencing these hardships, they were more likely to feel depressed and get in trouble at school.</p>
<h2>Why it matters</h2>
<p>Other researchers have found that economic hardship is related to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8624.2007.00986.x">differences in parenting</a>, <a href="https://doi.org/10.3390/children9070981">academic achievement</a> and many <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.childyouth.2022.106400">other developmental outcomes</a> – but prior studies haven’t always captured the complexities and challenges that struggling families face. </p>
<p>For example, researchers studying links between economic hardship and youth behavioral development have historically looked at family income on a yearly basis. But bills come due weekly or monthly. Our work shows that looking at the annual data alone risks missing an important part of the story: Many families experience brief spells of financial instability.</p>
<p>Our work also shows that teens are acutely affected by economic conditions in their daily lives and understand their families’ circumstances. This has important implications for research. Given that adolescence is a time of major emotional and cognitive changes, our team believes that researchers should center on the perspectives of young people directly affected by economic challenges. For example, we have previously found that how young people view stress and support in their lives may have <a href="https://theconversation.com/positive-parenting-can-help-protect-against-the-effects-of-stress-in-childhood-and-adolescence-new-study-shows-208268">implications for their brain development</a>.</p>
<p>This work also has important implications for public policy. For example, lawmakers assume that economic hardship is fairly stable and set anti-poverty policies accordingly. Our research offers fresh evidence that many people see <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/05/31/business/31-volatility.html">large income swings throughout the year</a>. This kind of economic instability has been found to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s10802-016-0181-5">affect child development</a>, especially when families <a href="https://doi.org/10.1017/S0954579419001494">lose large amounts of income</a>. To lessen the impact of poverty, policymakers may need to think about economic hardship more dynamically.</p>
<h2>What’s next</h2>
<p>Our research team wants to continue putting young people’s voices front and center. We’re also interested in more complex ways to make sense of socioeconomic status. While we know that income matters for families, we’re increasingly focused on household wealth, which is a household’s assets minus its debts. Wealth may influence child development in ways that are different from income. We’re just starting to collect data for a new project examining how both of these factors <a href="https://sanford.duke.edu/story/nichd-awards-grant-sanford-partnership-focused-adolescent-wellness-factors/">affect teen mental health</a>.</p>
<p><em>The <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/topics/research-brief-83231">Research Brief</a> is a short take on interesting academic work.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/221939/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jamie Hanson and his colleagues receive funding from the National Institutes of Health. Hanson is also a board member of the Pittsburgh Non-Profit, Project Destiny.</span></em></p>A study of more than 100 teens and their caregivers showed a unique link between hardship and behavior problems.Jamie Hanson, Assistant Professor of Psychology, University of PittsburghLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2233712024-02-29T13:17:22Z2024-02-29T13:17:22ZThe UK’s two-child limit on benefits is hurting the poorest families – poverty experts on why it should be abolished<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/577376/original/file-20240222-18-unkhdr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C998%2C666&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/please-give-me-some-chocolate-group-1299500284">Liderina/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Under the UK’s two-child limit, families on benefit receive a payment for each of their first two children, but no more for any additional children. </p>
<p>The limit results in families losing around <a href="https://www.resolutionfoundation.org/publications/catastophic-caps/">£3,200 a year</a> for any third or subsequent child born after April 2017. For low-income households, that’s a huge amount. The policy affects over 400,000 families, according to estimates by think tank the <a href="https://www.resolutionfoundation.org/publications/catastophic-caps/">Resolution Foundation</a>. </p>
<p>Our <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/ijsw.12642">new research</a> shows that larger families have become poorer since the introduction of the two-child limit – and the poorest families are losing out the most. The policy breaks the link between need and social benefits: rather than helping those in greatest need, the it punishes them. </p>
<p>The two-child limit came into force in April 2017. A family claiming working-age means-tested benefits, such as the child tax benefit, housing benefit, or universal credit, who had a third or subsequent child born <a href="https://www.gov.uk/guidance/claiming-benefits-for-2-or-more-children">after April 6 2017</a> does not receive a child related payment for them. Larger families with children born before this date continue to receive the standard child addition. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.york.ac.uk/news-and-events/news/2023/research/two-child-limit-and-benefit-cap-fail-to-meet-aims/">Research has found</a> that the two-child limit, along with the benefit cap (an upper limit on the amount of out-of-work benefits a family can receive) has put larger families under enormous pressure and harmed parents’ mental health. </p>
<p>Another brutal detail is known as the “rape clause”. The two-child limit allows for an exception in the event of non-consensual conception, but it requires victims to provide <a href="https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/CBP-9301/CBP-9301.pdf">third party evidence</a> – such as a criminal injuries compensation scheme award – and prove they are not living with the perpetrator. </p>
<h2>Losing out</h2>
<p>Our new <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/ijsw.12642">research</a> used data from the Households Below Average Income dataset, a nationally representative source of information on household incomes. We compared data from 2015-16, before the two-child limit came into force, with 2019-20 (the pandemic disrupted later data collection). We also compared small families – those with one or two children – with larger families of three or more children. </p>
<p>We measured poverty using household disposable incomes after taxes and benefits, but before housing costs. Children in households with incomes below 60% of the national median were counted as poor. </p>
<p>When the two-child limit was announced in 2015, 27% of children in larger families lived in low-income households, based on this measure, compared with 17% of children in smaller families. By 2019-20, after the introduction of the two-child limit, the larger family poverty rate had gone up to 37%. It remained at 17% for smaller families. This was because larger families’ incomes fell rather than because poorer families had more children. </p>
<p>This cannot be solely attributed to the two-child limit. Poverty in larger families <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/ijsw.12642">had been increasing</a> before it was introduced. But it means that the limit penalised families that were already vulnerable. </p>
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<img alt="Worried couple, woman is pregnant" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/577384/original/file-20240222-22-3jerkd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/577384/original/file-20240222-22-3jerkd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577384/original/file-20240222-22-3jerkd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577384/original/file-20240222-22-3jerkd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577384/original/file-20240222-22-3jerkd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577384/original/file-20240222-22-3jerkd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577384/original/file-20240222-22-3jerkd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">The poorest families are losing out.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/married-man-woman-stressed-worried-postpartum-1940705395">christinarosepix/Shutterstock</a></span>
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<p>We also looked at income differences between larger families with or without a child under three. The two-child limit came into force in 2017, meaning that in 2019-20 larger families with children aged under three would be affected by the policy. We found that larger families with a child under three had lower incomes on average in real terms in 2019-20 than in 2015-16. </p>
<p>And we found that poverty has worsened the most in the poorest larger families. Between 2015-16 and 2019-20, the large families who were poorer than 90% of families nationally saw their income fall by 18% in real terms. The larger families on middling incomes saw their income fall by 9%.</p>
<p>The income of the poorest small families – families not affected by the two child limit – also fell in real terms, but by much less: 2%. </p>
<h2>Unusual limits</h2>
<p>From an international perspective, the UK two-child limit policy is unusual. None of the other <a href="https://www.oecd.org/about/">developed countries</a> that are members of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/ijsw.12642">limit the number</a> of children eligible for means-tested family benefits to two children, and in many countries benefits increase with family size. </p>
<p><a href="https://sticerd.lse.ac.uk/dps/case/cp/casepaper228.pdf">Research</a> from the London School of Economics shows that only three European Union countries restrict their benefits by family size (Cyprus, Romania and Spain) but they do so at three or four children. </p>
<p>The rationale for the two-child limit was to reduce government deficit, but it <a href="https://www.parliament.uk/globalassets/documents/impact-assessments/IA15-006E.pdf">also sought</a> to encourage parents “to reflect carefully on their readiness to support an additional child”. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://endchildpoverty.org.uk/two_child_limit/">End Child Poverty Coalition</a> argues that scrapping the limit would be the most cost effective way of reducing child poverty, stating that for the estimated cost of £1.3 billion, a quarter of a million children would be lifted from poverty. If the Labour party is serious about <a href="https://labour.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Mission-breaking-down-barriers.pdf">breakding down the barriers to opportunity</a>, abolishing the two-child limit should be the first thing they do, should they come to power.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/223371/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jonathan Bradshaw receives funding from no one currently. He is a member of the Research Committee of the Child Poverty Action Group and an Emeritus Professor at the University of York.. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Yekaterina Chzhen does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Rather than helping the families in greatest need, the policy punishes them.Yekaterina Chzhen, Assistant Professor in Sociology, Trinity College DublinJonathan Bradshaw, Professor of Social Policy, University of YorkLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2186822024-02-21T13:19:25Z2024-02-21T13:19:25ZMarriage is not as effective an anti-poverty strategy as you’ve been led to believe<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/575664/original/file-20240214-26-6cr98q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Despite the popular guidance, marriage can be an economic risk for single parents with unstable partners.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/divorce-process-royalty-free-image/1329914655">simarik/iStock/Getty Images Plus</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Brides.com predicts that 2024 will be the “<a href="https://www.brides.com/marriage-proposal-boom-2024-8358024">year of the proposal</a>” as engagements tick back up after a pandemic-driven slowdown.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, support for marriage has found new grist in recent books, including <a href="https://sociology.as.virginia.edu/people/w-bradford-wilcox">sociologist</a> Brad Wilcox’s “<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Get-Married-Americans-Families-Civilization/dp/0063210851">Get Married: Why Americans Must Defy the Elites, Forge Strong Families and Save Civilization</a>” and economist Melissa Kearney’s “<a href="https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/T/bo205550079.html">The Two-Parent Privilege</a>.”</p>
<p>Kearney’s book was <a href="https://www.city-journal.org/article/review-of-the-two-parent-privilege-by-melissa-kearney">hailed by economist Tyler Cowen</a> as possibly “the most important economics and policy book of this year.” This is not because it treads new ground but because, as author <a href="https://www.city-journal.org/article/review-of-the-two-parent-privilege-by-melissa-kearney">Kay Hymowitz writes</a>, it breaks the supposed “taboo about an honest accounting of family decline.” </p>
<p>These developments are good news for the marriage promotion movement, which <a href="https://www.dol.gov/general/aboutdol/history/webid-moynihan">for decades</a> has claimed that marriage supports children’s well-being and combats poverty. The movement dates back at least to the U.S. Department of Labor’s <a href="https://www.dol.gov/general/aboutdol/history/webid-moynihan">Moynihan Report of 1965</a>, which argued that <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/09/the-moynihan-report-an-annotated-edition/404632/">family structure aggravated Black poverty</a>.</p>
<p>Forty years after the Moynihan Report, George W. Bush-era programs such as the <a href="https://www.acf.hhs.gov/ocs/policy-guidance/csbg-im-no-89-healthy-marriage-initiative">Healthy Marriage Initiative</a> sought to <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/4624797">enlist churches</a> and other community groups in an effort to channel childbearing back into marriage. These initiatives continue today, with the federally subsidized <a href="https://www.acf.hhs.gov/ofa/programs/healthy-marriage-responsible-fatherhood">Healthy Marriage and Responsible Fatherhood programs</a>.</p>
<p>Still, nearly <a href="https://www.census.gov/newsroom/stories/single-parent-day.html">30% of U.S. children</a> live in single-parent homes today, compared with 10% in 1965.</p>
<p>We are <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=gCJEShUAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">law professors</a> who have written extensively about <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=0BBCYNAAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">family structure</a> and <a href="https://www.fordham.edu/school-of-law/faculty/directory/full-time/eleanor-brown/">poverty</a>. We, and others, have found that there is almost no evidence that federal programs that promote marriage <a href="https://www.bgsu.edu/content/dam/BGSU/college-of-arts-and-sciences/NCFMR/documents/FP/FP-14-02_HMIInitiative.pdf">have made a difference</a> in encouraging two-parent households. That’s in large part because they forgo effective solutions that directly address poverty for measures that embrace the culture wars. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/575989/original/file-20240215-28-q3xgpp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Child hangs upside down on playground equipment" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/575989/original/file-20240215-28-q3xgpp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/575989/original/file-20240215-28-q3xgpp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575989/original/file-20240215-28-q3xgpp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575989/original/file-20240215-28-q3xgpp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575989/original/file-20240215-28-q3xgpp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575989/original/file-20240215-28-q3xgpp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575989/original/file-20240215-28-q3xgpp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Having a parent who has a college degree makes kids less likely to live in poverty than having parents who are married.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/girl-upside-down-on-the-jungle-gym-royalty-free-image/1127705002">Mayur Kakade/Moment Collection via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Marriage and social class</h2>
<p>Today’s marriage promoters claim that <a href="https://ifstudies.org/blog/the-benefits-of-marriage-shouldnt-only-be-for-elites">marriage should not be just for elites</a>. The emergence of marriage as a marker of class, they believe, is a sign of societal dysfunction.</p>
<p>According to census data released in 2021, 9.5% of children living with two parents – and 7.5% with married parents – <a href="https://ojjdp.ojp.gov/statistical-briefing-book/population/faqs/qa01203#:%7E:text=In%202021%2C%209.5%25%20of%20children,17.4%25">lived below the poverty level</a>, compared with 31.7% of children living with a single parent.</p>
<p>Kearney’s argument comes down to: 1 + 1 = 2. Two parents have more resources, including money and time to spend with children, than one. She marshals extensive research designed to show that children from married couple families are <a href="https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-economics-063016-103749">more likely to graduate</a> from high school, complete college and earn <a href="https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-economics-063016-103749">higher incomes as adults</a> than the children of single parents.</p>
<p>It is undoubtedly true that two parents – that is, two nonviolent parents with reliable incomes and cooperative behavior – have <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/articles/cohabiting-parents-differ-from-married-ones-in-three-big-ways/">more resources for their children</a> than one parent who has to work two jobs to pay the rent. However, this equation <a href="https://doi.org/10.31235/osf.io/pmyhj">does not address causation</a>. In other words, parents who have stable incomes and behaviors are more likely to stay together than parents who don’t.</p>
<p>Ethnographic studies indicate, for example, that the most common reasons unmarried women are no longer with the fathers of their children are the men’s <a href="https://ssrn.com/abstract=3841832">violent behavior, infidelity</a> and <a href="https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520335233/essential-dads">substance abuse</a>.</p>
<p>Moreover, income volatility disproportionately affects parents who don’t go to college. So while they may have more money to invest in children together than apart, when one of these parents experiences a substantial drop in income, the other parent may have to decide whether to <a href="https://elibrary.law.psu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1455&context=fac_works">support the partner or the children</a> on what is often a meager income.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://theconversation.com/having-a-single-parent-doesnt-determine-your-life-chances-the-data-shows-poverty-is-far-more-important-217841">impact of having single parents</a> also plays out differently by race and class. As sociologist and researcher <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/09/opinion/two-parent-family.html">Christina Cross explains</a>, “Living apart from a biological parent does not carry the same cost for Black youths as for their white peers, and being raised in a two-parent family is not equally beneficial.” </p>
<p>For example, Cross found that living in a single-mother family is less likely to affect high school completion rates for Black children than for white children. Also, Black families tend to be more embedded in extended family than white families, and this additional support system may help protect children from negative outcomes associated with single-parent households.</p>
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<h2>Making men more ‘marriageable’</h2>
<p>Kearney, to her credit, does note that economic insecurity largely explains what is happening to working-class families, and that no parent should have to tolerate violence or substance abuse. But she doubles down on the need to restore a norm of two-parent families.</p>
<p>Many of her policy prescriptions are sensible. She advocates for better opportunities for low-income men – to make them, in the words of <a href="https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/T/bo13375722.html">sociologist William Julius Wilson</a>, “marriageable.” Such policies would include wage subsidies to improve their job opportunities, investment in community colleges that provide skills training, and the <a href="https://theconversation.com/banning-the-box-would-help-people-released-from-prison-rebuild-their-lives-45539">removal of questions about criminal histories</a> from job applications, so that candidates who have previously been incarcerated are not immediately disqualified.</p>
<h2>A new marriage model</h2>
<p>What marriage promotion efforts overlook, however, are the underlying changes in what marriage has become – both legally and practically. </p>
<p>The new marriage model rests on three premises.</p>
<p>The first is a moral command: Have sex if you want to, but don’t have children until you are ready. While the shotgun marriage once served as the primary response to unplanned pregnancy, such marriages today often derail education and careers and are <a href="https://today.duke.edu/2016/11/shotgun-marriage-dead#:%7E:text=After%20a%20decade%2C%2030%20percent,prior%20to%20a%20child's%20conception.">more likely to result in divorce</a> than other marriages. Research shows that lower-income women’s pregnancies are much <a href="https://www.guttmacher.org/sites/default/files/factsheet/fb-unintended-pregnancy-us_0_4.pdf">more likely to be unplanned</a>. </p>
<p>The second is the ability to pick a partner who will support you and assume joint responsibility for parenting. As women have attained more economic independence, they are less in need of men to raise children, particularly if their partners are insensitive or abusive. With healthy relationships, couples pick partners based on trust, commitment and equal respect. This is more difficult to do in communities with high rates of incarceration and few opportunities for stable employment. </p>
<p>And the third is economic and behavioral stability. Instability undermines even committed unions. Parents who wait until they find the right partner and have stable lives bring a lot more to parenting, whether they marry or not.</p>
<p>We believe that creating opportunities for low-income parents to reach this middle-class model is likely to be the most effective marriage promotion policy.</p>
<h2>Economic support is key</h2>
<p>In relationships that fall outside of these premises, 1 + 1 often becomes 1 + -1, which equals 0.</p>
<p>Being committed to a partner who can’t pay speeding tickets, runs up credit card bills, comes home drunk or can’t be relied on to pick up the children after school is not a recipe for success. </p>
<p>Economic principles suggest that businesses with more volatile income streams need a stronger capital base to withstand the downturns. Working-class couples who face economic insecurity see commitment as similarly misguided; without a capital base, a downturn for one partner can wipe out the other.</p>
<p>The Biden administration’s child tax credit expansion included in the <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2024-02-08/the-child-tax-credit-bill-seems-destined-for-defeat-in-the-senate?embedded-checkout=true">American Rescue Plan Act of 2021</a> helped cut the child poverty rate – after accounting for government assistance – <a href="https://www.cbpp.org/research/poverty-and-inequality/governments-pandemic-response-turned-a-would-be-poverty-surge-into">to a record low</a> that year. It did more to address child poverty than <a href="https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/01/140106094155.htm">marriage promotion efforts have ever done</a>.</p>
<p>Researchers have described such income-support policies as the “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s12187-020-09782-0">ultimate multipurpose policy instrument</a>.” They improve the economic circumstances of single-parent families and, in doing so, may also provide greater support for two-parent relationships. </p>
<p>Policymakers know how to solve child poverty – and these measures are far more effective than efforts to put two married parents in every household.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/218682/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Marriage on its own won’t do away with child poverty, and in fact it can create even more instability for low-income families.Eleanor Brown, Professor of Law, Fordham UniversityJune Carbone, Professor of Law, University of MinnesotaNaomi Cahn, Professor of Law, University of VirginiaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2215652024-01-29T18:13:40Z2024-01-29T18:13:40ZChild poverty is on the rise in Canada, putting over 1 million kids at risk of life-long negative effects<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/571536/original/file-20240125-19-ibw47t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=221%2C0%2C6488%2C4466&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Poverty reduction has the potential to initiate a beneficial cascade that would improve the lives of children and youth.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span></figcaption></figure><iframe style="width: 100%; height: 100px; border: none; position: relative; z-index: 1;" allowtransparency="" allow="clipboard-read; clipboard-write" src="https://narrations.ad-auris.com/widget/the-conversation-canada/child-poverty-is-on-the-rise-in-canada-putting-over-1-million-kids-at-risk-of-life-long-negative-effects" width="100%" height="400"></iframe>
<p>At first glance, Canada ranks among the top third of countries for its work in addressing child poverty. But that isn’t the whole story.</p>
<p>Based on current rates of and overall progress in reducing child poverty, the latest <a href="https://www.unicef.ca/en/unicef-report-card-18">UNICEF report card</a> ranks Canada 11th out of 39 of the world’s wealthiest countries. Initially, it seems Canada is doing well; between 2012 and 2021, child poverty fell by 23 per cent. </p>
<p>In reality, since 2021, the number of children living in <a href="https://www.unicef.org/globalinsight/media/3291/file/UNICEF-Innocenti-Report-Card-18-Child-Poverty-Amidst-Wealth-2023.pdf">monetary poverty</a> has <a href="https://www.unicef.ca/sites/default/files/2023-12/UNICEFReport%20Card18CanadianSummary.pdf">sharply risen from 15.2 per cent in 2020 to 17.8 per cent in 2021</a>, and more than <a href="https://www.newswire.ca/news-releases/canada-still-in-the-middle-of-high-income-countries-on-child-poverty-new-unicef-report-852057195.html">one million Canadian children</a> live in poverty today. </p>
<p>This means that one in five children live in persistent fear and stress, face barriers to having their basic needs met, such as stable housing and nutritious food, and experience a lack of opportunity, including access to quality early childhood experiences. As a child psychologist and a health economist, we know that the consequences of child poverty are lifelong and are worth prioritizing.</p>
<p>We know that <a href="https://www.nccp.org/publication/childhood-and-intergenerational-poverty/">poverty persists</a>, generation by generation. This is why, although Canada ranks in the top third of countries, we shouldn’t lose sight of our reality. Canada is presently experiencing rising <a href="https://theconversation.com/an-economist-explains-what-you-need-to-know-about-inflation-188959">inflation</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/heres-how-the-bank-of-canadas-interest-rate-hike-to-5-will-impact-canadian-households-209369">interest rates</a>, both driving the cost of living crisis and the increase in child poverty rates. And while the economy continues to place constraints on all Canadians, it has a magnifying effect on those most vulnerable, including children. </p>
<h2>Building a solid foundation for the future</h2>
<p>Child poverty is a pernicious childhood adversity that has detrimental long-term impacts on children’s health, development and well-being throughout life. Children living in poverty have lower <a href="https://doi.org/10.2307/1602387">academic outcomes</a>, including school readiness and academic achievement, than financially better-off children. Poverty is also a risk factor for behavioural and emotional difficulties. </p>
<p>These educational and social gaps are associated with chronic stress that persists over time, leading to lower earning potential, poorer health and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1604756114">poorer well-being</a>. Poverty, including income loss, housing insecurity and material hardship, is also <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/car.2795">strongly associated</a> with abuse and neglect, which are known toxic stressors for children and youth. </p>
<p>Poverty reduction has the potential to initiate a beneficial cascade that would improve the lives of children and youth. Taken together, addressing child poverty has the potential to put children on a more optimal developmental course and reduce their risk for poor outcomes. </p>
<h2>Balancing today’s needs with tomorrow’s</h2>
<p>Between 2012 and 2021, Canada made great strides in addressing child poverty. In 2016, the <a href="https://www.thestar.com/business/canada-child-benefit-payments-to-increase-this-month-for-many-families-here-s-how-much/article_1b689540-3a7b-5cd0-aa11-8f1855455c54.html">Canada Child Benefit (CCB)</a> was introduced as a monthly tax-free supplement for eligible families to support the cost of raising children. Families in low to middle-income households benefited the most; the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1086/721379">CCB reduced poverty</a> by 11 per cent in single-parent families and 17 per cent in two-parent families. </p>
<p>The Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB) program provided additional temporary relief for eligible individuals during the <a href="https://nationalpost.com/news/politics/pandemic-benefits-reduced-child-poverty-government-should-build-on-success-report">COVID-19 pandemic</a>. And, in recent years, the minimum wage has also increased for Canadians. </p>
<p>Although there is evidence that <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jadohealth.2022.02.011">monetary interventions</a>, such as cash transfers, help reduce mental health symptoms among youth experiencing poverty, there remains <a href="https://globalnews.ca/news/9999605/minimum-wage-hikes-cost-of-living-advocates/">debate</a> on whether these increases have helped families overcome challenges to the cost of living. </p>
<p>Furthermore, the CERB, provided during the pandemic, has now been discontinued, increasing the hardship among Canadian families. Until families are provided with adequate support, the reality is Canada may continue experiencing a rise in rates of child poverty with significant cascading effects.</p>
<h2>Long-term payoffs of addressing child poverty</h2>
<p>Addressing child poverty has long-term payoffs. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1257/pol.3.3.175">Child benefit programs</a> in Canada have been shown to positively affect children’s educational attainment and improve mothers’ health and mental health. These improvements can subsequently lead to improved health and mental health among children, which reduces long-term public costs. </p>
<p>In addition to being a <a href="https://www.un.org/development/desa/en/news/social/poverty-is-denial-of-childrens-rights.html">human rights issue</a>, addressing child poverty makes <a href="https://doi.org/10.1503%2Fcmaj.69470">economic sense</a>. This is why addressing child poverty needs to remain a priority for all Canadians. Governments, employers and communities must partner to reduce the risk of poverty. They can do this by:</p>
<ol>
<li>Adopting a national <a href="https://www.livingwage.ca/">living wage</a> policy, where the hourly minimum wage supports the cost of living in Canadian communities. </li>
<li>Reducing <a href="https://proof.utoronto.ca/food-insecurity/">food insecurity</a> by enhancing access to nutritional food through nationally available school food programs. </li>
<li>Increasing school readiness by providing universal access to <a href="https://www.unicef.org/eca/press-releases/investing-ECD-essential-children">quality early childhood development</a> programs across Canada.</li>
</ol>
<h2>Some are more at risk than others</h2>
<p>In its <a href="https://www.unicef.ca/en/unicef-report-card-18">report card</a>, UNICEF identified single-parent families, families living in Indigenous communities, and families with racialized or disabled children as being at higher risk of poverty. These risks come with cascading health, social and justice <a href="https://doi.org/10.1503%2Fcmaj.171508">consequences</a>. Further multidimensional and targeted approaches are needed to support families that are more severely affected. </p>
<p>The Government of Canada has a legislated target to <a href="https://www.canada.ca/en/employment-social-development/programs/agenda-2030/poverty.html">reduce poverty by at least 50 per cent</a> relative to 2015 levels by 2030 in line with the Sustainable Development Goals. </p>
<p>As we saw before the pandemic, it is possible to reduce child poverty in Canada. However, unless the impact of the current economic climate on families is considered and suitably responded to, Canada may continue experiencing a rise in rates of child poverty, putting our collective future at risk. Canada can do better, and we should do better for our kids.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/221565/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nicole Racine receives funding from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, the University of Ottawa, and holds a Chair in Child and Youth Mental Health at the Children's Hospital of Easter Ontario Research Institute. She sits on the Board of Trustees for Strong Minds Strong Kids, Psychology Foundation of Canada. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Shainur Premji receives funding from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, and the National Institute for Health and Care Research.</span></em></p>Over one million Canadian children live in poverty. Child poverty is a pernicious childhood adversity that has detrimental long-term impacts on health, development and well-being throughout life.Nicole Racine, Assistant professor, School of Psychology, Scientist, Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario Research Institute, L’Université d’Ottawa/University of OttawaShainur Premji, Research Fellow, Centre for Health Economics, University of YorkLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2220332024-01-26T17:57:58Z2024-01-26T17:57:58ZThe Kitchen: Daniel Kaluuya and Kano’s dystopian film portrays a gentrified future uncomfortably close to home<p>For his directorial debut, British actor Daniel Kaluuya has teamed up with filmmaker and architect Kibwe Tavares and the musician and actor, Kano AKA Kane Robinson, in The Kitchen, a dystopian tale of community bonds and inequality, now out on Netflix. The story is set in 2044. The gap between rich and poor it portrays has never loomed larger. It has also never felt closer to home. </p>
<p>The titular Kitchen is a brutalist former <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0038026118777451">sink estate</a> in south London. Surrounded by sparkling private apartment complexes, the people have been parked here in temporary housing by a government now bent on recuperating the real estate and kicking them out. </p>
<p>Here, Izi (Robinson), a worker at the Life after Life scam funeral company, is biding his time through gritted teeth. He cannot wait to get out, having almost saved enough to afford a new apartment in the Buena Vida development. The story hinges on the relationship he forges with recently orphaned Benji (Jedaiah Bannerman). </p>
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<p>With no vestige of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/austerity-gutted-the-welfare-state-preserving-benefits-now-cant-make-up-for-that-193360">welfare state</a>, those who are too poor to live in the city can’t even afford to die there. Grieving families fall back on Life after Life, which promises to save burial costs by growing trees, supposedly for “ecological restoration projects” from composted bodies. </p>
<p>In a future where death is too expensive, it is not surprising that social housing no longer exists. Life on the Kitchen is hard. Essential infrastructure regularly fails. Residents queue for one shower cubicle when the water goes off across the blocks. </p>
<p>These breakdowns are deliberate. Staples (Hope Ikpoku Jr), a local Robin Hood, musters his troupe of bikers to secure supermarket delivery vans’ contents in order to feed the estate’s residents. “They cuttin’ water, they blockin’ deliveries, they takin’ people,” Staples tells Benji. </p>
<h2>When the community pushes back</h2>
<p>“They” refers to the authorities behind the gentrification project that threatens the Kitchen’s existence. Police raids, violent and brutal, are increasing in regularity to clear the remaining residents out. “I can’t breathe,” Benji gasps at one point, a clear reference to the events that sparked the 2020 <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-the-pandemic-changed-social-media-and-george-floyds-death-created-a-collective-conscience-140104">#BlackLivesMatter protests</a>. </p>
<p>Residents warn each other the police are coming by <a href="https://theconversation.com/voices-hearts-and-hands-how-the-powerful-sounds-of-protest-have-changed-over-time-140192">banging pots and pans</a> against the railings, giving the Kitchen its name. There may be echoes of the pandemic’s clap for carers in this act, but its roots lie much further back.</p>
<p>It recalls the <em>cacerolazo</em> women’s protests across <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14791420701821773?casa_token=DEw1By77KAcAAAAA:CAk3bR2DNK5RjNWnlKNMOl30A27QGKK4rgSju2z5Q9E3Y9TeMFruP8tVmxtcGPBEUE_JAFACq-1t">South America</a> in the early 2000s over the impact of globalisation on their impoverished communities. The Kitchen’s inhabitants are pushing back against the forces marginalising them, with the basic materials they have to hand.</p>
<p>In <a href="https://www.nme.com/features/film-interviews/daniel-kaluuya-kibwe-tavares-the-kitchen-kano-netflix-3568525">a recent interview</a>, Kaluuya described what happened to his Kings Cross neighbourhood, in London, after the Eurostar terminal opened in 2007. Gentrification reduced crime rates associated with drugs and prostitution. It also ripped out stable residential communities. </p>
<p>An unflinching belief in the potential of community strength runs through the film. “We gotta look out for each other,” Lord Kitchener (Ian Wright), the estate’s resident radio DJ and unofficial leader, reminds his listeners. “They can’t stop We.” </p>
<p>The radio shows hosted by the Lord, as he’s known, reflect and reinforce the Kitchen’s cohesion. There is daily news of weddings and birthdays, where to find food, where there’s no water. Everyone living there is “family”, “a team”. </p>
<p>Amid its sprawling, blocky concrete structures (created in part through Tavares’ architectural nous), the estate’s residents create their own world. Hollowed out spaces beneath the flats become a vibrant market supplied through raids on shops beyond the estate. Residents constantly come together to eat and drink, to roller skate. One joyful scene sees the whole club doing the Candy dance. Everyone knows all the moves. </p>
<p>The Kitchen’s community defending itself reflects real events observed in urban Britain from the 1960s onwards. Local residents in poor districts –- often led by women –- have been organising themselves for decades to defend their spaces from the <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/03071022.2017.1290366?casa_token=z-VYxLWy6lEAAAAA:eDIISxGhryJz21MK57pT4hBDr8GDXIfJgFUbGc38xgOKnR7VeWj8ahRAEtlUuGRMf8BFMlQqSFBF">dangers of car ownership</a>, from the <a href="https://academic.oup.com/hwj/article/83/1/79/3862507">impact of housing shortages</a> and from the <a href="https://www.ucl.ac.uk/urban-lab/sites/urban-lab/files/case-study-5-lambeth-council.pdf">negative consequences</a> of gentrification. </p>
<p>Just as people in the Kitchen do not necessarily see their communal parties as an explicit form of resistance, researchers have described innumerable incidences of <a href="https://jspp.psychopen.eu/index.php/jspp/article/view/5081/5081.html">“implicit activism”</a> where local people work to improve their surroundings without seeing themselves and their families displaced in the process. </p>
<p>As one mother on an estate in the East Midlands <a href="https://figshare.le.ac.uk/articles/journal_contribution/Small_acts_kind_words_and_not_too_much_fuss_Implicit_activisms/10108445">put it</a>, when her local Sure Start centre was threatened with closure in the early 2000s, “If there was a big issue, I think most of the mums here would be up for it. We stick together like that.” </p>
<p>Such communal activities, The Kitchen suggests, offer a more genuine reality than that manufactured by government-led “community improvement”. This point is forcibly brought home when we see that the breathtaking views over the city from Izi’s new apartment are in fact a series of projected images. The flat has no real window. </p>
<p>The question the film poses is whether community action is enough. The real danger is that by 2044, the gap between rich and poor in the UK will be so great as to be unbroachable. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.jrf.org.uk/uk-poverty-2024-the-essential-guide-to-understanding-poverty-in-the-uk">Poverty rates</a> are rising steeply, especially among children. <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2024/jan/21/gordon-brown-urges-overhaul-benefits-system-study-crisis">Benefits</a> no longer cover the most basic costs to eat healthily and stay warm. <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-awaab-ishaks-death-says-about-the-state-of-social-housing-in-the-uk-expert-qanda-19374">State housing stock</a> continues to decline. <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-the-private-rental-sector-created-a-homelessness-crisis-in-ireland-and-england-201734">Private sector rents</a> are soaring. Local authorities are going <a href="https://theconversation.com/birminghams-bankruptcy-is-only-the-tip-of-the-iceberg-local-authorities-across-england-are-at-risk-212912">bankrupt</a> and the basic services people need – from <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/jan/25/warehouse-disabled-people-bristol-city-council">in-home social care</a> to special needs education and waste collection – are <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-nottinghamshire-67577142">dwindling</a>. </p>
<p>The future The Kitchen depicts is not quite where we are, but familiar enough to feel realistic. Those watching it in this general election year would do well to consider whether this is the future that we wish to see.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/222033/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Krista Cowman receives funding from AHRC; European Science Foundation and is a member of the Labour Party</span></em></p>The film is run through with an unflinching belief in the power communities wield and the tangible limits they face.Krista Cowman, Head of School of History Politics and International Relations, University of LeicesterLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2213822024-01-22T13:28:57Z2024-01-22T13:28:57ZCongress is close to expanding the child tax credit again − with a smaller boost for families this time<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/570367/original/file-20240119-25-35ut1k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=94%2C83%2C6903%2C4395&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The costs of raising children can strain a household's budget.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/mother-and-daughter-shopping-school-supplies-in-a-royalty-free-image/1585987057?adppopup=true">Phynart Studio/E+ via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em><a href="https://www.axios.com/2024/01/16/child-tax-credit-reduce-poverty">Influential lawmakers have struck a deal</a> that could increase the extent to which low-income U.S. families can benefit from the child tax credit for three years. The Conversation asked <a href="https://fordschool.umich.edu/faculty/natasha-pilkauskas">Natasha Pilkauskas</a> and <a href="https://fordschool.umich.edu/faculty/katherine-michelmore">Katherine Michelmore</a>, public policy researchers at the University of Michigan, to explain what may change and why.</em></p>
<h2>Why does Congress want to expand the child tax credit?</h2>
<p>The child tax credit, <a href="https://www.ncsl.org/human-services/child-tax-credit-overview">first enacted in 1997</a>, was originally designed to help middle-class families with the costs of raising kids by giving them and upper-class families a tax credit of US$400 per child.</p>
<p>After several changes, this credit grew to as much as $2,000. Then the government temporarily expanded the credit in two main ways for the 2021 tax year. </p>
<p>Families could get up to $3,600 for each child, and nearly all low-income families could obtain it. In addition, half of this money was disbursed in monthly payments in the second half of 2021.</p>
<p>In 2022, the credit reverted to its previous terms, in accordance with the tax reform package that President Donald Trump <a href="https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/sites/default/files/briefing-book/what-is-the-child-tax-credit.pdf">signed into law in late 2017</a>.</p>
<p>The maximum credit is currently worth $2,000. Families must earn at least $2,500 to claim any credit, but their earnings must be higher to get the full credit. For example, a family with two children must earn at least about $40,000 to receive the full $4,000 in child tax credits. Families with three or more children have to earn even more to get the full benefits.</p>
<h2>What could change this time?</h2>
<p>A bipartisan group of House and Senate <a href="https://gop-waysandmeans.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/The-Tax-Relief-for-American-Families-and-Workers-Act-of-2024-Technical-Summary.pdf">lawmakers agreed on Jan. 16, 2024</a>, to expand the credit again. If Congress <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/16/us/politics/tax-deal-congress.html">passes the $33 billion measure</a> and President Joe Biden signs it into law, the credit would still be smaller than the 2021 version, and it would not be available to all low-income families.</p>
<p>The new proposal would adjust the earnings requirements. These changes would make it easier for many lower-income families – those earning roughly between $10,000 and $50,000 – to get the full credit. These families would get an <a href="https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2024/1/16/24035922/child-tax-credit-wyden-smith-deal">average credit that is about $1,130 higher</a> than in 2022.</p>
<p>Families with higher incomes will also see larger benefits in future years if this expansion is passed, because the credit would be indexed to inflation to help families keep pace with rising expenses.</p>
<p>Unlike the 2021 expansion, which gave families monthly checks for six months, this credit would come only at tax time as a lump sum.</p>
<p>The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities <a href="https://www.cbpp.org/sites/default/files/1-16-24tax.pdf">projects that this policy would boost benefits</a> for 16 million kids. That’s more than <a href="https://www.childstats.gov/americaschildren/demo.asp">1 in 5 of the nation’s 72 million children</a>.</p>
<p>Families who would <a href="https://www.investopedia.com/financial-edge/0411/5-groups-that-dont-pay-taxes.aspx">not otherwise have to file their taxes</a> will need to do so to claim the child tax credit. In our own research, we found that almost 25% of lower-income families <a href="https://doi.org/10.1257/pandp.20231089">didn’t receive any of the monthly child tax credits</a>, perhaps because they didn’t file their taxes. </p>
<p>For parents who worked in 2023 and have kids younger than 17 who live with them, it may be worth filing taxes in 2024.</p>
<h2>What’s the rationale for this expansion?</h2>
<p>Raising children can be very expensive.</p>
<p>Consider a mother who is working year-round in a full-time, minimum-wage job who has two kids. Assuming she earns the <a href="https://www.usa.gov/minimum-wage">federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour</a>, she would <a href="https://www.indeed.com/career-advice/pay-salary/how-much-does-a-minimum-wage-job-pay-a-year">earn just over $15,000 each year</a>. Once she pays her rent, food and utility bills, she likely has very little money left for other important expenses like child care or school fees.</p>
<p>For this woman, getting a bigger check at tax time could really help her make ends meet. This new plan would nearly double her child tax credit <a href="https://www.cbpp.org/sites/default/files/1-16-24tax.pdf">from about $1,875 to $3,600</a>.</p>
<p>There’s also widespread support to expand the child tax credit because the 2021 child tax credit lifted <a href="https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2022/09/record-drop-in-child-poverty.html">3 million children out of poverty</a>. </p>
<p>Many researchers, including us, have found that most <a href="https://doi.org/10.1257/pandp.20231089">families with low incomes</a> spent the 2021 credit on bills, <a href="https://doi.org/10.3386/w31339">rent</a>, <a href="https://doi.org/10.3386/w30533">food and clothing</a>.</p>
<p>We also determined that the expanded child tax credit made <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssmph.2023.101420">parents less anxious and depressed</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/570384/original/file-20240119-25-yp90kj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A group of children sit and stand in front of a banner that says 'hungry for the child tax credit.'" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/570384/original/file-20240119-25-yp90kj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/570384/original/file-20240119-25-yp90kj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/570384/original/file-20240119-25-yp90kj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/570384/original/file-20240119-25-yp90kj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/570384/original/file-20240119-25-yp90kj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/570384/original/file-20240119-25-yp90kj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/570384/original/file-20240119-25-yp90kj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">The children of advocates for changes to the child tax credit gathered in front of the White House in September 2022.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/parents-and-caregivers-with-the-economic-security-project-news-photo/1425648693?adppopup=true">Larry French/Getty Images for SKDK</a></span>
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<h2>Who wants this expansion to go into effect?</h2>
<p>In the past, bipartisan coalitions have voted to expand the child tax credit. Republicans and Democrats alike have proposed making it more generous over the years.</p>
<p>The current expansion also has bipartisan support, even though <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2024/01/15/child-tax-credit-increase-2024/">progressive lawmakers would have preferred</a> a return to the 2021 version of the credit, which was larger, available to more low-income families and disbursed in monthly installments. </p>
<p>Some conservatives worry that bigger credits <a href="https://www.aei.org/center-on-opportunity-and-social-mobility/tax-extenders-package-would-cut-the-child-tax-credits-annual-work-requirement-in-half/">make people less likely to work</a>. There’s not much evidence to support that claim. </p>
<p>Instead, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/pam.22528">there’s ample evidence</a> that the <a href="https://www.nber.org/papers/w29823">2021 tax credit expansion</a> <a href="https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/pandp.20231087">didn’t make parents less likely to earn money</a>.</p>
<p>And it’s important to remember that families will still have to work in order to receive any benefit from the child tax credit under this proposal.</p>
<h2>How long would the expansion last?</h2>
<p>To be clear, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2024/01/15/child-tax-credit-increase-2024/">there is no guarantee that Congress will approve</a> this measure. It’s part of a <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2024/01/16/tax-chiefs-reach-deal-on-child-credit-business-breaks-00135631">larger array of tax changes</a> subject to other partisan battles.</p>
<p>Should Congress pass the tax package and Biden sign it by Jan. 29, American families would be able to claim this expanded credit in 2024 on their 2023 taxes.</p>
<p>Even so, this expansion would be short-lived. The current child tax credit <a href="https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxvox/evidence-suggests-expanding-child-tax-credit-could-ease-hardship-among-families-kids">is slated to become smaller after the 2025 tax year</a> unless Congress takes further action. It’s one of the many 2017 tax reforms that will expire in 2026.</p>
<p>After that point, the child tax credit will <a href="https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/briefing-book/what-child-tax-credit">decline to a maximum of $1,000</a> per child.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/221382/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Natasha Pilkauskas has received funding from the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Philanthropies and the Washington Center for Equitable Growth.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Katherine Michelmore has received funding from the Washington Center for Equitable Growth</span></em></p>Republicans and Democrats have committed to making this family-friendly government benefit a little more generous. Unless lawmakers act, it will get much smaller in 2026.Natasha Pilkauskas, Associate Professor of Public Policy, University of MichiganKatherine Michelmore, Associate Professor of Public Policy, University of MichiganLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2166892023-11-14T17:06:53Z2023-11-14T17:06:53ZAround a million children in the UK are living in destitution – with harmful consequences for their development<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/558367/original/file-20231108-29-8kzjy6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C4730%2C3158&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/small-boy-71181397">spixel/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Millions of people in the UK are unable to meet their most basic physical needs: to stay warm, dry, clean and fed. This is known as destitution. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.jrf.org.uk/report/destitution-uk-2023">Recent analysis</a> from charity the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (<a href="https://www.jrf.org.uk/">JRF</a>) estimates that around 3.8 million people in the UK experienced destitution at some point during 2022. This is a 61% increase since 2019 – and a 148% increase since 2017. </p>
<p>Living in destitution means severe material hardship. The JRF’s <a href="https://www.jrf.org.uk/report/destitution-uk-2023">2022 survey</a> of crisis service users in the UK found that 61% reported going without food in the month before the survey. They often put other needs, such as accommodation or feeding their children, over feeding themselves. </p>
<p>About half of the people surveyed were not able to afford adequate clothing and basic necessities, such as toiletries. Many talked of living in insecure and low quality housing. </p>
<p>One particularly alarming aspect of these most recent statistics is the steep increase in the number of children living in destitution. In 2022, around 1 million children lived in households who experienced destitution. This is an increase of 88% since the charity’s corresponding 2019 study, and a 186% increase since the 2017 study.</p>
<h2>Impact on children</h2>
<p>Destitution causes immediate suffering. But for these children, this experience of hardship at a young age will have consequences that last throughout their lives. There is little doubt that both <a href="https://sticerd.lse.ac.uk/dps/case/cp/casepaper203.pdf">money</a> and <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12146745/">environment</a> (housing quality, parental mental health and nutrition, for example) contribute to inequalities in child development. Both of these factors are affected by living in destitution. </p>
<p>When children reach the age of three, stark differences are <a href="https://ifs.org.uk/inequality/early-childhood-inequalities-chapter/">already evident</a> between those who live in poverty and those who do not. Children from more well-off families have better developed skills in both cognitive tasks, such as understanding basic concepts like colours, letters, numbers and shapes, as well as socio-emotional skills, such as self-control and resilience. </p>
<p>Other factors that are important in shaping children’s skills include housing quality and parental mental health. </p>
<p>Inequalities so early in life can compound and widen over time. These differences between the disadvantaged and the better off can <a href="https://www.eif.org.uk/report/social-and-emotional-skills-in-childhood-and-their-long-term-effects-on-adult-life">be seen in</a> educational achievement, health and criminal activity.</p>
<p>These types of inequalities were also exacerbated by the pandemic. While pupils everywhere missed out on education, these learning losses were not equally distributed: young people from lower socio-economic background fell <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/learning-during-the-pandemic/learning-during-the-pandemic-quantifying-lost-time--2">further behind</a>. </p>
<p>Despite large <a href="https://ifs.org.uk/publications/2019-annual-report-education-spending-england">increases</a> in funding for the early-year sectors, socio-economic inequalities in child development have <a href="https://ifs.org.uk/inequality/early-childhood-inequalities-chapter/">not generally narrowed</a>, particularly in recent years. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1716715308369535026"}"></div></p>
<p>And now, the sharp increase in the share of children living in destitution does not paint a optimistic picture for the future. </p>
<h2>Making a difference</h2>
<p>However, many of these issues can be changed by government policy. For example, we know that being hungry at school makes it difficult to concentrate and learn. Measures that address hunger, then, can make a difference. <a href="https://ifs.org.uk/articles/breakfast-clubs-work-their-magic-disadvantaged-english-schools#:%7E:text=New%20IFS%20research%20finds%20that,the%20course%20of%20a%20year.">Analysis</a> of a trial of breakfast clubs in English schools, which offered free breakfast to disadvantaged children aged six and seven, found that the free breakfast lead to the equivalent of two months’ extra progress in reading, writing and maths across the course of one year. </p>
<p><a href="https://heckmanequation.org/resource/research-summary-perry-preschool-and-character-skill-development/">Research has shown</a> that many early interventions – such as high quality childcare and education programmes for at-risk children – can have long-lasting positive effects. From an economic perspective, acting early to lift children out of poverty and improve their home and learning environments can be a cost-effective way of helping in the long run, both for individuals as well as wider society. </p>
<p>Another option would be reform of the benefits system to make sure families have enough money to live. In the <a href="https://www.jrf.org.uk/report/destitution-uk-2023">2022 Joseph Rowntree Foundation survey</a> of people who used crisis centres, 72% did receive social security benefits – but were still destitute.</p>
<p>This rise in children living in household experiencing destitution must be given serious attention. <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/pm-speech-on-opportunity">Successive governments</a> <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/britain-the-great-meritocracy-prime-ministers-speech">claim</a> to hold upward social mobility as a important goal – that is, the ability of people to move up the economic and social ladder, regardless of their own upbringing and social background. Reducing destitution would not only benefit children right now, but would help them throughout life.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/216689/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Emma Louise Gorman receives funding from the Economic and Social Research Council to support her academic research (grant numbers ES/R00627X/1 and ES/X012190/1)</span></em></p>Destitution causes children immediate suffering – and can affect them throughout their lives.Emma Louise Gorman, Principal Research Fellow, Centre for Employment Research, University of WestminsterLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2172602023-11-08T23:00:16Z2023-11-08T23:00:16ZIf NZ’s new government wants a simple fix to improve child poverty, here’s what it should do<p>With a National-led coalition government taking shape (how long it takes is another matter), the nation’s “squeezed middle” awaits the financial relief promised during the election campaign.</p>
<p>As the lead party, National’s policies should be central to negotiations. For those without children, its proposed payment of the full <a href="https://assets.nationbuilder.com/nationalparty/pages/17859/attachments/original/1693346887/Back_Pocket_Boost.pdf?1693346887">Independent Earner Tax Credit</a> for incomes between NZ$24,000 and $66,000 would kick in from April 1 next year. </p>
<p>This would help some 380,000 people in low and modestly paid work with an extra $10 a week. It’s not a lot, but better than nothing. For those with children, National has promised an extra $25 a week from the In Work Tax Credit – providing neither parent receives any part of a core welfare benefit. </p>
<p>At an annual cost of about $200 million, around 160,000 low-income “working families” would gain enough each week to buy a large block of cheese. </p>
<p>But for those roughly 180,000 families where parents are without work and who need welfare to survive, National’s election promises will deliver nothing.</p>
<p>This raises real questions about incoming prime minister Christopher Luxon’s promise to stick to the targets outlined in the Child Poverty Reduction Act and <a href="https://www.cpag.org.nz/media-releases/tough-times-ahead-for-children-in-hardship-under-next-government-cpag-warns">halve child poverty</a> by 2028.</p>
<p>With a willingness to re-examine what is on the table, however, New Zealand’s worst-off children can be helped in a meaningful way. At the same time, the work effort of low-income parents can be better rewarded.</p>
<h2>How the poverty trap works</h2>
<p>The various tax credits available through Working for Families (WFF) are fiendishly complicated but utterly critical for the negotiating coalition parties to understand.</p>
<p>When a family’s joint gross income exceeds the (very low) fixed $42,700 threshold, every extra dollar earned denies them 27 cents of WFF assistance. To help explain this, it’s useful to imagine a typical family in those circumstances.</p>
<p>Let’s say this family has two children at school, with one parent in full-time employment and the other half-time, both on the minimum wage. That gives them a total annual gross income of $70,824, or $63,984 after tax.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/forcing-people-to-repay-welfare-loans-traps-them-in-a-poverty-cycle-where-is-the-policy-debate-about-that-212528">Forcing people to repay welfare ‘loans’ traps them in a poverty cycle – where is the policy debate about that?</a>
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<p>WFF currently provides a maximum of $320 per week, made up of $248 from the Family Tax Credit (FTC) and $72 from the In Work Tax Credit (IWTC). But the parents’ joint income is over the fixed threshold, meaning they lose entitlement to $146 of WFF. This leaves just $174 a week for the needs of their children.</p>
<p>With rent or a mortgage taking maybe half of their net income, their budget just doesn’t add up. The weekly deficit must be covered by food parcels from foodbanks, special assistance from Work and Income, defaults on payments, high-interest borrowing or selling assets.</p>
<p>The parents are already stretched, but let’s say the mother decides to go back to full-time paid work. Her additional gross income would see Inland Revenue reduce her WFF entitlement by $116 a week – or demand repayment of any overpaid entitlements. </p>
<p>If she has a student loan, as many do, she could be liable for another repayment of $51 a week. Her extra income of $454 for 20 hours’ work leaves her better off by just $207.</p>
<h2>Letting people work and earn more</h2>
<p>To alleviate this kind of poverty trap, National proposes to increase the WFF threshold from $42,700 to $50,000. But this does not happen until 2026, just in time for the next election. In the meantime, rising costs will erode the family’s extra weekly $25 from the IWTC.</p>
<p>To increase the threshold to $50,000 immediately would cost about $250 million according to National’s own calculations. Delaying the change only decreases the incentive to work, with flow-on effects for productivity.</p>
<p>Rather than increasing the IWTC by $25, bringing forward the higher income threshold would be a more effective way to help squeezed middle-income “working” families by loosening the vice of that poverty trap.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-labour-national-consensus-on-family-support-means-the-election-wont-change-much-for-nzs-poorest-households-212450">The Labour-National consensus on family support means the election won’t change much for NZ’s poorest households</a>
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<p>It would deliver an extra $38 a week of WFF on joint incomes between $50,000 and, $100,000 or more, depending on the number of children. This would also address child poverty, as about half of the country’s poor children are in families in low-paid work.</p>
<p>But what of the other poor children in families that get nothing from National’s election promises? If their parents are so poor they need a benefit, or part of a benefit, they do not receive the IWTC and would gain nothing from the threshold increase.</p>
<p>These families live on budgets that <a href="https://static1.squarespace.com/static/60189fe639b6d67b861cf5c4/t/6461b5d7e7257216cb48d105/1684125147888/Update+and+report+Budget+gaps+revised+FINAL.pdf">fall far short of a liveable income</a>. Many slip further into debt every week, waste precious time arguing for means-tested top-ups from Work and Income, or need food parcels from stretched and underfunded foodbanks.</p>
<h2>A simple solution</h2>
<p>For child poverty targets to have even a remote chance of being met, these worst-off children must be helped. This would best be achieved by an immediate increase to the Family Tax Credit, over and above the required inflation adjustment.</p>
<p>Here is a counter-intuitive but serious suggestion: <em>reduce</em> the In Work Tax Credit by $25 a week and <em>increase</em> the Family Tax Credit by the same amount.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-coming-storm-for-new-zealands-future-retirees-still-renting-and-not-enough-savings-to-avoid-poverty-179661">The coming storm for New Zealand’s future retirees: still renting and not enough savings to avoid poverty</a>
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<p>This would mean the poorest families are better off. The working poor would see no difference, as their IWTC goes down while their FTC goes up. But they would still be helped greatly by the increase in the income abatement threshold, because any extra earnings would not be quite so badly penalised.</p>
<p>Much more could be done to reduce the poverty trap, including a reduction of the 27% abatement rate, indexation of the threshold for inflation, and a review of the penal student loan arrangements.</p>
<p>But this basic suggestion could still be a win-win for National’s key objectives at roughly the same eventual annual cost. It should be only a beginning, but it would provide a better path for future adjustments.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/217260/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Susan St John is affiliated with the Child Poverty Action Group.</span></em></p>Working for Families tax credits favour those in work, yet discourage them from working or earning more. But there is a cost-effective way to improve the system for those on welfare and low incomes.Susan St John, Honorary Associate Professor, Economic Policy Centre, Auckland Business School, University of Auckland, Waipapa Taumata RauLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2153792023-10-12T10:34:49Z2023-10-12T10:34:49ZThe cost of living crisis can’t wait for the next election: three key issues the UK government needs to tackle now<p>Speakers at the 2023 Labour party conference have rightly addressed <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/oct/10/five-key-points-from-keir-starmers-speech">the economic insecurity</a> affecting families across the UK. As winter approaches, many are at breaking point. One week earlier, however, the Conservatives were notably quiet on this point. And yet, the government’s <a href="https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/inflationandpriceindices/articles/costoflivinginsights/food">own statistics</a> show that four in ten adults are struggling with rent or mortgage payments and are buying less food when shopping. </p>
<p>The government has implemented a range of measures to support people facing rising costs. These include direct support to households through the <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/energy-bills-support/energy-bills-support-factsheet-8-september-2022">energy price guarantee</a>, and <a href="https://www.gov.uk/guidance/cost-of-living-payment">cost of living payments</a> to households in receipt of eligible benefits. Other initiatives – the <a href="https://www.gov.uk/cost-living-help-local-council">household support fund</a> and <a href="https://www.gov.uk/guidance/council-tax-rebate-factsheet">council tax energy rebates</a> – have been devolved to local authorities to roll out. </p>
<p>Our <a href="https://www.york.ac.uk/media/policyengine/costoflivingresearchgroup/Cost%20of%20Living%20report%20(5)%20(1).pdf">new research</a> combines evidence collated since 2022, through projects in the University of York’s <a href="https://www.york.ac.uk/policy-engine/cost-of-living/#:%7E:text=Chaired%20by%20Professor%20Kate%20Pickett,Equality%20and%20Health%20and%20Wellbeing.">Cost of Living Research Group</a>. In particular, we are conducting <a href="https://changingrealities.org/">collaborative research</a> with more than 100 families on low incomes based across the UK, along with analysis of national statistics and surveys of over 700 local councillors. </p>
<p>Our findings show that these governmental interventions have not helped the country’s most vulnerable people. They point to three crucial issues that need to be addressed: <a href="https://theconversation.com/poverty-in-britain-is-firmly-linked-to-the-countrys-mountain-of-private-wealth-labour-must-address-this-growing-inequality-212741">child poverty</a>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-uk-economys-covid-bounceback-was-stronger-than-we-thought-but-heres-why-people-are-still-feeling-financial-pain-212947">fuel poverty</a>, and <a href="https://theconversation.com/austerity-gutted-the-welfare-state-preserving-benefits-now-cant-make-up-for-that-193360">local authority welfare funding</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Children in school uniform with backpacks." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/553272/original/file-20231011-24-y5diez.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/553272/original/file-20231011-24-y5diez.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/553272/original/file-20231011-24-y5diez.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/553272/original/file-20231011-24-y5diez.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/553272/original/file-20231011-24-y5diez.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/553272/original/file-20231011-24-y5diez.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/553272/original/file-20231011-24-y5diez.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">280,000 children are impacted by the cap on benefits.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/multicultural-children-asian-indian-chinese-caucasian-1738679645">Shutterstock</a></span>
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</figure>
<h2>Child poverty</h2>
<p>The pandemic and cost of living crisis have exposed weaknesses in the UK’s social security system, opened up by over a <a href="https://wbg.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/SOCIAL-SECURITY-2019.pdf">decade of cuts</a>. Children in the poorest households are <a href="https://www.thenhsa.co.uk/app/uploads/2023/01/COTN-APPG.pdf">bearing the brunt</a> of this failing safety net. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.gov.uk/benefit-cap">benefit cap</a> and <a href="https://www.gov.uk/guidance/claiming-benefits-for-2-or-more-children">two-child limit</a>, which restricted the support provided through tax credits and universal credit to two children per household, were key contributors to rising child poverty throughout the 2010s, predominantly affecting <a href="https://largerfamilies.study/">larger families</a>. One in ten children (1.5 million) now live in households affected by the two-child limit. The benefit cap, meanwhile, has affected the lives of 280,000 children. Some 32,000 households – 110,000 children – have their income limited by both. </p>
<p>The people we spoke with explained how living in poverty has affected their whole families. One respondent, Lili, said: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Scrimping like this does have a negative effect on us all … I wake up in the night worrying about money and know how much it costs to use every single appliance. My standard of self-care and wellbeing has declined, but I am trying to ensure that our daughter’s does not. We are surviving but not really living, let alone thriving.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The government’s cost of living payments were <a href="https://largerfamilies.study/">paid at a flat rate</a> and not adjusted to household size. This means they have not met the needs of families with children. Abolishing the two-child limit and benefit cap would make an immediate difference to low-income households, <a href="https://www.york.ac.uk/media/policyengine/costoflivingresearchgroup/Cost%20of%20Living%20report%20(5)%20(1).pdf">helping lift</a> more than 1.5 million children out of poverty.</p>
<h2>Fuel poverty</h2>
<p>Since 2021, the proportion of people unable to meet their energy needs has risen dramatically. Our research shows that one in ten UK households are now affected. </p>
<p>That number rises to three in ten for one-parent households with two or more children. This means these families are at risk of living in damp, mouldy and cold homes, which can lead to heart and lung problems and undermine their mental health. For children, living in fuel poverty can have a significant <a href="https://www.thenhsa.co.uk/app/uploads/2023/01/COTN-APPG.pdf">lifelong impact</a>.</p>
<p>The Westminster government’s energy support has done little to alleviate hardship. As another respondent, Dotty, put it: “I’m lucky if £20 credit on my electric pre-payment meter will even last me for three days.” </p>
<p>Despite the <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/energy-bills-support/energy-price-guarantee-up-until-30-june-2023">energy price guarantee</a>, our <a href="https://www.york.ac.uk/media/business-society/research/Who_are_the_fuel_poor_revised_v2.pdf">analysis</a> suggests that six in ten families on the lowest incomes were living in fuel poverty in April 2023. We estimate that one in three households in fuel poverty (around 1.75 million people) have been ineligible for government cost of living support.</p>
<p>A recent survey from the energy provider EDF <a href="https://www.edfenergy.com/media-centre/news-releases/public-show-strong-support-social-energy-tariff-winter-approaches">found</a> that 77% of the British public are in favour of a social energy tariff. Implementing such a tariff could help target government support to the most vulnerable households.</p>
<h2>Local welfare systems</h2>
<p>Councils are responsible for administering the national government’s household support fund. The first of this series of support packages, now totalling over £2.5bn, was announced by Westminster in October 2021.</p>
<p>The problem is that after a decade and a half of austerity policies, councils and local services have been <a href="https://theconversation.com/birminghams-bankruptcy-is-only-the-tip-of-the-iceberg-local-authorities-across-england-are-at-risk-212912">stripped to the bone</a>. They now lack the infrastructure and capacity to administer and roll out these short-term schemes, about which they are notified, by central government, at short notice.</p>
<p>One council worker told us how “bitty” the funding had been: “Every time we’ve had the scheme, the message from the Department for Work and Pensions has been, ‘This is the last year you’ll get the funding.’” As a result, the council worker said, they do not plan for the long-term.</p>
<p>Our analysis of the second wave of household support fund <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/household-support-fund-2-management-information-1-april-to-30-september-2022/">allocations</a> showed that, while authorities such as Doncaster and Leeds allocated more than 70% of their funds to support for energy and water needs, neighbouring authorities North Yorkshire and Wakefield allocated 90% or more towards food. </p>
<p>This inconsistency is making life harder for people seeking help. As one respondent, Mollie put it: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>I reached out to my local council regarding the household support fund, as my sister mentioned she had received some support in the form of food vouchers. It turns out her local council made the scheme easier to access.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The household support fund can be a lifeline for households struggling with rising costs. But getting aid to the people who need it takes stable, predictable funding and proper strategic planning. </p>
<p>In his conference speech, opposition leader Keir Starmer said the Labour party wants to move away from the current government’s short-term, <a href="https://labour.org.uk/updates/press-releases/keir-starmers-speech-at-labour-conference/">“sticking plaster”</a> approach to politics. The reality, however, is that neither party currently has a sufficiently ambitious plan to rebuild the UK’s social security system. People cannot wait until the next election to get the help they need. The government needs to act now.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/215379/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kit Colliver receives funding from the Economic and Social Research Council. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Amy Barnes receives funding from the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) and the UK Prevention Research Partnership (an initiative funded by UK Research and Innovation Councils, the Department of Health and Social Care (England), UK devolved administrations, and leading health research charities). Amy is a Trustee of Healthwatch North Yorkshire and Manor and Castle Development Trust, Sheffield.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Maddy Power receives funding from the Wellcome Trust. Maddy is a member of the Labour Party and a Trustee of the Independent Food Aid Network.</span></em></p>Governmental support is failing the country’s most vulnerable households. Politicians need to act now.Kit Colliver, Research Associate at York Law School, University of YorkAmy Barnes, Senior Researcher, Public Health and Society, University of YorkMaddy Power, Research Fellow in the Department of Health Sciences, University of YorkLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2124502023-09-11T20:09:22Z2023-09-11T20:09:22ZThe Labour-National consensus on family support means the election won’t change much for NZ’s poorest households<p>Casual observers could be forgiven for thinking the National Party’s recently released <a href="https://www.national.org.nz/delivering_tax_relief">Working for Families</a> tax policy had been cut and pasted from the <a href="https://www.labour.org.nz/news-cost_living_working_families">Labour Party’s own policy</a>. The similarities are certainly striking.</p>
<p>Both parties pledge to increase the “in-work tax credit” (IWTC) by NZ$25, to $97.50 a week from April next year. They also promise to raise the Working for Families (WFF) household income abatement threshold (above which payments start reducing at 27%) from $42,700 to $50,000 in 2026.</p>
<p>In this strange pre-election coalescence, there is no longer even a pretence of delivering on Labour’s stalled <a href="https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/politics/fundamental-changes-to-tax-credit-system-could-lift-incomes-of-350000-families-in-working-for-families-review/UGDZFI3XWZCX3JKUCNWVKKSEXY/">Working for Families review</a> that promised “fundamental” changes to the system.</p>
<p>The major WFF tax credit remains the Family Tax Credit. It costs $2.3 billion a year, and is worth $137 weekly for the first child, and $111.60 for each extra child. This payment goes to all low-income children, whether or not parents are on welfare benefits, and is the major income tool to address child poverty. </p>
<p>But nearly one fifth of the two main WFF tax credits are made up by the IWTC, costing $500 million annually. Only children in families with some paid work (and not on any benefit) are eligible. Thus around 200,000 of the poorest children are excluded, disproportionately affecting Māori, Pacific and disabled children. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1690533604806549504"}"></div></p>
<h2>Poverty and paid work</h2>
<p>The current IWTC is a flat $72.50 a week for families with one to three children, with an extra $15 added for each additional child. Parents or caregivers (if eligible) receive both child-related tax credits in one weekly payment. </p>
<p>But the IWTC can quickly disappear if their employment status changes due to illness, redundancy or some other cause. Unless they struggle on without a welfare benefit and have “some” paid work, they can keep the IWTC for only two weeks. </p>
<p>The problem lies in the way the IWTC <a href="https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2023/08/14/so-this-is-the-best-we-can-expect-from-the-working-for-families-wffreview/">conflates</a> two different things: an incentive to seek and find paid work, and a mechanism for reducing child poverty. By withholding a payment that reduces poverty – when a household loses paid work or is on a benefit – child poverty is perpetuated. </p>
<p>Until now, the IWTC has tended to be an issue within obscure tax debates. But with both major parties effectively proposing the same policy, the political origins of the IWTC and the worrying implications of the current consensus are out in the open.</p>
<h2>A brief history of tax credits</h2>
<p>In 1996, the then-National government could not ignore the rapid increase in child poverty that followed its “<a href="https://www.stuff.co.nz/the-press/christchurch-life/124978983/1991-the-mother-of-all-budgets">mother of all budgets</a>” in 1991, and increased weekly “family support” payments by $20 per child.</p>
<p>Of that increase, $15 comprised what became known as the Child Tax Credit. It was only available for children whose parents were “independent from the state”. The poorest children received only the remaining $5 from the increase, not nearly enough to match inflation.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/nz-is-finally-making-progress-on-child-poverty-but-a-no-frills-budget-puts-that-at-risk-205559">NZ is finally making progress on child poverty – but a ‘no frills’ budget puts that at risk</a>
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</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>The opposition Labour Party vowed to remove what it saw as discrimination. Finance spokesperson Michael Cullen spoke in parliament of National’s “simplistic tangle of bigotry and ignorance”:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Children are children are children, no matter who their parents are. To draw distinctions between what the state says should go to low-income families on the basis of the source of that income, rather than on the level of that income, is obscene.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>But when Labour returned to power in 1999 it changed nothing for five years, until 2005 when it turned the old family support payment into the Family Tax Credit. Then in 2006, it transformed the Child Tax Credit of $15 per child into the IWTC. </p>
<h2>Debt and distress</h2>
<p>The IWTC became a flat $60 per week for a family with one to three children, and $15 for each additional child. But to qualify, sole parents had to perform at least 20 hours of paid work each week, and a couple 30 hours. </p>
<p>In 2016, the National government left the Family Tax Credit unchanged and instead favoured those in paid work by raising the IWTC to $72.50 per week, where it sits today. </p>
<p>The current Labour government removed the fixed hours of paid work requirement in 2020 due to COVID’s employment effects. But “some” paid work is still required, and a family cannot be on any benefit. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/taxing-questions-is-national-glossing-over-the-likely-cost-of-administering-its-new-revenue-measures-212529">Taxing questions: is National glossing over the likely cost of administering its new ‘revenue measures'?</a>
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<p>Furthermore, any alleged “overpayment” of WFF (due to unexpected extra income, or when the vague rules around paid work, benefits or relationship status are not met) must be repaid to Inland Revenue.</p>
<p>For families already struggling with other debt, this only adds to their <a href="https://static1.squarespace.com/static/60189fe639b6d67b861cf5c4/t/62bbd935210c4b1411e8d647/1656478014065/0513_CPAG+improving+the+framework+23+May++2022.pdf">distress</a>. Inland Revenue reported a <a href="https://www.ird.govt.nz/-/media/project/ir/home/documents/about-us/publications/annual-and-corporate-reports/annual-reports/annual-report-2022.pdf">26% increase</a> in WFF debt for the year to June 2022. </p>
<p>And yet, due to the way the Family Tax Credit is calculated, the IWTC may be paid in full <a href="https://www.ird.govt.nz/-/media/project/ir/home/documents/forms-and-guides/ir200---ir299/ir271/ir271-2024.pdf?modified=20230221204652&modified=20230221204652https://www.ird.govt.nz/-/media/project/ir/home/documents/forms-and-guides/ir200---ir299/ir271/ir271-2024.pdf?modified=20230221204652&modified=20230221204652">well up the income scale</a>. Under the proposed election policies, for example, the weekly $25 increase to the IWTC will mean a five-child family can earn nearly $160,000 before their IWTC of $127.50 starts to reduce.</p>
<p>Those families would not appear to need any work incentive. But the worst-off children in struggling families who do not qualify will fall even further behind.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/nzs-housing-market-drives-inequality-why-not-just-tax-houses-like-any-other-income-208003">NZ’s housing market drives inequality – why not just tax houses like any other income?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>A fairer system</h2>
<p>Better strategies to reduce child poverty and help low-wage families are needed. Why not simply give the full WFF package to families that currently miss out on the $72.50 (more for larger families), regardless of their household’s employment status? </p>
<p>This would meaningfully reduce child poverty in a cost-effective way. After all, both parties have signed up to the <a href="https://www.legislation.govt.nz/act/public/2018/0057/18.0/whole.html">Child Poverty Reduction Act</a>, but their election policies do little to address these issues. </p>
<p>All of the new spending would go to the worst-off, and none of it to higher-income families. Yes, it would be expensive at $500 million. But the policy to retain and enlarge the IWTC is expensive already. </p>
<p>Finally, many low-income families find they are hardly better off if they earn over the $42,700 abatement threshold. Each extra dollar earned may end up as only a few cents in the hand after 17.5 cents in tax, 27 cents in WFF, and often 25 cents in housing assistance and 12 cents in student loan repayments, are all taken out.</p>
<p>The Labour-National proposed increase to only $50,000 by 2026 is too little, too late. Today it should be $53,000 just to match inflation. </p>
<p>As it stands, both Labour and National will preside over deepening family poverty among beneficiaries, while ignoring the huge work disincentives faced by the working poor.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/212450/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Susan St John is affiliated with the Child Poverty Action Group.</span></em></p>Both major parties are promising to increase payments for families ‘in work’. But the changes will only entrench the problems already faced by beneficiaries and the working poor.Susan St John, Honorary Associate Professor, Economic Policy Centre, Auckland Business School, University of Auckland, Waipapa Taumata RauLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2127412023-09-05T15:15:03Z2023-09-05T15:15:03ZPoverty in Britain is firmly linked to the country’s mountain of private wealth – Labour must address this growing inequality<p>Labour’s shadow chancellor, Rachel Reeves, <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-66634187">has said</a> that a Labour government would not raises taxes on wealth, capital gains or higher incomes. She does not, she says, see “the way to prosperity as being through taxation.” </p>
<p>Britain is asset rich. National wealth – a mix of property, business, financial and state assets – stands at almost <a href="https://wid.world/news-article/world-inequality-report-2022/">seven times</a> the size of the economy. That is double the level of the 1970s. </p>
<p>This has not come about as a result of investment and productivity growth. Instead, much of this private-wealth mountain is <a href="https://policy.bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/the-richer-the-poorer">unearned</a> – the product of windfall gains, resulting from state-driven <a href="https://www.resolutionfoundation.org/publications/the-missing-billions/">asset inflation</a>, the mass sell-off of former public and commonly held assets (from land to industries) and the exploitation of corporate power. As philosopher and civil servant John Stuart Mill quipped during the Industrial Revolution, it’s “getting rich while asleep”.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/546156/original/file-20230904-28-fy6ubv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/546156/original/file-20230904-28-fy6ubv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/546156/original/file-20230904-28-fy6ubv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=603&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/546156/original/file-20230904-28-fy6ubv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=603&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/546156/original/file-20230904-28-fy6ubv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=603&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/546156/original/file-20230904-28-fy6ubv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=758&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/546156/original/file-20230904-28-fy6ubv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=758&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/546156/original/file-20230904-28-fy6ubv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=758&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<p><em>The Conversation is partnering with <a href="https://howthelightgetsin.org/festivals/london?utm_source=MP+L23+Conversation&utm_medium=Article+feature&utm_campaign=HTLGI+London+2023&utm_id=The+Conversation">HowTheLightGetsIn</a>, the world’s largest philosophy and music festival, which returns to Kenwood House in London on September 23-24. On Saturday 23, we will host a discussion on how to restructure society for <a href="https://howthelightgetsin.org/events/the-common-good-16017">the common good</a>. <a href="https://howthelightgetsin.org/festivals/london/programme?utm_source=MP+L23+Conversation&utm_medium=Article+feature&utm_campaign=HTLGI+London+2023&utm_id=The+Conversation">Explore the full programme here</a> and don’t miss getting <a href="https://howthelightgetsin.org/festivals/london/festival-passes?utm_source=MP+L23+Conversation&utm_medium=Article+feature&utm_campaign=HTLGI+London+2023&utm_id=The+Conversation">20% off tickets using the code CONVO23</a></em></p>
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<p>This has widened the wealth gap. The top tenth of Britons now holds nearly half of the UK’s <a href="https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/personalandhouseholdfinances/incomeandwealth/bulletins/totalwealthingreatbritain/april2018tomarch2020">private wealth</a>. The <a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674430006">poorest half’s share</a>, meanwhile, has never exceeded one-tenth. </p>
<p>As a former US supreme court justice <a href="https://www.newgeography.com/content/004253-concentrated-wealth-or-democracy-not-both">Louis Brandeis</a> famously declared – a century ago – it was possible, in the US, to have either democracy or great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few – but not both. </p>
<p>Britain today badly fails Brandeis’s democracy test. Yet, the Labour party’s leaders have <a href="https://theconversation.com/keir-starmers-first-conference-speech-as-labour-leader-was-a-serious-affair-heres-what-you-need-to-know-168788">no declared plans</a> – at least, as yet – to close this gap.</p>
<h2>Radical thinking</h2>
<p>In its early history, Labour drew on a number of radical, egalitarian thinkers to develop the case for a greater level of equality including via <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-new-enclosure-how-land-commissions-can-lead-the-fight-against-urban-land-grabs-167817">common ownership</a> of assets. As Britain’s first professor of sociology, <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/hobhouse-liberalism-and-other-writings/introduction/DE180F13230FC78763861C9804E41EC4">Leonard Hobhouse</a> put it:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Some forms of wealth are substantially the creation of society and it is only through the misfeasance of government that such wealth has been allowed to fall into private hands.</p>
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<p>Historian and Christian socialist <a href="https://www.encyclopedia.com/social-sciences/dictionaries-thesauruses-pictures-and-press-releases/tawney-richard-h">Richard Henry Tawney</a>, meanwhile, warned that assets used simply to extract payments from others, and not to perform a positive role, allowed “property without function”.</p>
<p><a href="https://archive.org/details/attlee00kenn">Clement Attlee</a>, who became prime minister immediately after the second world war, accepted that poverty was essentially due to inequality and excessive private ownership. He set out to reduce wealth inequality through a mix of higher taxes, nationalisation of key industries and a commitment to collectivism. </p>
<p>The course of poverty and inequality is ultimately the outcome of the conflict over the spoils of economic activity. It also traces the interplay between rich elites, governments and societal pressure. </p>
<p>Largely <a href="https://theconversation.com/could-post-war-drive-for-a-more-equal-society-help-with-todays-cost-of-living-crisis-185743">as a result</a> of Attlee’s policies, Britain achieved <a href="https://ifs.org.uk/living-standards-poverty-and-inequality-uk">peak income and wealth equality</a> and a low point for (relative) poverty in the late 1970s. This period turned out to be the high water mark of egalitarianism. </p>
<p>Since then, these gains have been overturned, amid a return to the <a href="https://policy.bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/the-richer-the-poorer">high-inequality politics</a> of the pre-war era. Child-poverty levels <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/households-below-average-income-for-financial-years-ending-1995-to-2020/households-below-average-income-an-analysis-of-the-income-distribution-fye-1995-to-fye-2020">have doubled</a>. A small financial and corporate elite has seized a growing share of economic gains.</p>
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<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/london-is-a-major-reason-for-the-uks-inequality-problem-unfortunately-city-leaders-dont-want-to-talk-about-it-212762">London is a major reason for the UK's inequality problem. Unfortunately, City leaders don't want to talk about it</a>
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<p>Former Conservative prime minister Margaret Thatcher’s governing philosophy of a private “<a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2023/01/05/thatcher-property-revolution-undone-plunging-home-ownership/">property-owning democracy</a>” brought a shift from collectively to individually owned wealth. It ushered in a string of policies, from the discounted sale of council homes to the sale of cut-price shares through rolling privatisation. </p>
<p>Yet the key outcome of that philosophy has been an erosion of Britain’s common wealth base. A towering <a href="https://policy.bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/the-richer-the-poorer">nine-tenths</a> of the national asset pool is now privately-owned while the share that is in public ownership has fallen from around 30% in the 1970s to one-tenth today. </p>
<h2>Rising inequality</h2>
<p>The property-owning dream is bypassing the current generation. The number of <a href="https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populationandmigration/internationalmigration/articles/housingandhomeownershipintheuk/2015-01-22">first-time home-buyers</a> now stands at less than half its mid-1990s rate. </p>
<p>The public’s ownership of <a href="https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/investmentspensionsandtrusts/bulletins/ownershipofukquotedshares/2020">corporate Britain</a> has shrunk and is largely confined to the rich and affluent. More than a half of shares in the nation’s quoted companies are owned overseas <a href="https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/investmentspensionsandtrusts/bulletins/ownershipofukquotedshares/2020">up from 8% 60 years ago</a> – largely by giant US asset management companies and sovereign wealth funds. They are displacing the share once held by UK pension and insurance funds.</p>
<p>Labour today remains largely silent on the critical distinction between new wealth creation that contributes to the common good, and extraction that serves the powerful few. In 1896, Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/manual-of-political-economy-9780199607952?cc=gb&lang=en&">defined</a> economic activity as either the “production or transformation of economic goods” or “the appropriation of goods produced by others.” </p>
<p>Such <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-economic-growth-alone-will-not-make-british-society-fairer-or-more-equal-202388">appropriation</a> or extraction was widespread in the Victorian era but less prevalent in the post-war decades. Today, it is once again common practice. </p>
<p>Wealth surges that are not linked to new value creation have a malign socioeconomic impact, including upward redistribution from those without to those with assets. Many large companies have been turned into <a href="https://policy.bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/the-richer-the-poorer">cash cows</a> for executives and shareholders. House price rises benefit existing property owners, at the expense of all renters. </p>
<p>Taxation is one way of rebalancing – if only marginally at current rates – these gains and losses. However, Labour has been eroding its historic mission of greater equality. </p>
<p>As Labour prime minister between 1997 and 2007, Tony Blair’s ambitious commitment to cut poverty ultimately failed because Britain’s model of extractive capitalism was allowed to continue unchecked. </p>
<p>On the day of Thatcher’s death in 2013, he <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-politics-22073434">said</a> he’d always aimed to build on her achievements, not reverse them. He bought into the argument that surging rewards at the top were deserved and that poverty had nothing to do with the process of wealth accumulation. </p>
<p>History cannot be clearer, though. Poverty levels soared during the 1980s because of the sharp rise in the share of national income accruing to the rich, a trend that left less for everyone else. </p>
<p>Current Labour leader Keir Starmer has said that the fight against poverty requires more than “<a href="https://www.scotsman.com/news/politics/why-sir-keir-starmer-wants-to-smash-through-the-class-ceiling-with-vision-for-scotland-4254496">tinkering at the edges</a>.” A successful strategy would require a new set of embedded pro-equality measures. Yet, like Blair, he appears to be downgrading the anti-inequality goal. </p>
<p><em><a href="https://howthelightgetsin.org/festivals/london?utm_source=MP+L23+Conversation&utm_medium=Article+feature&utm_campaign=HTLGI+London+2023&utm_id=The+Conversation">HowTheLightGetsIn</a>’s theme for London 2023 is <a href="https://howthelightgetsin.org/festivals/london/the-big-ideas">Dangers, Desire and Destiny</a>. The two-day festival on September 23-24 covers everything from politics, science, philosophy and the arts and attracts a host of speakers including Nobel Laureates, Pulitzer prize-winners, political activists and world leading thinkers.</em></p>
<p><em>Alongside the Conversation’s curated event <a href="https://howthelightgetsin.org/events/the-common-good-16017">The Common Good</a>, expect to see Alastair Campbell, Rory Stewart, Ruby Wax, Michio Kaku, David Baddiel, Carol Gilligan, Martin Wolf and more lock horns over a packed weekend of debates, talks and performances. <a href="https://howthelightgetsin.org/festivals/london/programme?utm_source=MP+L23+Conversation&utm_medium=Article+feature&utm_campaign=HTLGI+London+2023&utm_id=The+Conversation">Explore the full programme here</a> and don’t miss out on <a href="https://howthelightgetsin.org/festivals/london/festival-passes?utm_source=MP+L23+Conversation&utm_medium=Article+feature&utm_campaign=HTLGI+London+2023&utm_id=The+Conversation">20% off tickets using code CONVO23</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/212741/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Stewart Lansley does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The UK Labour Party used to radically advocate for common ownership. But as private wealth in Britain benefits from ever greater tax breaks, anti-inequality sentiment is waning.Stewart Lansley, Visiting Fellow, School of Policy Studies, University of BristolLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2047162023-08-14T19:37:44Z2023-08-14T19:37:44ZCanada’s welfare system is failing mothers with infants<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/541320/original/file-20230805-15-xi8j4t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C82%2C3670%2C2351&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Food insecurity can impact both a mother’s ability or decision to breastfeed, and also the ability to purchase baby formula.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span></figcaption></figure><iframe style="width: 100%; height: 100px; border: none; position: relative; z-index: 1;" allowtransparency="" allow="clipboard-read; clipboard-write" src="https://narrations.ad-auris.com/widget/the-conversation-canada/canadas-welfare-system-is-failing-mothers-with-infants" width="100%" height="400"></iframe>
<p>The Canadian government issued a <a href="https://theconversation.com/federal-budget-2023-grocery-rebate-is-the-right-direction-on-food-insecurity-but-theres-a-long-road-ahead-201926">one-time grocery rebate</a> in July, targeted at low-income Canadians. While the rebate provided some relief to people struggling with soaring inflation, <a href="https://theconversation.com/federal-budget-2023-grocery-rebate-is-the-right-direction-on-food-insecurity-but-theres-a-long-road-ahead-201926">it is far from enough</a> to address the depth of poverty and intensity of food insecurity faced by the lowest income Canadians. </p>
<p>During the <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4981537/">most vulnerable time of life</a>, mothers and infants living on welfare are experiencing food insecurity, which can have <a href="https://www.healthaffairs.org/doi/10.1377/hlthaff.2015.0645">lifelong impacts</a>. Governments need to make policy changes to better serve mothers and their children. </p>
<h2>Infant food insecurity</h2>
<p>Food insecurity is defined as having “<a href="https://proof.utoronto.ca/food-insecurity/">inadequate or insecure access to food due to financial constraints</a>.” Maternal food insecurity can result in many health-damaging effects, ranging from <a href="https://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/10/1/e033296">adverse birth outcomes</a> to <a href="https://www.healthaffairs.org/doi/10.1377/hlthaff.2015.0645">mental health issues</a>. Infant food insecurity can result in long-term developmental impacts, including effects on <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pcl.2019.12.004">cognition and brain development</a>. </p>
<p>Experts have outlined how <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-are-babies-going-hungry-in-a-food-rich-nation-like-canada-165789">food insecurity can impact a mother’s ability or decision to breastfeed</a>. Food-insecure mothers might cease breastfeeding much sooner because they feel they have inadequate breastmilk supply. In addition, they might struggle to afford infant formula.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/524793/original/file-20230508-29-dhs4uw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A woman feeding a baby from a bottle." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/524793/original/file-20230508-29-dhs4uw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/524793/original/file-20230508-29-dhs4uw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/524793/original/file-20230508-29-dhs4uw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/524793/original/file-20230508-29-dhs4uw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/524793/original/file-20230508-29-dhs4uw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/524793/original/file-20230508-29-dhs4uw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/524793/original/file-20230508-29-dhs4uw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Mothers and infants living on welfare are experiencing food insecurity, which can have lifelong impacts.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>While food-insecure mothers initiate breastfeeding at the same rate as food-secure mothers, <a href="https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/study-finds-moms-living-in-poverty-struggle-to-breastfeed-their-babies-longer-1.3853616?cache=yes">rates drop steeply within the first two months</a>. Mothers who are undernourished themselves might perceive they have less than adequate milk supply and often stop breastfeeding for this reason, <a href="https://www.ubcpress.ca/out-of-milk">believing the baby will suffer because they have an inadequate diet</a>. </p>
<p>For low-income mothers, breastfeeding might seem to be the most cost-effective way of feeding their infants. However, other research shows that <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32162282/">both formula and breastfeeding are unaffordable to mothers who receive welfare</a>. </p>
<h2>Problems with the welfare system</h2>
<p>Approximately <a href="https://maytree.com/wp-content/uploads/Social_Assistance_Summaries_All_Canada.pdf">four to six per cent of people</a> in most provinces and territories receive welfare benefits. The number is slightly lower in the Yukon and Alberta and significantly higher in Nunavut where it is just under 28 per cent. </p>
<p>While some provinces and territories provide more financial resources to pregnant women and mothers than others, incomes remain low and inadequate to achieve food security. </p>
<p>For example, Nova Scotia welfare recipients receive a total of <a href="https://novascotia.ca/coms/employment/documents/ESIA_Program_Policy_Manual.pdf">$51 per month in maternal nutrition allowance</a> during pregnancy and up to 12 months after birth. However, this is often not enough support for low-income mothers to adequately feed their infants.</p>
<p><a href="https://proof.utoronto.ca/2023/new-data-on-household-food-insecurity-in-2022/">COVID-19 increased household food insecurity rates for households with children in both Canada</a> and the <a href="https://www.ers.usda.gov/amber-waves/2022/february/food-insecurity-for-households-with-children-rose-in-2020-disrupting-decade-long-decline/">United States</a></p>
<p>Allowances for pregnant women and mothers of infants receiving welfare are similarly low across Canada. These low rates create food insecurity for these vulnerable families and must be rectified via provincial, territorial and federal government policies. </p>
<h2>Charity alone is not enough</h2>
<p>Some might assume that charities and food banks will provide vital support for low-income families. A recent study found that during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, many community organizations <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/14927713.2022.2054460">answered the increased call for food</a>. </p>
<p>While community organizations were critical in filling pandemic gaps, they alone cannot address the root cause of food insecurity: inadequate incomes. That problem continues, and the number of people relying on food banks has <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/60-rise-use-of-food-banks-programs-canada-2023-1.6711094">increased exponentially in the past couple of years</a>.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/as-governments-shirk-their-responsibilities-non-profits-are-more-important-than-ever-205169">As governments shirk their responsibilities, non-profits are more important than ever</a>
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<p>Additionally, many food banks are <a href="https://ca.style.yahoo.com/at-breaking-point-canadian-food-banks-struggling-insecurity-inflation-214221464.html">struggling to provide enough food</a>. The demand for food now far outstrips the donations most food banks receive. A sustainable solution to food insecurity is needed, particularly for pregnant women and mothers of infants. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/541322/original/file-20230805-21-3ju57z.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A person in a grey t-shirt placing food items on a shelf" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/541322/original/file-20230805-21-3ju57z.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/541322/original/file-20230805-21-3ju57z.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/541322/original/file-20230805-21-3ju57z.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/541322/original/file-20230805-21-3ju57z.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/541322/original/file-20230805-21-3ju57z.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/541322/original/file-20230805-21-3ju57z.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/541322/original/file-20230805-21-3ju57z.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">A volunteer places products on shelves at a food bank in Ottawa. Food banks alone cannot address the root cause of food insecurity: inadequate incomes.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld</span></span>
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</figure>
<h2>Child welfare laws</h2>
<p>In addition, child welfare laws need to be changed to stop them from unfairly penalizing poorer parents. In Nova Scotia, the <a href="https://policyalternatives.ca/sites/default/files/uploads/publications/Nova%20Scotia%20Office/2023/03/CCPAChildPovertyReportCardFINAL.pdf"><em>Children and Family Services Act</em> stipulates</a> that parents’ failure to provide adequate nutrition is grounds for child apprehension.</p>
<p><a href="https://policyalternatives.ca/sites/default/files/uploads/publications/Nova%20Scotia%20Office/2023/03/CCPAChildPovertyReportCardFINAL.pdf">The 2022 Report Card on Child and Family Poverty in Nova Scotia</a> recommended removing this stipulation. <a href="https://fernwoodpublishing.ca/book/ineligible">Experts have highlighted</a> the punitive nature of such requirements. These kinds of regulations punish mothers for their poverty and food insecurity, rather than increasing the financial support they receive.</p>
<h2>Impact of inflation</h2>
<p>There are also reforms that need to take place around welfare rates that would create a more liveable income source for mothers and infants in particular. </p>
<p>As the 2022 report card on poverty in Nova Scotia shows, welfare rates are not indexed to inflation in the province. This has resulted in <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/ns-income-assistance-rates-unchanged-1.6788662">benefits stagnating</a> despite a few modest increases in the past several years. Only three provinces and territories <a href="https://maytree.com/wp-content/uploads/Welfare_in_Canada_2021.pdf">index welfare rates to inflation:</a> New Brunswick, Québec and the Yukon. In Québec, <a href="https://inroadsjournal.ca/quebecs-distinct-welfare-state-on-poverty-among-families-with-children-quebec-%E2%80%A8and-the-rest-of-canada-have-taken-different-paths/">this has resulted in lower income inequality</a>. </p>
<p>The province has also recently launched a <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/quebec-basic-income-program-begins-advocates-say-many-low-income-people-excluded-1.6730003">basic income program</a> and although the eligibility requirements exclude many, it does increase income recipients would otherwise receive from welfare benefits.</p>
<p>With inflation affecting the price of food, the depth of food insecurity for mothers receiving welfare payments will only grow. Welfare rates must reflect the income necessary to feed pregnant and new mothers and provide them the support they need to care for their children.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/204716/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Laura Fisher receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.</span></em></p>Low-income mothers with infants are struggling with food insecurity, which can lead to long-term health impacts for both mothers and children.Laura Fisher, PhD student, Sociology, Dalhousie UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2064892023-06-02T12:40:21Z2023-06-02T12:40:21ZWork requirements don’t work for domestic violence survivors – but Michigan data shows they rarely get waivers they should receive for cash assistance<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/529631/original/file-20230601-26-jmk5gb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=48%2C104%2C5318%2C3231&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Denying waivers to survivors of domestic violence can hinder their independence from their abusers. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/rear-view-of-an-unrecognizable-abused-woman-sitting-royalty-free-image/1327080394">Alvaro Medina Jurado/Moment via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>The <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/topics/research-brief-83231">Research Brief</a> is a short take about interesting academic work.</em></p>
<h2>The big idea</h2>
<p>Very few people who have survived domestic violence are <a href="https://www.acf.hhs.gov/opre/project/family-self-sufficiency-and-stability-research-scholars-network-fssrn-2020-2025">getting Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) waivers</a> from the work requirements and time limits tied to those benefits – even though they’re eligible for them, according to our new research.</p>
<p>State governments administer the federal TANF program, commonly known as welfare or cash assistance, in accordance with their own guidelines. Federal law allows states to <a href="https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/RL/RL32748">grant domestic violence waivers</a> to TANF recipients when time limits, work requirements and other policies increase their risk of abuse or would unfairly penalize victims of abuse. Without a waiver, people who receive these benefits can only get <a href="https://research.upjohn.org/jrnlarticles/214/">TANF benefits for a limited time</a>, which can’t exceed a total of five years, and they must document the completion of up to 120 hours a month of “<a href="https://www.acf.hhs.gov/opre/report/tanf-work-requirements-and-state-strategies-fulfill-them">work activities</a>,” according to a <a href="https://www.cbpp.org/research/income-security/temporary-assistance-for-needy-families">complex compliance formula</a>.</p>
<p>We examined annual reports from Michigan to the federal government on the number of domestic violence waivers it issued from 2008 to 2021. Even when the number of approved TANF applications increased, as occurred at the beginning of the <a href="https://mlpp.org/revitalize-the-family-independence-program-to-help-more-michigan-families-reach-financial-stability/">COVID-19 pandemic</a>, the number of domestic violence waivers issued remained flat.</p>
<p>In recent years, an average of 12,600 families in Michigan received TANF benefits in a typical month. More than 75% were female-led single-parent households. Since studies have found that 25% to 50% of women who get these benefits <a href="https://www.doi.org/10.1891/1946-6560.2.2.147">have experienced domestic violence</a>, we would expect at least 750 to 1,000 women getting this assistance to be experiencing domestic violence or to have recently left a violent relationship.</p>
<p>Instead, the state has only issued a total of from seven to 36 waivers per year for the past decade.</p>
<p>Our estimates of how many domestic violence waivers should be issued exclude men and transgender and binary people due to a <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2018-021960">lack of relevant research</a>. </p>
<p>To better understand what causes this discrepancy, we conducted focus groups with TANF caseworkers in 10 Michigan counties. They said they got no training on what domestic violence does to survivors’ ability to work, or guidance on when to grant the waivers. They also said there were no standard screening practices.</p>
<p>They also told us that survivors typically have to request waivers – even though by offering the waivers, Michigan has agreed to certify that TANF applicants and recipients are <a href="https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/RL/RL32748">notified that they are available</a>.</p>
<p>The caseworkers also said that domestic violence survivors who didn’t meet TANF work requirements often lost their benefits.</p>
<h2>Why it matters</h2>
<p>People who have experienced domestic violence can have <a href="https://econpapers.repec.org/article/rfajournl/v_3a5_3ay_3a2017_3ai_3a12_3ap_3a20-31.htm">trouble finding and keeping jobs</a> because of physical injuries and their abusers’ <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0886260520962075">efforts to sabotage their employment</a>. </p>
<p>Denying waivers to survivors can hinder their ability to gain financial independence and could place them at risk for returning to their abusive partner as a way to meet their housing and child care needs.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://theconversation.com/house-approval-of-debt-ceiling-deal-a-triumph-of-the-political-center-206837">debt-ceiling deal</a> struck between the White House and Republican leaders now pending in Congress would exempt people who are experiencing homelessness, former foster youth and veterans from <a href="https://theconversation.com/snap-work-requirements-dont-actually-get-more-people-working-but-they-do-drastically-limit-the-availability-of-food-aid-204257">Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program</a> work requirements. Known as SNAP, that program provides low-income people with money they must spend on groceries.</p>
<p>Our findings show that even with exemptions in place for at-risk groups, people who are eligible for such exceptions do not automatically get them.</p>
<p>That same deal also includes provisions that may encourage <a href="https://www.foxbusiness.com/money/debt-ceiling-deal-includes-new-work-requirements-snap-how-they-would-work">states to further restrict TANF waivers</a> by setting stricter overall work requirement goals for all parents who get this aid. </p>
<h2>What other work is being done</h2>
<p>In states with more lenient work requirements, such as not immediately stopping benefits when people miss work requirement targets, and more generous financial incentives, people who get TANF benefits tend to have better and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s10834-020-09714-8">higher-paying jobs</a> when they exit the program. In contrast, recent research indicates that taking TANF benefits away from domestic violence survivors can increase the risk that they will <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2020.113355">experience further abuse</a>. </p>
<h2>What’s next</h2>
<p>We plan to expand our analysis to include the entire country and to see how waivers can be successfully used to help domestic violence survivors escape poverty.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/206489/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kristina Nikolova Andrea Hetling receives funding from the Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation, Administration for Children and Families, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Grant Number 90PE0044.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Andrea Hetling receives funding from the Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation, Administration for Children and Families, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Grant Number 90PE0043-01-01.</span></em></p>People who have experienced domestic violence can have trouble finding and keeping jobs because of physical injuries and their abusers’ efforts to sabotage their employment.Kristina Nikolova, Research Assistant Professor of Social Work, University of Windsor, and Adjunct Professor of Social Work, Wayne State UniversityAndrea Hetling, Professor of Public Policy, Rutgers UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2055352023-05-30T14:04:31Z2023-05-30T14:04:31ZPoorer pupils do worse at school – here’s how to reduce the attainment gap<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/527990/original/file-20230524-24637-l4fgym.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=7%2C222%2C5089%2C2835&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/group-school-children-sitting-together-drawing-1878869518">Juice Verve/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Children living in relative poverty in England have worse average educational outcomes, including lower grades in exams, than other pupils. This situation is often referred to as the poverty attainment gap. </p>
<p>Closing this gap, so that poorer students do as well at school as their peers, is a concern for countries around the world. The ways this can be done has been a <a href="https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/mono/10.4324/9781003287353/making-schools-better-disadvantaged-students-stephen-gorard-nadia-siddiqui-beng-huat-see">focus of my research</a>. </p>
<p>A key issue to address is the social divisions that mean that certain schools cater for richer or poorer pupils. Extra funding should also be focused on the children who need it most. </p>
<h2>Measuring the gap</h2>
<p>In official statistics, the attainment gap is measured as the difference between the attainment of the majority of pupils and those eligible for free school meals (<a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/measuring-disadvantaged-pupils-attainment-gaps-over-time">a measure of poverty</a>). This is problematic because the gap changes as the <a href="https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/mono/10.4324/9781003287353/making-schools-better-disadvantaged-students-stephen-gorard-nadia-siddiqui-beng-huat-see">proportion of pupils eligible</a> for free school meals changes over time. </p>
<p>Individual students’ circumstances might change as their family income changes. But, more importantly, different groups of students may have more or fewer pupils eligible for free school meals due to fluctuations in the economy or changes in government policy. This then affects the attainment gap, but is nothing to do with education or the work of schools. </p>
<p>A more robust measure is to measure the difference in attainment between pupils always eligible for free school meals for their entire school lives, and the rest. These two groups are stable over time and less affected by economic and legal changes. And the attainment gap between them had been reducing historically in England until 2014. </p>
<p>The gap increased in 2015 – perhaps due to changes to the curriculum – but since 2016 the gap has started decreasing again at key stage two (ages seven to 11). It is difficult to compare the attainment gap after 2019 with what came before, because of the exam disruption caused by COVID-19 lockdowns. </p>
<p><strong>The attainment gap at the end of year two over time</strong></p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Line graph" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/526596/original/file-20230516-21547-bbff3j.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/526596/original/file-20230516-21547-bbff3j.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=346&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526596/original/file-20230516-21547-bbff3j.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=346&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526596/original/file-20230516-21547-bbff3j.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=346&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526596/original/file-20230516-21547-bbff3j.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=434&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526596/original/file-20230516-21547-bbff3j.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=434&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526596/original/file-20230516-21547-bbff3j.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=434&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Change in effect size for the gap between long-term disadvantaged pupils and the rest, KS1 points, 2006-2019.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Making Schools Better for Disadvantaged Students: The International Implications of Evidence on Effective School Funding, by Stephen Gorard, Beng Huat See and Nadia Siddiqui, Routledge.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Despite this progress, the gap between the permanently disadvantaged students and the rest is still substantial – note that the graph above does not start at zero. </p>
<p>Perhaps the main driver of the change has been a slow reduction in social segregation – the extent to which poorer children are <a href="https://policy.bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/education-policy">clustered in schools</a> with others like them. </p>
<p><strong>Decline in social segregation of pupils in year one</strong></p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Line graph" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/526599/original/file-20230516-37075-7170vy.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/526599/original/file-20230516-37075-7170vy.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526599/original/file-20230516-37075-7170vy.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526599/original/file-20230516-37075-7170vy.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526599/original/file-20230516-37075-7170vy.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526599/original/file-20230516-37075-7170vy.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526599/original/file-20230516-37075-7170vy.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Change in effect size for the gap between FSM-eligible pupils and the rest, FSM Segregation in Year 1, 2006-2019.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Making Schools Better for Disadvantaged Students: The International Implications of Evidence on Effective School Funding, by Stephen Gorard, Beng Huat See and Nadia Siddiqui, Routledge.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In <a href="https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/mono/10.4324/9781003287353/making-schools-better-disadvantaged-students-stephen-gorard-nadia-siddiqui-beng-huat-see">my research</a>, I’ve compared the attainment gap with the level of poverty segregation in schools in areas across England. I’ve found that where segregation is lower, the attainment gap is too. </p>
<p>Reinforcing the ongoing reduction in segregation, and in the attainment gap in turn, should be an educational priority.</p>
<p><strong>Scatterplot showing the relationship between segregation (y axis) and attainment gap (x axis) at key stage two</strong></p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Scatterplot" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/526597/original/file-20230516-17-p2hxsk.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/526597/original/file-20230516-17-p2hxsk.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=352&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526597/original/file-20230516-17-p2hxsk.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=352&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526597/original/file-20230516-17-p2hxsk.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=352&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526597/original/file-20230516-17-p2hxsk.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=442&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526597/original/file-20230516-17-p2hxsk.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=442&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526597/original/file-20230516-17-p2hxsk.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=442&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Scatterplot of segregation (y axis) by attainment gaps (x axis) for the Economic Areas of England.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Making Schools Better for Disadvantaged Students: The International Implications of Evidence on Effective School Funding, by Stephen Gorard, Beng Huat See and Nadia Siddiqui, Routledge.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Types of school</h2>
<p>One way to reduce this social segregation – and so reduce the attainment gap – is to reduce the <a href="https://dro.dur.ac.uk/38522/">variety of different types</a> of schools. </p>
<p>There is an unnecessarily wide variety of different types of school in England. Grammar schools select pupils by ability – which is linked to social background. Faith schools select by religion, which is linked to ethnicity. There are also special, free, foundation, specialist, and community schools, plus academies and university technical colleges. Each type can end up with somewhat different pupil intakes, so driving segregation.</p>
<p>All these schools could be gradually phased into a national system of similar all-ability local schools. Pupils would still be able to receive additional help or tailored interventions within such schools, but the social mix of the schools would better represent their region than at present.</p>
<p>School catchment areas are another factor increasing social segregation. Where schools are oversubscribed, contested places should not be allocated on the basis of travel or distance from home, or of feeder primary schools. These methods all duplicate and reinforce residential segregation by poverty. </p>
<p>Alternative measures could include banding by poverty, where each school might be required to give a certain number of places to pupils eligible for free school meals, or lotteries, where oversubscribed places are allocated randomly. Pupils could be given free transport to schools outside their immediate neighbourhood. </p>
<p>The idea would be to spread out the most disadvantaged students between schools, in order to make any issues with their attainment easier to address. </p>
<h2>Managing funding</h2>
<p>The <a href="https://bera-journals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/berj.3775">biggest decline</a> in poverty segregation has <a href="https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/mono/10.4324/9781003287353/making-schools-better-disadvantaged-students-stephen-gorard-nadia-siddiqui-beng-huat-see">taken place since 2011</a>, when <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/pupil-premium/pupil-premium">pupil premium funding</a> was introduced. Pupil premium allocates extra funding to schools in proportion to the number of disadvantaged pupils that they take. This reduces the disincentive for schools to take poorer children.</p>
<p>But the pupil group with the <a href="https://www.tes.com/magazine/analysis/general/i-helped-design-pupil-premium-funding-it-needs-urgent-update">lowest attainment</a> are those who have been eligible for free school meals for the longest. So it makes sense for pupil premium funding to be better calibrated in future. Proportionately more funding should follow the most disadvantaged pupils – those who are eligible for free school meals for all of their time at school.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/205535/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Stephen Gorard does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Measures need to focus on reducing social segregation in schools.Stephen Gorard, Professor of Education and Public Policy, Durham UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2055592023-05-16T18:56:18Z2023-05-16T18:56:18ZNZ is finally making progress on child poverty – but a ‘no frills’ budget puts that at risk<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/526346/original/file-20230515-24343-w2qwnn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=15%2C0%2C5108%2C3380&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Budget 2023 marks “half-time” for the Labour government’s <a href="https://www.childyouthwellbeing.govt.nz/our-aspirations/context/reducing-child-poverty/child-poverty-measures-targets-and-indicators#:%7E:text=Ten%20year%20longer%20term%20targets,reduction%20of%20around%20120%2C000%20children.">long-term child poverty targets</a>. It’s an ideal point in the ten-year project to take stock and see what’s worked and what hasn’t.</p>
<p>In 2018, Jacinda Ardern’s Labour coalition government was handed a mandate to address Aotearoa New Zealand’s high child poverty rates. This culminated in legislation requiring the government of the day to set both short-term (three year) and long-term (ten year) targets for four key poverty measures.</p>
<p>Various factors have influenced the outcomes so far: on the upside, high employment, a COVID-19 response that saved lives and livelihoods, and expansions to the social safety net; on the downside, the lingering impact of the pandemic, high inflation and unaffordable housing.</p>
<p>We might add to that a seeming lack of political appetite for bold change – the signalling of a “no frills” budget included. Ultimately, however, the hope is that what we’ve learned so far can guide future policy to hit those targets.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1638760268657475585"}"></div></p>
<h2>A nuanced story</h2>
<p>The short-term targets came due in 2021, with mixed results. One important measurement captures the percentage of children living in households with income less than the 50% of the median household income, after housing costs are accounted for. This declined from 22.8% in 2018-19 to 15.0% in 2020-21, beating the target of 18.8%. </p>
<p>However, targets for the other two measures – household income before housing costs, and material hardship — were not met, or sat on the edge of the margin of error.</p>
<p>But focusing on only these measures masks a more nuanced story about who was helped – and who was left behind. In addition to these three key poverty measures, <a href="https://www.stats.govt.nz/information-releases/child-poverty-statistics-year-ended-june-2022/">six other indicators</a> are routinely reported each year.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/wellbeing-is-so-last-year-labours-no-frills-budget-points-to-an-uninspiring-nz-election-205118">Wellbeing is so last year – Labour's 'no frills' budget points to an uninspiring NZ election</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Poverty declined across all indicators. Moreover, some of the largest drops, in terms of the percent change from their base levels in 2018, were in measures of more severe poverty, and those that accounted for differences in housing affordability. </p>
<p>For example, those living in severe material hardship (not being able to afford at least half of a list of 17 everyday items, such as fresh fruit and vegetables or home heating) went from 5.8% in 2018 to 3.9% in 2022. That’s a 33% decline from the base level. </p>
<p>A similar decline occurred among children who were in both material hardship and income poverty, as well as for the key after-housing-cost measure.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/proving-the-wealthiest-new-zealanders-pay-low-tax-rates-is-a-good-start-now-comes-the-hard-part-204532">Proving the wealthiest New Zealanders pay low tax rates is a good start – now comes the hard part</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Uneven trends</h2>
<p>This is good news. Those in the most severe hardship and in deeper forms of income poverty were more likely to have been helped in the past five years. And poverty seemed to drop even after considering differences in family housing costs.</p>
<p>Across many of these indicators, too, the percent change from 2019 base poverty levels (when ethnicity data were first reported) was larger among tamariki Māori and Asian children when compared with European children.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/for-some-workers-low-paying-jobs-might-be-more-of-a-dead-end-than-a-stepping-stone-202031">For some workers, low-paying jobs might be more of a dead end than a stepping stone</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>To be absolutely clear, there are still large and unconscionable inequities in poverty rates between European children and tamariki Māori. But the poverty declines have been larger in absolute terms for tamariki Māori and have helped modestly narrow inequities across many measures.</p>
<p>The declines were uneven across certain subgroups, however. While declines in some measures have been larger for tamariki Māori compared with European children, declines were statistically insignificant for two of the key poverty indicators.</p>
<p>In particular, Pacific children experienced the smallest declines, and in three of the nine measures reported <em>increases</em> in poverty rates (albeit within sampling error range). A similar trend was found among disabled children and children living with household members with disabilities, although data reporting only began in 2020.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1657510144719355904"}"></div></p>
<h2>Taking the targets seriously</h2>
<p>We’re not going to make further dents in child poverty without implementing bold support for those families being left behind:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>working families teetering on the poverty line </p></li>
<li><p>Pacific families who may be less likely to qualify for support because they don’t have residency status, despite contributing to the economy and their communities </p></li>
<li><p>and families who may not be able to work, or whose work may be limited due to care needs, such as those with whānau with disabilities.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>Alas, a <a href="https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/131876661/labour-to-deliver-nofrills-budget-with-no-new-taxes--hipkins">“no frills” budget</a> this week feels woefully out of line with what is needed to keep the pedal down and meet those long-term poverty targets. </p>
<p>While the prime minister has said there would be “targeted support for those that need it most with the rising cost of living”, this hardly points to broader systemic change. If a cost-of-living crisis is seen as a short-term economic condition, deeper problems aren’t addressed.</p>
<p>More fundamentally, it goes against a key purpose of these targets: to have the government set goals and make budget decisions that show it takes these targets seriously. </p>
<p>If this or any future budget fails to project any impact on child poverty, those targets risk becoming nothing more than a Treasury spreadsheet exercise.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/205559/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kate C. Prickett is the Director of the Roy McKenzie Centre for the Study of Families and Children, which has previously received research funding from the Ministry of Social Development and the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet.</span></em></p>Making further dents in child poverty will mean implementing bold support for those families being left behind. This week’s budget already feels like a lost opportunity.Kate C. Prickett, Director of the Roy McKenzie Centre for the Study of Families and Children, Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of WellingtonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2008932023-03-27T12:23:01Z2023-03-27T12:23:01ZExtra food assistance cushioned the early pandemic’s blow on kids’ mental health<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/516734/original/file-20230321-20-u5z17m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=51%2C25%2C5668%2C3782&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The pandemic-era expansion of SNAP benefits ended in all U.S. states by March 2023.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/asian-woman-wearing-protective-face-mask-hold-paper-royalty-free-image/1253665535?adppopup=true">aogreatkim/iStock/Getty Images Plus via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>The <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/topics/research-brief-83231">Research Brief</a> is a short take about interesting academic work.</em></p>
<h2>The big idea</h2>
<p>Despite the <a href="https://theconversation.com/snap-benefits-cost-a-total-of-85-6b-in-the-2020-fiscal-year-amid-heightened-us-poverty-and-unemployment-148077">heightened poverty and unemployment</a> seen when the COVID-19 pandemic got underway, many low-income U.S. children <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ypmed.2023.107456">did not experience a decline in their emotional and mental health</a>, we found in a new study. </p>
<p>We looked specifically at kids whose families were participating in the <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-snap-can-help-people-during-hard-economic-times-like-these-133664">Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program</a> – commonly known as SNAP – the government program that helps low-income Americans afford food. </p>
<p>The government began to boost SNAP benefits in early 2020 to help offset pandemic-driven food insecurity for participating families, which now <a href="https://theconversation.com/extra-snap-benefits-are-ending-as-us-lawmakers-resume-battle-over-program-that-helps-low-income-americans-buy-food-199929">number around 41 million</a>.</p>
<p>As a result, <a href="https://www.fns.usda.gov/snap/covid-19-emergency-allotments-guidance">families got an extra US$95</a> or more per month for groceries to <a href="https://www.ers.usda.gov/webdocs/publications/100820/ap-089.pdf?v=5555.5">replace the meals children were missing</a> at schools that had closed. <a href="https://healthyeatingresearch.org/research/snap-waivers-and-adaptations-during-the-covid-19-pandemic-a-survey-of-state-agency-perspectives-in-2020/">Some eligibility rules were loosened</a> to expand the program’s reach, and for the first time, <a href="https://www.usda.gov/media/press-releases/2019/04/18/usda-launches-snap-online-purchasing-pilot">people could buy groceries online</a> with their SNAP benefits.</p>
<p>To learn whether these extra benefits affected children’s mental and emotional health, we analyzed five years of data collected by the <a href="https://www.nschdata.org/">National Survey of Children’s Health</a> on 30,748 low-income families with children aged 6 to 17 years. The data, which included both families who were and were not getting SNAP benefits, covered the four years prior to the pandemic, as well as 2020. </p>
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<p>Among the 8,680 families getting SNAP benefits during this period, 38% had at least one child with problems such as doctor-diagnosed mental, emotional, developmental or behavioral health issues – including anxiety and depression.</p>
<p>To assess whether the temporarily expanded benefits had an impact on these children, we conducted a “<a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/economics-econometrics-and-finance/difference-in-differences">difference in differences</a>” analysis: We compared data regarding children whose families enrolled in the SNAP program over time with children whose families didn’t get those benefits. In addition, we considered the potential influence of several factors that could play a role, such as parents’ mental health.</p>
<p>We found that children in families getting SNAP benefits in 2020 did not generally experience any change in their mental or emotional health compared to prior years, despite the heavy stress of the pandemic.</p>
<h2>Why it matters</h2>
<p>Typically, <a href="https://www.apa.org/topics/socioeconomic-status/poverty-hunger-homelessness-children">low-income children are more at risk</a> of developing mental health or emotional problems, compared with high-income children. Our study adds to earlier evidence that SNAP benefits can lower that risk by <a href="https://dx.doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2014.302480">reducing psychological distress and improving food security</a>.</p>
<p>While 2020’s extra SNAP benefits protected children’s mental and emotional health, they did not improve it. This suggests that actually reducing food insecurity for low-income families would have required additional steps. </p>
<p>In March 2023, <a href="https://theconversation.com/extra-snap-benefits-are-ending-as-us-lawmakers-resume-battle-over-program-that-helps-low-income-americans-buy-food-19992">the federal government ended</a> the pandemic-era SNAP expansions in 35 states and territories that hadn’t yet rolled them back. With inflation driving the <a href="https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/food-price-outlook/summary-findings/">cost of groceries up 11.4%</a> in 2022, we believe that <a href="https://www.cbpp.org/research/food-assistance/temporary-pandemic-snap-benefits-will-end-in-remaining-35-states-in-march#_ftn2">losing these benefits</a> threatens the well-being of millions of families.</p>
<h2>What’s next</h2>
<p>We are now studying the <a href="https://texaswic.org/">effects of pandemic-related changes</a> to the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children, better known as WIC. </p>
<p>We are looking at, for example, how expanding WIC benefits to cover canned, frozen and dried fruits and vegetables in addition to fresh produce has affected the low-income families’ purchasing behavior. Our team for this research also includes public health and nutrition scholars <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=d4_yu0YAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">Alexandra MacMillan Uribe</a> and <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=UKvdw94AAAAJ">Elizabeth Racine</a>, </p>
<h2>What is not known</h2>
<p>When we did our study, data from the years after 2020 wasn’t yet available, so we couldn’t investigate the potential impact of subsequent pandemic-related changes to SNAP benefits. Notably, in 2021, the federal government increased maximum benefit levels by 15% and <a href="https://www.cbpp.org/research/food-assistance/temporary-pandemic-snap-benefits-will-end-in-remaining-35-states-in-march">extended the extra $95 or more</a> in monthly food assistance for the lowest-income households.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/200893/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Grace Melo's research related for this article was supported by funding from the Texas A&M AgriLife Institute for Advancing Health Through Agriculture.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Pourya Valizadeh receives funding from the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Economic Research Service. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rodolfo M. Nayga Jr. receives funding from U.S. Department of Agriculture.</span></em></p>Expanding SNAP helped shield low-income children from some of the harm caused by economic upheaval when the COVID-19 pandemic began.Grace Melo, ACES Faculty Fellow, Texas A&M UniversityPourya Valizadeh, Research Assistant Professor of Agricultural Economics, Texas A&M UniversityRodolfo M. Nayga Jr., Professor of Agricultural Economics, Texas A&M UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1996772023-02-15T19:06:13Z2023-02-15T19:06:13ZChildren can now report rights violations directly to the UN – it’s progress, but Aotearoa New Zealand still needs to do more<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/510223/original/file-20230214-16-a4bbf6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=21%2C28%2C4695%2C3076&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The latest <a href="https://tbinternet.ohchr.org/_layouts/15/treatybodyexternal/Download.aspx?symbolno=CRC%2FC%2FNZL%2FCO%2F6&Lang=en">report into the rights of children</a> in Aotearoa New Zealand has painted a mixed picture of how the country treats young people.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.ohchr.org/en/treaty-bodies/crc">UN Committee on the Rights of the Child</a> recently published its sixth review into how Aotearoa New Zealand is implementing its obligations under the <a href="https://www.ohchr.org/en/instruments-mechanisms/instruments/convention-rights-child">UN Convention on the Rights of the Child 1989</a>.</p>
<p>The good news is that Aotearoa New Zealand has made progress in the seven years since the last review. But despite decades of warnings, the country is still failing too many of its children and young people, particularly those in state care, living in poverty, with disabilities, and those who end up in the justice system</p>
<p>On the positive side, measures such as establishment of the Ministry for Children (<a href="https://www.orangatamariki.govt.nz/">Oranga Tamariki</a>) in 2017, the passing of the <a href="https://www.legislation.govt.nz/act/public/2017/0031/latest/whole.html">Children, Young Persons, and Their Families (Oranga Tamariki) Act 2017</a>, the <a href="https://www.childyouthwellbeing.govt.nz/our-aspirations/context/child-poverty-reduction-and-wellbeing-legislation">Child Poverty Reduction Act 2018</a> and the development of the <a href="https://dpmc.govt.nz/our-programmes/child-and-youth-wellbeing-strategy">Child and Youth Wellbeing Strategy 2019</a> were welcomed by the writers of the report. </p>
<p>Aotearoa New Zealand has also voluntarily implemented the convention’s <a href="https://www.msd.govt.nz/about-msd-and-our-work/publications-resources/monitoring/uncroc/optional-protocols.html#OptionalProtocolonaCommunicationsProcedure1">communications procedure</a>, allowing children to take complaints about rights violations directly to the committee.</p>
<h2>A long list of failures</h2>
<p>But while Aotearoa New Zealand’s progress was commended, the bulk of the report was devoted to the country’s ongoing failure to fully implement the internationally established rights of young people.</p>
<p>Among the key concerns requiring urgent attention were:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>the persistent discrimination against children in vulnerable situations </p></li>
<li><p>the persistent rates of abuse, neglect and violence against children</p></li>
<li><p>the rights of children in state care and the disproportionate levels of harm experienced by these children</p></li>
</ul>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/new-zealand-is-violating-the-rights-of-its-children-is-it-time-to-change-the-legal-definition-of-age-discrimination-145685">New Zealand is violating the rights of its children. Is it time to change the legal definition of age discrimination?</a>
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<li><p>the higher levels of risk or violence and abuse that children with disabilities are exposed to, as well as the higher levels of deprivation, poverty and inadequate housing, and the lower levels of enrolment in education or training programmes they experience</p></li>
<li><p>the rates of children living in poverty and experiencing food insecurity, homelessness and unstable or overcrowded housing resulting in poorer health and education outcomes</p></li>
<li><p>the minimum age of criminal responsibility – just 10 years old in New Zealand – as well as the failure to separate children and adults in detention, the indefinite period for which some young people can be remanded in police custody, and the automatic transfer of young people charged with serious offences to the adult justice system.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>The committee expressed concern at the persistent over-representation of tamariki and rangatahi Māori in most of these areas of key concern. The committee also noted that Pasifika children, LGBTI children and children with disabilities were more likely to be in vulnerable situations.</p>
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<h2>The issues are not new</h2>
<p>Many of these concerns had already been identified in Aotearoa New Zealand’s last report, in <a href="https://docstore.ohchr.org/SelfServices/FilesHandler.ashx?enc=6QkG1d%2FPPRiCAqhKb7yhsrXsJ3pRx9xOCak0Ed1mLEkIUHtKTSHNWA9ddXmo8oiUgGuB9JUoxS6ES4ymmXawE3W7Z52o%2B4tn33VBe09mSo1Rr6ta1lLVkTxmo%2FSYUATQ">2016</a>. Indeed, many of these issues were a matter of concern when Aotearoa New Zealand first reported to the committee in <a href="https://tbinternet.ohchr.org/_layouts/15/treatybodyexternal/Download.aspx?symbolno=CRC%2FC%2F15%2FAdd.71&Lang=en">1997</a>. </p>
<p>Not only have the committee’s concerns been highlighted in the past, but the report’s findings come from Aotearoa New Zealand’s own data on children. </p>
<p>The committee considered a <a href="https://docstore.ohchr.org/SelfServices/FilesHandler.ashx?enc=6QkG1d%2FPPRiCAqhKb7yhsrXsJ3pRx9xOCak0Ed1mLElOb1P37sl9i8IkOkisrTYvNyBgHBWM5LhFdPBuMc1QjthQOJhr0BQ9MKxlm2%2BpFeExvp5CWO1se1B4UAJtStmI">2021 report</a> submitted by the Aotearoa New Zealand government, along with <a href="https://tbinternet.ohchr.org/_layouts/15/TreatyBodyExternal/countries.aspx?CountryCode=NZL&Lang=EN">other reports</a> from national institutions such as the Children’s Commissioner and non-governmental organisations. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-state-removal-of-maori-children-from-their-families-is-a-wound-that-wont-heal-but-there-is-a-way-forward-140243">The state removal of Māori children from their families is a wound that won't heal – but there is a way forward</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>The committee then discussed the state of children’s rights in Aotearoa New Zealand with a government delegation at the UN headquarters in Geneva. The most recent <a href="https://www.ungeneva.org/en/news-media/meeting-summary/2023/01/examen-de-la-nouvelle-zelande-devant-le-comite-des-droits-de">meeting</a> between New Zealand and the committee took place in late January.</p>
<h2>Why the review process matters</h2>
<p>The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child is an international, legally binding agreement. It has been formally accepted by <a href="https://indicators.ohchr.org/">196 countries</a>, making it the most widely accepted human rights treaty.</p>
<p>The convention established the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, a body of 18 independent experts that monitors its implementation in the states that have accepted it. </p>
<p>Regular reporting to the committee is a requirement of the convention. These reviews allow for the nature of children’s rights and states’ obligations to be spelled out. </p>
<p>Over the decades, the reviews have built up a picture of how Aotearoa New Zealand’s children’s rights are violated by discrimination, deprivation and (sometimes deadly) violence. The reviews continually identify what the government must do to prevent these breaches and how to remedy their consequences. </p>
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<h2>What must the government do now?</h2>
<p>A few overarching themes can be identified amongst the dozens of recommendations made by the committee. </p>
<p>Firstly, the convention’s rights and obligations must be incorporated into Aotearoa New Zealand law. Children should also be able to participate meaningfully in the design and implementation of all laws, policies and programmes regarding their rights.</p>
<p>Children whose rights have been violated need greater access to more child-friendly complaints mechanisms. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/10-is-too-young-to-be-in-court-nz-should-raise-the-minimum-age-of-criminal-responsibility-188969">10 is too young to be in court – NZ should raise the minimum age of criminal responsibility</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Additionally, more data needs to be collected to create a fuller picture of the situation of all Aotearoa New Zealand children and their rights. More resources also need to be allocated to the protection of children and the national budget needs to more strongly reflect a child rights-based approach.</p>
<p>But perhaps the best place to start is for the government to fulfil one of its obligations and publicise the findings of this latest review, as well as publicising the fact that children can now complain to the UN when their rights have been violated.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/199677/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Claire Breen does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>New Zealand is making some progress in its treatment of children and young people. But there is still a way to go to meet its obligations under international law.Claire Breen, Professor of Law, University of WaikatoLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1904072022-11-21T17:57:47Z2022-11-21T17:57:47ZWhy it’s time to end child sponsorship<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/491444/original/file-20221024-8945-cyleto.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=30%2C18%2C3995%2C2329&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Charities often promote the benefits of child sponsorship. However, the practice perpetuates damaging patterns of thinking. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span></figcaption></figure><iframe style="width: 100%; height: 100px; border: none; position: relative; z-index: 1;" allowtransparency="" allow="clipboard-read; clipboard-write" src="https://narrations.ad-auris.com/widget/the-conversation-canada/why-it-s-time-to-end-child-sponsorship" width="100%" height="400"></iframe>
<p>Language about the <a href="https://www.worldvision.ca/stronger-together/home">benefits of child sponsorship</a> is common in the charity sector. The narrative we are given is that sponsoring a child in the Global South is a way to make a positive difference in their lives. </p>
<p>However, this narrative inaccurately frames children and their families as lacking, backward, inferior, and longing for the standards of the Global North. It does not speak to the greater injustices and inequities impacting these children’s lives, or the role the Global North has played in producing them.</p>
<p>Millions of children are sponsored worldwide <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-22472455">raising billions of dollars per year</a>. Yet, the more things change, the more they stay the same: the misguided motivations for sponsors becoming involved, lack of public education around issues of poverty and inequity and the level of denial for the role played by the Global North in reproducing problematic patterns of thinking and relationships all remain unchanged. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/491962/original/file-20221026-18530-fqnmkd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Words on a smartphone screen read: Making a better world." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/491962/original/file-20221026-18530-fqnmkd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/491962/original/file-20221026-18530-fqnmkd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/491962/original/file-20221026-18530-fqnmkd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/491962/original/file-20221026-18530-fqnmkd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/491962/original/file-20221026-18530-fqnmkd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/491962/original/file-20221026-18530-fqnmkd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/491962/original/file-20221026-18530-fqnmkd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Child sponsorship raises billions of dollars a year.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><a href="https://newint.org/features/2022/04/04/feature-please-continue-not-sponsor-child">I have been researching child sponsorship since 2018</a>. My advice not to participate is typically met with blank stares or a retort that it is “better than nothing.” </p>
<p>Unfortunately, it’s not. Child sponsorship is highly successful at escaping questioning and reproach because it is viewed as a well-intentioned and benevolent act on the part of good people who want to help. Failure to ask sponsors to think and act differently and to challenge their comfortable roles as well-intentioned, good people, <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/listen/live-radio/1-103-the-afternoon-edition-sask/clip/15916615-u-r-prof-says-homework-opening-wallet-sponsor">is a problematic pattern of thinking</a>.</p>
<h2>Why people sponsor children</h2>
<p><a href="https://doi.org/10.33448/rsd-v9i8.5574">Motivations for becoming a child sponsor are numerous</a>, including the sponsor’s guilt over their own privilege, the need for a personal connection, the desire to support development or even the belief that sponsoring a child is apolitical. </p>
<p>People are also drawn to child sponsorship for altruistic reasons. But, as geographer <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2012.04.006">Frances Rabbitts</a> observes: “Despite the common association of charity with altruism…charitable gifts are shown to be inextricably bound up in webs of reciprocity and relations of power.” </p>
<p>Take the standard practice of letter writing between sponsor and child. As writer Peter Stalker explains, “<a href="https://newint.org/features/1982/05/01/keynote">there’s nothing like writing a regular thank-you letter to keep you in your place</a>.”</p>
<p>For some, motivation is tied up in those glossy photos of children living in poverty — images designed to tug at a donor’s heartstrings. International development consultant <a href="https://www.thenewhumanitarian.org/opinion/2021/4/20/time-to-end-aid-agency-child-sponsorship-schemes">Carol Sherman</a> describes the persuasive marketing techniques used for child sponsorship as “much like those found on online shopping sites or dating apps.” </p>
<p>Other motivations are based in a belief that child sponsorship is an apolitical way to advance the project of “development” by helping innocent victims of chronic poverty. But that belief is framed primarily by and for the Global North to make the Global South feel the need to catch up. Post-development theorist Arturo Escobar calls for a shift away from the concept of development, calling instead for “complex conversations” which will “<a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691150451/encountering-development">provide alternative understandings of the world.</a>”</p>
<p>As sociology professor <a href="https://camosun.ca/peter-ove">Peter Ove</a> says, “<a href="https://www.beyondchildsponsorship.ca/why-not-child-sponsorship/">child sponsorship is never going to be the solution to the problem. And I think the faster we realize that, and change our core assumptions, the better off we’ll be</a>.”</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/491452/original/file-20221024-6143-nwfk3e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A hand placing a coin into a wooden box." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/491452/original/file-20221024-6143-nwfk3e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/491452/original/file-20221024-6143-nwfk3e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/491452/original/file-20221024-6143-nwfk3e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/491452/original/file-20221024-6143-nwfk3e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/491452/original/file-20221024-6143-nwfk3e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/491452/original/file-20221024-6143-nwfk3e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/491452/original/file-20221024-6143-nwfk3e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Child sponsorship avoids complex conversations and is framed primarily by and for the Global North.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Sponsorship lets people off the hook</h2>
<p>Unfortunately, society tends to discuss global poverty as simply a case of being fortunate or unfortunate. But that utterly disregards the role played by the Global North in producing and sustaining the conditions of the South through, for example, <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/ca/structural-adjustment-9781842773895/">structural adjustment programs</a>, <a href="https://blendedfinancecritique.ca/">foreign policies</a> and <a href="https://newint.org/features/2019/01/07/just-open-and-green-action-trade">global trade regimes</a>. </p>
<p>Viewing the global poverty discourse through a fortunate/unfortunate lens takes people in wealthier countries out of the power relationship and <a href="https://www.developmenteducationreview.com/issue/issue-19/critical-literacy-theories-and-practices-development-education">reproduces problematic historical perspectives and relationships</a>.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.beyondchildsponsorship.ca/how-do-charity-justice-and-solidarity-relate-to-cs/">“Charity lets people off the hook by not requiring them to recognize their position within a relationship based on power,</a>” says international development scholar <a href="https://www.uregina.ca/arts/politics-international-studies/faculty-staff/faculty/granovsky-larsen-simon.html">Simon Granovsky-Larsen</a>. Agencies do not encourage sponsors to examine their role in global injustice nor do they attempt to reverse or undo the structural conditions that have produced it.</p>
<p>But, as Granovsky-Larsen says, actions based on justice “require a difficult look at who you are, what your role is in imbalanced relationships of power, and how you can act — sometimes at a cost to yourself — to undo the structural conditions that have produced that injustice.”</p>
<h2>Education and engagement instead</h2>
<p>Instead of sponsorship, we need to engage with and support education and advocacy work being done in the Global South. For example, <a href="https://www.devp.org/en/">Development and Peace Caritas Canada (DPCC)</a> works on ecological justice, democracy, citizen participation and peace and reconciliation with their Global South partner organizations. </p>
<p>DPCC also educates Canadians on the root causes of global poverty. We need to understand that poverty in the Global South is intimately <a href="https://theconversation.com/five-ways-the-monarchy-has-benefited-from-colonialism-and-slavery-179911">linked to the wealth of those in the industrialized Global North</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/491741/original/file-20221025-18-nsh8t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="People on a small boat." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/491741/original/file-20221025-18-nsh8t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/491741/original/file-20221025-18-nsh8t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/491741/original/file-20221025-18-nsh8t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/491741/original/file-20221025-18-nsh8t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/491741/original/file-20221025-18-nsh8t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/491741/original/file-20221025-18-nsh8t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/491741/original/file-20221025-18-nsh8t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Villagers cross a flooded area in Sindh province, Pakistan. Climate change was blamed for the ferocity of this year’s floods. While the richest countries produce the majority of the world’s pollution, poorer countries like Pakistan often suffer the consequences.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Fareed Khan)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>We can support and act in solidarity with grassroots groups and campaigns for change around the world, while also putting pressure on our governments to shape policies and laws. </p>
<p>This can take a number of forms: exercising one’s right to vote with a global citizenship lens; supporting NGOs that promote a change in foreign aid conditions; participating in civil engagement and divestment actions to hold companies accountable when they are linked to violence and harm in communities in the Global South.</p>
<p><a href="https://newint.org/features/1982/05/01/keynote">In the words of Stalker</a>, who warned people off child sponsorship forty years ago: “Alleviating the problems of the poor is one thing. But solving them involves much more difficult choices.” It’s time to make difficult choices and move beyond child sponsorship.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/190407/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kathleen Nolan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Child sponsorship is often billed as a significant way of improving children’s lives. However, sponsorship is based on narratives that fail to address the role of rich countries in global poverty.Kathleen Nolan, Professor, Faculty of Education, University of ReginaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1926192022-11-08T09:04:59Z2022-11-08T09:04:59ZA dumpsite is no place for a child: study shows Nigeria’s young waste pickers are at risk<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/491263/original/file-20221024-1609-y8vdtg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=7%2C0%2C2588%2C1715&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Children are among waste pickers exposed to hazards while working at the Olusosun landfill. Photo by: Lionel Healing/AFP.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/people-sift-through-rubbish-at-a-dump-17-april-2007-in-news-photo/73905533?phrase=olusosun%20dumpsite%20Lagos&adppopup=true">from www,gettyimages.com</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The Olusosun landfill sprawls across 100 acres (40ha) in Nigeria’s largest city, Lagos. Initially situated at the outskirts of the city, it is now at the city’s centre due to urban encroachment. Olusosun is often described as <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12011-021-02758-3">Nigeria’s biggest landfill</a>; it receives over one million tonnes of <a href="https://owlcation.com/stem/15-of-the-Worlds-Largest-Landfills">waste</a> annually. Most of this is electronic waste (such as lamps, televisions and laptops), municipal solid waste and construction waste.</p>
<p>Access to the dumpsite is not restricted. Waste pickers can go in and look for recyclable materials that can be resold. In most Nigerian cities, waste picking represents a vital survival strategy for the <a href="https://www.ijern.com/journal/March-2014/26.pdf">poor</a>.</p>
<p>It’s not only adults who operate as waste pickers. As we outline in our recent <a href="https://thescipub.com/abstract/10.3844/ajessp.2022.69.80">study</a>, children are also working at Olusosun. </p>
<p>We surveyed 150 of these child waste pickers; most were boys aged between 13 and 17. More than half (58.7%) of the children were not attending school. They worked at the dumpsite daily for social and economic reasons and their labour was physically taxing. They reported being bitten by insects and snakes. They slipped and sometimes fell. Many suffered from chronic headaches. For this they earned between N500 (US$1.20) and N1,600 (US$3.85) a day. </p>
<p>The use of a child for forced or <a href="https://www.scirp.org/journal/paperinformation.aspx?paperid=64999">exploitative labour</a> under section 28 (1) (a) of the Child’s Rights Act is an offence punishable with a fine or imprisonment. But in the informal sector of urban areas, Nigeria’s government has not made serious efforts to enforce this law to protect children.</p>
<p>A concerted effort is needed by government, civil society, and international organisations to eradicate waste picking by children. Financial aid could be offered to the children’s families so that they don’t feel they have no option but to let children work. And free, compulsory primary and secondary education is key to keeping children in the classroom rather than working.</p>
<h2>Huge health and safety risks</h2>
<p>Access to Olusosun landfill is unregulated, but there are informal systems in place to manage who can and cannot engage in waste picking. Our <a href="https://doi.org/10.3844/ajessp.2022.69.80">survey</a> confirmed that before any person could pick waste on this site, they had to register with an association. Unregistered people were not allowed to work on the site and if they did without permission, there would be a quarrel. </p>
<p>An informal association formed by the operators oversees the registration process. It is funded by membership fees and only registers adults. But once they are registered, those adults can hire children to do the work for them. They do this, we were told, to keep their costs low because they could pay children less than they would pay adults.</p>
<p>Information we obtained showed that child waste pickers’ minimum daily income was N500 (US$1.20); the maximum was N1,600 (US$3.85). The average daily revenue was N1,180 (US$2.84) – more than N30,000 (about US$72.20) per month. Although this amount is higher than the <a href="https://doi.org/10.3844/ajessp.2022.69.80">national minimum monthly wage</a> (N30,000) in the public sector, the work and the environment are hazardous and detrimental to the children’s health.</p>
<p>Children usually sorted the waste manually, with no protective equipment like gloves and face masks. They operated in an unsheltered environment regardless of conditions like rain, hot sun and cold weather. These conditions had resulted in gastrointestinal illnesses, skin diseases, stings and bites from insects. Many talked about suffering regular headaches.</p>
<p>Child waste pickers were also at risk of being pricked by sharp objects such as syringes, needles, surgical blades and broken bottles.</p>
<p>Despite all these hazards, the children continued working at the landfill because of chronic poverty. Some of the children’s parents were waste
pickers themselves. Many came from areas without <a href="https://www.premiumtimesng.com/news/more-news/469581-less-than-40-of-lagos-residents-have-access-to-water-governor.html">potable water</a>, sanitation facilities or basic healthcare services. </p>
<h1>Recommendations</h1>
<p>In addressing the use of children for forced or exploitative labour, integrated approaches have
<a href="https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5984577fe5274a1707000067/105-Interventions-on-Child-Labour-in-South-Asia.pdf">demonstrated</a> the most success in South Asian countries. (Afghanistan is an important exception.) These approaches can include, for example, conditional cash transfers combined with interventions such as providing education and healthcare services. </p>
<p>Thus, a pragmatic regulatory framework should be developed whereby different actors (government, civil society and international organisations) focus on eliminating the practice of waste picking by children. Such efforts require strong political backing and financial support. </p>
<p>Such a regulatory framework should also make provision for financial aid to the children’s parents through a direct assistance programme. </p>
<p>There is a need for a well-thought-out plan by the government to introduce free and compulsory primary and secondary education for every child. Making education compulsory, especially at the secondary level, is a way to keep children learning and, ideally, setting themselves up for safe, decently-paid future work.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/192619/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Amos Oluwole Taiwo does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Employing children as waste pickers lowers costs but exposes them to hazards.Amos Oluwole Taiwo, Lecturer, Department of Urban and Regional Planning, Olabisi Onabanjo University, Ago-Iwoye, Ogun State, Nigeria, Olabisi Onabanjo UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1878172022-09-15T12:22:25Z2022-09-15T12:22:25ZIn states where abortion is banned, children and families already face an uphill battle<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/482819/original/file-20220905-14-wr41ei.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=21%2C26%2C3540%2C2344&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Of the 10 most child-friendly states, only one has attempted to ban abortion.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/katherine-merlos-a-pre-k-3-student-centron%C3%ADa-gives-a-thumbs-news-photo/1239430403">Sarah L. Voisin/The Washington Post via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Some proponents of abortion bans and restrictions say they are concerned about “supporting not just life,” but what they call “<a href="https://missouriindependent.com/2022/07/06/states-with-strong-antiabortion-laws-have-high-maternal-and-infant-mortality-rates/">quality of life worth living</a>,” saying they want to <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2022/06/anti-abortion-movement-dobbs-roe-overturned/661393/">promote laws and policies that help families</a>. Three authors from Brigham Young University, for instance, have noted that the overturning of Roe v. Wade provides a “<a href="https://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2022/06/82906/">genuine opportunity for pro-lifers to work with people of diverse political persuasions</a> to seek a more just and compassionate world. This world would be not only pro-life, but also pro-child, pro-parent and pro-family.”</p>
<p>U.S. Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah is one of three Republicans in the Senate who have sponsored a bill called the <a href="https://www.romney.senate.gov/romney-family-security-act-2-0-one-of-the-most-important-efforts-to-support-the-family-in-nearly-thirty-years/">Family Security Act</a>, billed as a “pro-family, pro-life and pro-marriage plan” that would provide a monthly cash benefit starting at pregnancy and continuing through the child turning 17.</p>
<p>But so far, these are <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2022/06/anti-abortion-movement-dobbs-roe-overturned/661393/">minority voices</a> in the anti-abortion movement. </p>
<p>As a law professor who <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=gCJEShUAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">studies reproductive care</a>, policies that affect families and political partisanship, I have been following the relationship between <a href="https://www.urban.org/urban-wire/research-shows-access-legal-abortion-improves-womens-lives">abortion restrictions and family well-being</a> for decades. It turns out that states taking the strictest stands against abortion tend to have among the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/28/upshot/abortion-bans-states-social-services.html">worst statistics</a> on child and family well-being in the nation.</p>
<h2>Unintended pregnancy and infant mortality</h2>
<p>Take Mississippi, the state that enacted the abortion restriction law that was at the center of the Supreme Court’s June 2022 opinion in <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/21pdf/19-1392_6j37.pdf">Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization</a>, which struck down federal protection for the right to get an abortion. </p>
<p>In 2019, Mississippi had the <a href="https://www.americashealthrankings.org/explore/health-of-women-and-children/measure/unintended_pregnancy/state/U.S">highest rate of unintended pregnancy</a>, defined as the percentage of women who recently gave birth but whose pregnancies were either <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/reproductivehealth/contraception/unintendedpregnancy/index.htm">unwanted or happened at an unwanted time</a>. In Mississippi, 47% of women who recently had a child did not want to become pregnant or wanted to become pregnant later in life.</p>
<p>By contrast, Vermont had the nation’s lowest rate of unintended pregnancy in 2019, with <a href="https://www.americashealthrankings.org/explore/health-of-women-and-children/measure/unintended_pregnancy/state/U.S">just 20% of women who recently had a child</a> saying they would have preferred not to get pregnant or wanted to do so at some point in the future. That state already protects abortion rights. If Vermont’s <a href="https://www.wcax.com/2022/06/23/will-vermont-become-abortion-haven-if-scotus-upends-roe-v-wade/">upcoming referendum on abortion</a> passes, the state’s constitution will protect “<a href="https://legislature.vermont.gov/Documents/2022/Docs/BILLS/PR0005/PR0005%20As%20adopted%20by%20the%20Senate%20Official.pdf">an individual’s right to personal reproductive autonomy</a>.”</p>
<p>Mississippi also has the <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/sosmap/infant_mortality_rates/infant_mortality.htm">highest infant mortality rate</a> in the country. Five of the other nine states with the highest infant mortality <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/us/abortion-laws-roe-v-wade.html">also have abortion bans</a>. At the other end of the spectrum, of the 10 states with the lowest infant mortality rates, <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/sosmap/infant_mortality_rates/infant_mortality.htm">only one – Iowa</a> – has a law restricting abortions, <a href="https://www.kcci.com/article/governor-kim-reynolds-announces-legal-actions-regarding-abortion-in-iowa/40449729">although a court has prevented its enforcement</a>.</p>
<h2>Childhood poverty and teen birth rates</h2>
<p>Mississippi has the <a href="https://www.census.gov/acs/www/data/data-tables-and-tools/ranking-tables/">highest rate of child poverty in the country</a>. Six of the other 10 states with the country’s highest child poverty levels also have <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/us/abortion-laws-roe-v-wade.html">abortion bans in effect</a>: Louisiana, Arkansas, Kentucky, Alabama, Oklahoma and Tennessee.</p>
<p>Mississippi also had the <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/sosmap/teen-births/teenbirths.htm">highest teen birth rate in the country</a>, and eight of the other nine states with the highest teen birth rates also <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/us/abortion-laws-roe-v-wade.html">ban abortions or have a ban blocked</a>.</p>
<p>In all 10 states with the lowest teen birth rates, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/24/abortion-state-laws-criminalization-roe/">abortion is legal</a> and likely to be protected for the foreseeable future.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/482820/original/file-20220905-18-djghzt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A pregnant person has a written message on the skin of her belly: 'My daughter deserves a choice'" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/482820/original/file-20220905-18-djghzt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/482820/original/file-20220905-18-djghzt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/482820/original/file-20220905-18-djghzt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/482820/original/file-20220905-18-djghzt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/482820/original/file-20220905-18-djghzt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/482820/original/file-20220905-18-djghzt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/482820/original/file-20220905-18-djghzt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A pregnant activist calls for abortion rights in Chicago on June 25, 2022.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/pregnant-woman-takes-part-in-a-protest-in-downtown-chicago-news-photo/1241562432?adppopup=true">Vincent D. Johnson/Xinhua via Getty Images)</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Supporting families</h2>
<p>The well-being of children also depends on the availability of support for their parents.</p>
<p>For instance, <a href="https://www.ncsl.org/research/labor-and-employment/state-family-and-medical-leave-laws.aspx">11 states plus the District of Columbia legally require employers</a> to offer workers paid time off after the birth or adoption of a child. None of those jurisdictions <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/24/abortion-state-laws-criminalization-roe/">bans abortions</a>.</p>
<p>Another federal effort to support families came in the Affordable Care Act, enacted in 2010, with <a href="https://www.healthcare.gov/glossary/affordable-care-act/">sweeping changes</a> to the nation’s health insurance marketplace. One provision allowed states to <a href="https://www.healthcare.gov/medicaid-chip/medicaid-expansion-and-you/">expand Medicaid eligibility</a> to more adults, with financial support from the federal government. If Medicaid were expanded, <a href="https://www.urban.org/research/publication/3-7-million-people-would-gain-health-coverage-2023-if-remaining-12-states-were">reproductive-aged women</a> would be among the groups to experience the largest coverage gains.</p>
<p>As of August 2022, <a href="https://www.urban.org/research/publication/3-7-million-people-would-gain-health-coverage-2023-if-remaining-12-states-were">12 states</a> had not adopted the expansion: Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kansas, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Wisconsin and Wyoming. <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/us/abortion-laws-roe-v-wade.html">Eight of those states</a> have either a full ban on abortion or a ban after six weeks – before many people realize they are pregnant.</p>
<p>Two of those states, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/us/abortion-laws-roe-v-wade.html">South Carolina and Wyoming</a>, have abortion <a href="https://www.npr.org/2022/08/04/1115542013/wyomings-new-ban-on-abortions-has-been-temporarily-blocked">laws that are tied up in the courts</a>, and Florida bans abortions after 15 weeks. </p>
<p>In a June 2022 <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2022/06/30/the-end-of-roe-will-create-more-inequality-of-opportunity-for-children/">Brookings Institution study</a> of the states that are considered most child-friendly – measured by state expenditures per child and children’s overall well-being – the authors found that among the top 10, only Wyoming was <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/us/abortion-laws-roe-v-wade.html">even trying to ban abortion</a>. For the 10 states Brookings rated least child-friendly, nine either had a trigger ban or other abortion restriction.</p>
<p>The overall pattern is clear: A strong social safety net and other anti-poverty programs <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/13/opinion/abortion-romney-child-tax-credit.html">are more likely to be available</a> in states that also support abortion access, while actual measures of child and family well-being are often worse in states that restrict abortions.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/187817/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Naomi Cahn does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>States taking the strictest stands against abortion tend to have among the worst statistics in the nation on child and family well-being.Naomi Cahn, Professor of Law, University of VirginiaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1873342022-08-26T12:18:59Z2022-08-26T12:18:59ZChild poverty fell to a record-low 5.2% in 2021 – here’s how it could have been even lower<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/479412/original/file-20220816-21-c98s5a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=422%2C100%2C6287%2C3671&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Government benefits can reduce child poverty.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/mother-and-daughters-with-their-backs-turned-go-royalty-free-image/1337955441">DBenitostock/Moment via Getty Images</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The U.S. government’s most accurate measure of <a href="https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2022/demo/p60-277.html">child poverty fell to 5.2%</a> in 2021, the lowest level on record and a decline of 4.5 percentage points from a year earlier. This sharp reduction was due, in large part, to <a href="https://www.npr.org/2022/01/27/1075299510/the-expanded-child-tax-credit-briefly-slashed-child-poverty-heres-what-else-it-d">generous government benefits</a>. Our research suggests that although policies reduced child poverty by nearly half in 2021, the decline would have been even larger had the government made it easier for families to receive those benefits.</p>
<p>One way the federal government responded to the economic upheaval that accompanied the COVID-19 pandemic was to boost the <a href="https://www.irs.gov/coronavirus-tax-relief-and-economic-impact-payments">money Americans got as benefits</a> - and to distribute those benefits to people who didn’t previously get them. </p>
<p>Starting in the spring of 2020, for example, most Americans received a series of <a href="https://home.treasury.gov/policy-issues/coronavirus/assistance-for-american-families-and-workers/economic-impact-payments">economic relief payments</a>. Those funds had already helped reduce child poverty to <a href="https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2021/demo/p60-275.html">9.7% in 2020 from 12.6% in 2019</a>, according to what’s known as the “<a href="https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2021/demo/p60-275.html">supplemental poverty measure</a>.”</p>
<p>The government data, released on Sept. 13, 2022, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/01603477.2022.2107017">confirms expectations</a> <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/author/Pressman%2C+Steven">that</a> <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=zQIzkdYAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">we</a> and <a href="https://www.urban.org/sites/default/files/publication/104603/2021-poverty-projections_0_0.pdf">other economists</a> had based on <a href="https://www.nber.org/papers/w30371">previous research</a> regarding the share of American children living in poverty in 2021. One key policy change brought about this decline: The government temporarily <a href="https://theconversation.com/millions-of-american-parents-will-soon-get-a-monthly-allowance-4-questions-answered-156834">expanded the child tax credit</a>, boosting the incomes of nearly all families with children.</p>
<p>We have determined, however, that child poverty would have plunged much more had the government done a better job ensuring that all who qualified got the credit.</p>
<h2>Child tax credit</h2>
<p>Unlike the <a href="https://www.census.gov/topics/income-poverty/poverty/about/history-of-the-poverty-measure.html">official poverty rate</a>, the supplemental poverty measure accounts for government benefits, such as the <a href="https://theconversation.com/snap-benefits-are-rising-for-millions-of-americans-thanks-to-a-long-overdue-thrifty-food-plan-update-167876">Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program</a>, or SNAP. </p>
<p>The supplemental poverty measure has been consistently lower for children than the official poverty rate since its launch in 2011.</p>
<p>One reason for this is the <a href="https://www.childtaxcredit.gov/">child tax credit</a>. It began in 1998, with a maximum possible credit of $400 per child. The amount families could get was <a href="https://crsreports.congress.gov/search/#/?termsToSearch=the%20child%20tax%20credit&orderBy=Relevance">limited by the income taxes they owed</a>. Since low-income families either don’t pay any income taxes or owe very little, this did them little good. Subsequent reform measures increased both the amount of the credit and made some of this benefit available to families that paid no income tax.</p>
<p>A large federal spending package enacted in 2021 increased the credit further and made it available to all but the wealthiest families with children. Between July 2021 and June 2022, most received up to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/17/us/politics/child-tax-credit-payments.html">$3,600 for each child under 6 and as much as $3,000</a> for kids between the ages of 6 and 17. The Internal Revenue Service distributed half this money in monthly payments between July and December 2021, and the rest at tax time in 2022.</p>
<p><iframe id="OoHDY" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/OoHDY/3/" height="400px" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<h2>3 million fewer children in poverty</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.urban.org/research/publication/how-permanent-expansion-child-tax-credit-could-affect-poverty">Many economists</a> <a href="https://www.jainfamilyinstitute.org/assets/full-refundability-of-child-tax-credit-without-expansion.pdf">predicted</a> that this <a href="https://www.cbpp.org/research/federal-tax/temporarily-expanding-child-tax-credit-and-earned-income-tax-credit-would">benefit would help millions</a> of children escape poverty. </p>
<p>And, according to the Census, <a href="https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publications/2022/demo/p60-277.pdf">2.9 million fewer U.S. children</a> were living in poverty because of the child tax credit, including its temporary expansion. This policy reduced child poverty by 4 percentage points.</p>
<p>But we estimate that the child poverty rate could have fallen even further had the government ensured that more eligible families received the expanded child tax credit last year.</p>
<p>As we explained in the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/01603477.2022.2107017">Journal of Post Keynesian Economics</a>, an academic publication, we reviewed detailed 2019 data to estimate what would have happened to child poverty that year had all eligible families received the 2021 tax credit expansion. </p>
<p>We estimated a supplemental child poverty rate of around 5.2%, in line with what actually happened. But our modeling was based on a few assumptions, such as that the expansion would last for a full year and that there would be no other pandemic-related benefits. These two factors came close to balancing each other out, leading to an estimate of child poverty that was close to what was reported.</p>
<p>Based on our calculations, we believe that the supplemental child poverty rate could have declined 2.2 percentage points more in 2021 than what the Census found had every eligible family gotten the child tax credit. This would have lifted another 1.6 million children from poverty.</p>
<p>Many low-income families <a href="https://taxfoundation.org/us-households-paying-no-income-tax/">didn’t file a tax return</a> in 2019 or 2020, because they didn’t owe federal income taxes. To get monthly child tax credits from the IRS, these families <a href="https://www.irs.gov/credits-deductions/advance-child-tax-credit-payments-in-2021">needed to file a return</a>.</p>
<p>Alternatively, families could log in to the IRS website and apply for the child tax credit. That was hard to do for many low-income people who <a href="https://aspe.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/private/pdf/263601/internet-access-among-low-income-2019.pdf">lacked internet access</a>.</p>
<h2>Lack of awareness</h2>
<p>Surveys by a research team at <a href="https://socialpolicyinstitute.wustl.edu/employment-financial-wellbeing-effects-2021-ctc-report/">Washington University in St. Louis</a> support our theory. It found that 29% of low- and moderate-income Americans knew little or nothing about the child tax credit expansion – or even that they were eligible to receive it.</p>
<p>Specifically, 78% of those surveyed who did not file a 2020 tax return didn’t know much about the credit. Furthermore, some journalists found that the IRS website people must use to apply for benefits when they didn’t file a tax return was not user-friendly, and <a href="https://prospect.org/coronavirus/poor-arent-getting-help-democrats-want-to-give-them/">no Spanish version was available</a>.</p>
<p>These findings, together with the official <a href="https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2022/demo/p60-277.html">child poverty statistics for 2021</a>, show that expanding the child tax credit can greatly reduce child poverty. They also point to the need for increased outreach efforts to ensure that all low-income Americans can obtain the benefits for which they are eligible. </p>
<p>And now that the Census Bureau has released its 2021 poverty statistics, we expect that calls for this benefit to be restored on a permanent basis will spread.</p>
<p><em>This article was updated on Sept. 13, 2022, to reflect that the official Census Bureau’s child poverty data for 2021 had been released.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/187334/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A tax credit expansion played a big role in child poverty reduction. But the government’s failure to reach all eligible Americans meant many families never got that temporary benefit.Steven Pressman, Part-Time Professor of Economics, The New SchoolRobert H. Scott III, Professor, Dept. of Economics, Finance & Real Estate, Monmouth UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1805672022-08-18T02:17:55Z2022-08-18T02:17:55ZWe asked children how they experienced poverty. Here are 6 changes needed now<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/479263/original/file-20220816-12-dx3w5x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C11%2C2560%2C1682&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photo by Orlando Vera/Pexels</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>An <a href="https://cpc.weblogs.anu.edu.au/files/2021/10/Children-Communities-and-Social-Capital-Report.pdf">eight-year-old boy</a> is often hungry, but knows if he tells his mum, she will eat less herself and go hungry. He hates the thought, so he stays quiet.</p>
<p>An <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/19452829.2021.1911969?needAccess=true">11-year-old girl</a> knows once rent is paid, there is almost nothing left over, so she tries not to ask for too much. She never takes school excursion notes home in case the cost is too much.</p>
<p>A <a href="https://cpc.weblogs.anu.edu.au/files/2021/10/Children-Communities-and-Social-Capital-Report.pdf">10-year-old boy’s</a> dad has been angry since he was injured at work; he can no longer support his family, and awaits compensation. It makes this boy feel sad, but he understands and tries not to add to his dad’s stress.</p>
<p>This is how children have described their <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/19452829.2021.1911969?needAccess=true">experiences of poverty</a> in research I have done over several years.</p>
<p>Children have also told us relationships are <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/chso.12197">essential</a>. They talk about the importance of family, the strength of community, and people <a href="https://www.anu.edu.au/giving/impact-stories/paul-ramsay-foundation-supports-anu-to-end-disadvantage">helping one another</a>.</p>
<p>These help buffer children from the effects of poverty – but none can address its structural drivers, or the ways systems fail many people.</p>
<p>Decades after then prime minister Bob Hawke <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/no-child-will-live-in-poverty-30-years-on-bob-hawkes-promise-remains-an-elusive-goal-20170621-gwvdya.html">declared</a> that by 1990, “no Australian child will live in poverty”, the problem remains very real in Australia. </p>
<p>So what is that experience like for children, and what needs to be done?</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/richer-schools-students-run-faster-how-the-inequality-in-sport-flows-through-to-health-185681">Richer schools' students run faster: how the inequality in sport flows through to health</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Three key themes</h2>
<p>My <a href="https://researchprofiles.anu.edu.au/en/persons/sharon-bessell/publications/">research</a> shows that when we listen to children about their experiences of poverty, <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/19452829.2021.1911969">three themes</a> almost always emerge. </p>
<p>First, not having the material basics – enough food, a safe and secure home, transport - is a near-constant problem for <a href="https://cpc.weblogs.anu.edu.au/files/2021/10/Children-Communities-and-Social-Capital-Report.pdf">far too many children</a>.</p>
<p>Some of these things can be bought if money is sufficient, but some – like secure housing and transport – require investment in public infrastructure and equal distribution of resources. These are structural problems, not individual ones. </p>
<p>My colleagues and I have found children are more likely to talk about the importance of <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/19452829.2021.1911969?needAccess=true">food</a> than toys or electronic devices. Hunger shapes priorities powerfully.</p>
<p>Second, poverty limits children’s ability to participate in activities and services (such as sport, public library time and health care).</p>
<p>This can be due to families not having the money – but often the barriers are, once again, structural. Schools in low-income areas are often under-resourced, playgrounds are less likely to be maintained, services are limited, and public transport is inadequate. </p>
<p>Third, relationships are deeply affected by the pressures poverty creates. This is exacerbated by factors such as:</p>
<ul>
<li>low income</li>
<li>punitive conditions placed on welfare recipients (such as <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/nov/06/single-parents-forced-to-attend-story-time-or-lose-centrelink-payments">needing to attend playgroups and parenting classes</a> or <a href="https://au.finance.yahoo.com/news/centrelink-job-seeker-will-change-next-month-heres-why-recipients-are-worried-015017339.html">job interviews</a>)</li>
<li>insecure work</li>
<li>housing stress </li>
<li>unaffordable costs of living. </li>
</ul>
<p>For children, time with the people they love – particularly parents – is always a priority. Poverty eats away at that time.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/479265/original/file-20220816-18-vkphou.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/479265/original/file-20220816-18-vkphou.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/479265/original/file-20220816-18-vkphou.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/479265/original/file-20220816-18-vkphou.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/479265/original/file-20220816-18-vkphou.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/479265/original/file-20220816-18-vkphou.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/479265/original/file-20220816-18-vkphou.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/479265/original/file-20220816-18-vkphou.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The pressure of poverty eats away at the time children can spend with their parents.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.pexels.com/photo/crop-faceless-mom-touching-hand-of-newborn-7282843/">Photo by Sarah Chai/Pexels</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>A culture of shame</h2>
<p>Another, perhaps even more harmful, theme has emerged in Australia over recent decades – the discourse around poverty often attaches blame and stigma to individuals.</p>
<p>Anyone deemed to be part of the “undeserving poor” is shamed. Children experience this in the names targeted at them, their families and communities. Policy settings around welfare can be unbelievably punitive.</p>
<p>As a society, we are diminished by this blaming and shaming rhetoric. It undermines our ability to care for others, and to recognise the value of care.</p>
<h2>6 changes needed now</h2>
<p>There is no quick fix, but here are six changes that would help immediately.</p>
<p><strong>1. Boost welfare benefits</strong></p>
<p>Children in families dependent on working-age benefits will grow up in income poverty. Children in single-parent (usually single mum) families dependent on income support are most likely to be in <a href="https://povertyandinequality.acoss.org.au/poverty/sole-parents-and-unemployed-face-poverty-as-nation-surges-ahead/">poverty</a>. The policy response is clear – we must raise the <a href="https://www.cfecfw.asn.au/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Social-security-and-time-use-during-COVID-19-Report-Treating-Families-Fairly-2021.pdf">rate of working age benefits</a> and reform the <a href="https://www.austaxpolicy.com/poverty-by-design-how-single-mothers-benefits-are-reduced-without-them-knowing/">child support system</a>.</p>
<p><strong>2. Recognise the importance of strong and supportive relationships</strong></p>
<p>Relationships are crucial to children but undue pressure on parents – through welfare conditions or child-unfriendly, insecure working conditions – undermines those relationships. </p>
<p>Some countries, such as New Zealand, are undertaking <a href="https://www.msd.govt.nz/about-msd-and-our-work/publications-resources/resources/child-impact-assessment.html">child impact assessments</a>, which aim to work out whether a given policy proposal will improve the wellbeing of children and young people. </p>
<p>Australia should do similar assessments of all policies, particularly those linked to social security and labour markets.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/479268/original/file-20220816-24-bojg8k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/479268/original/file-20220816-24-bojg8k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/479268/original/file-20220816-24-bojg8k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/479268/original/file-20220816-24-bojg8k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/479268/original/file-20220816-24-bojg8k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/479268/original/file-20220816-24-bojg8k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/479268/original/file-20220816-24-bojg8k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/479268/original/file-20220816-24-bojg8k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Undue pressure on parents undermines relationships.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.pexels.com/photo/silhouette-of-man-with-children-at-sundown-6008346/">Photo by Maria Lindsey/Pexels</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><strong>3. Build child-friendly communities</strong></p>
<p>As governments respond to the housing crisis through greater numbers of social housing it is critical we adhere to principles of <a href="https://childfriendlycities.org/">child-friendly communities</a>.</p>
<p>This means providing safe, welcoming places for children to play, building footpaths so children can easily and safely get around, creating communal, child-inclusive spaces to bring people together across generations, and creating child-friendly services close to home.</p>
<p><strong>4. Reform education funding</strong></p>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/what-does-equity-in-schools-look-like-and-how-is-it-tied-to-growing-teacher-shortages-185394">Education funding</a> must be more equitable, and ensure all children can access and enjoy high-quality schooling. </p>
<p><strong>5. Change the narratives and language around poverty</strong></p>
<p>We must recognise poverty is not the fault of the individual. Debates and policies should be based on <a href="https://www.policyforum.net/resource/making-empathy-unconditional-changing-the-story-on-poverty-and-inequality/">empathy, not blame</a>.</p>
<p><strong>6. Put children at the centre of policy</strong></p>
<p>This could include approaches like the <a href="https://ec.europa.eu/social/main.jsp?catId=1428&langId=en">European Child Guarantee</a>, which aims to guarantee every child access to essential services. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/attending-school-every-day-counts-but-kids-in-out-of-home-care-are-missing-out-182299">Attending school every day counts – but kids in out-of-home care are missing out</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/180567/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sharon Bessell receives funding from The Australian Research Council; Paul Ramsay Foundation. This article is part of The Conversation’s Breaking the Cycle series, which is supported by a philanthropic grant from the Paul Ramsay Foundation.</span></em></p>One 11-year old girl told us she knows once rent is paid, there is almost nothing left over. So she never takes school excursion notes home, in case the cost is too much.Sharon Bessell, Professor of Public Policy, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1857432022-07-08T09:06:38Z2022-07-08T09:06:38ZCould post-war drive for a more equal society help with today’s cost of living crisis?<p>In response to the <a href="https://theconversation.com/cost-of-living-crisis-its-not-enough-to-know-how-many-people-are-below-the-poverty-line-we-need-to-measure-poverty-depth-180450">cost of living crisis</a>, the UK government has <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/spring-statement-2022-documents/spring-statement-2022-html#executive-summary">announced a number of measures</a> – including a non-repayable rebate on energy bills for some households – to relieve the pressure from rising prices. While these are to be welcomed, they do nothing to tackle a much deeper social and livelihood crisis that has been building for decades. </p>
<p>Gaps in income have widened sharply since the 1970s. The share of national income taken by the top 1% has <a href="https://wid.world/country/united-kingdom/">doubled</a>, rising from 6% in 1977 to 13% in 2018. Because this rise has squeezed incomes among the rest of the population, especially those at the bottom, the level of child poverty (based on a relative measure) has also risen sharply, from 14% in 1977 to <a href="https://ifs.org.uk/tools_and_resources/incomes_in_uk">27%</a> in 2021. </p>
<p>The level of personal wealth, meanwhile, has been rising at twice the rate of incomes, while becoming increasingly <a href="https://wid.world/country/united-kingdom/">concentrated at the top</a>. Private wealth holdings now stand <a href="https://wir2018.wid.world/">at nearly seven times</a> the size of the UK economy compared with three times in the 1970s. </p>
<p>It hasn’t always been this way. In the late 1970s, Britain achieved peak equality and a low point for poverty. As shown in my recent book, <a href="https://policy.bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/the-richer-the-poorer">The Richer, The Poorer</a>, this was the high point of egalitarianism that drove transformative, progressive change after the second world war. Today’s crisis of living standards is due in large part to a steady weakening of post-war pro-equality reforms. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A street party in a suburban area seen from above." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/472992/original/file-20220707-12-gsnmbv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/472992/original/file-20220707-12-gsnmbv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=440&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/472992/original/file-20220707-12-gsnmbv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=440&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/472992/original/file-20220707-12-gsnmbv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=440&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/472992/original/file-20220707-12-gsnmbv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=553&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/472992/original/file-20220707-12-gsnmbv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=553&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/472992/original/file-20220707-12-gsnmbv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=553&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">1977, the year of the Queen’s Silver Jubilee, marks a high point in the UK’s history of economic equality.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/omcoc/7327896232/">ed_needs_a_bicycle | flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">CC BY-NC-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>How peak equality was achieved</h2>
<p>In 1945, the new Labour government, <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-the-shock-of-the-second-world-war-transformed-the-british-state-recovery-podcast-part-four-141324">led by Clement Attlee</a>, launched a wave of social reforms. Attlee, influenced by leading thinkers including the eminent historian and Christian socialist <a href="https://archive.org/details/equality00tawn">R.H. Tawney</a> , saw his central goal as <a href="https://www.quercusbooks.co.uk/titles/john-bew/citizen-clem/9781780879925/">achieving</a> “greater equality, fewer great differences, more opportunities, and more social justice”. </p>
<p>These reforms built a stronger welfare state. They included a more comprehensive <a href="https://theconversation.com/national-insurance-a-uk-tax-which-is-complex-and-vulnerable-to-political-intervention-167552">national insurance system</a> to cover unemployment, sickness and old age. Further, with the founding of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-nhs-explained-in-eight-charts-91854?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=TCUKengagement&utm_content=NHS">NHS</a> in 1948, all were given direct access to free healthcare. And there was a new system of family allowances to support children, a measure extended by the introduction of <a href="https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/cabinetpapers/themes/beveridge-report-child-benefit.htm">child benefit</a> in the late 1970s. </p>
<p>These reforms were paid for by a more progressive tax system which bore more heavily on those with the highest incomes. They were underpinned by a broad, if shallow, cross-party consensus on the need for social change. A new, informal pact was made with business to accept greater social responsibility. Full employment – unemployment was below 3% for men throughout the 1950s – and a rise in the share of output accruing to wages were both key factors in the steady improvement in living standards across society. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Three people stand around a patient's bed in an old hospital." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/472950/original/file-20220707-20-nxsno8.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/472950/original/file-20220707-20-nxsno8.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=420&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/472950/original/file-20220707-20-nxsno8.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=420&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/472950/original/file-20220707-20-nxsno8.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=420&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/472950/original/file-20220707-20-nxsno8.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=527&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/472950/original/file-20220707-20-nxsno8.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=527&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/472950/original/file-20220707-20-nxsno8.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=527&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Minister of Health Anenurin Bevan visits Park Hospital Davyhulme near Manchester on the first day of the NHS, July 5, 1948.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/107733654@N04/14465908720">liverpoolhls | flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
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<h2>The counter revolution against egalitarianism</h2>
<p>Today’s crisis of living standards is, as I have argued, due in large part to the collapse of the egalitarian consensus, and its replacement by an anti-equality, pro-market ideology. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13569317.2021.1979139">New Right</a> architects of this counter-revolution, which included the Conservative MP, <a href="https://cps.org.uk/research/stranded-on-the-middle-ground-reflections-on-circumstances-and-policies/">Keith Joseph</a>, one of Thatcher’s most trusted advisers, argued that egalitarianism had gone too far. Britain, they claimed, now needed a stiff dose of inequality to drive a more dynamic economy.</p>
<p>Far from the economic resurgence they envisaged, the effect of this shift has brought a new gilded age for the rich. This has come at the expense of a reversal of social gains, deteriorating life chances for many ordinary citizens, and a more crisis-ridden economy. </p>
<p>Many of the towering personal fortunes at the top – accumulated since the 1980s – have been largely unearned. As I have shown, they are less a reward for new wealth and value creation than the product of the upward extraction of existing wealth and corporate assets. Extraction, which was commonplace in the <a href="https://www.lse.ac.uk/Economic-History/Assets/Documents/Research/FACTS/WorkingPapers/2005/0605Johnson.pdf">Victorian era</a>, returned from the 1980s.</p>
<p>Contemporary examples of wealth extraction include <a href="https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/305788/sabotage-by-palan-anastasia-nesvetailova-and-ronen/9780241446997">manipulating</a> corporate balance sheets, skimming returns from financial transactions (a process known as “<a href="https://www.ft.com/content/70180486-33f1-11df-8ebf-00144feabdc0">the croupier’s take</a>”) and the growth of <a href="https://direct.mit.edu/daed/article/147/3/111/27209/The-Problem-of-Monopolies-amp-Corporate-Public">monopolistic</a> and anti-competitive behaviour by powerful corporations. </p>
<p>Extraction has been used to deliver excessive rates of return, boosting rewards to executives and investors, rather than raising corporate investment, long-term durability and productivity. From 2014 to 2018, FTSE 100 companies <a href="https://highpaycentre.org/how-the-shareholder-first-business-model-contributes-to-poverty-inequality-and-climate-change/">generated net profits</a> of £551 billion, but returned £442 billion of this to shareholders, leaving a much lower proportion for wages and private investment. This has resulted in <a href="https://www.oecd.org/g20/topics/employment-and-social-policy/The-Labour-Share-in-G20-Economies.pdf">the steady decline</a> in the share of the economy accruing to wages, down from the higher levels achieved after the war. </p>
<p>An <a href="https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/sdn/2014/sdn1402.pdf">influential study</a> by the International Monetary Fund has concluded that high levels of inequality are associated with brittle economies and weak growth. A key reason has been a perverse system of incentives that makes it more attractive for executives to line their pockets than to build for the future. As economist Andrew Smithers <a href="https://oxford.universitypressscholarship.com/view/10.1093/oso/9780198836117.001.0001/oso-9780198836117">has noted</a>, this contributes to Britain’s low-wage, low-skill, low-productivity economy. </p>
<p>Rising inequality has also been shown to have significant negative social consequences. The voting gap between rich and poor groups rose from four percentage points in the 1987 general election to <a href="https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/look-beneath-the-vote/">22% in 2010</a>. This has been fostered by political alienation and what political scientist Colin Crouch has called <a href="https://www.wiley.com/en-gb/Post+Democracy-p-9780745633152">“post-democracy”</a>. </p>
<p>In the decade before COVID, <a href="https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/healthinequalities/bulletins/healthstatelifeexpectanciesbyindexofmultipledeprivationimd/2018to2020">the gap</a> in mortality rates between those living in the most and the least deprived areas widened. It now stands at 9.7 fewer years for men and 7.9 years for women. </p>
<p>Rebuilding Britain’s fractured society depends on re-embracing post-war egalitarianism. This means a set of pro-equality measures for modern times that raise the income and wealth floor but also lower the ceiling. Such measures should include a more generous benefits system financed by a more progressive tax system. They should also include the steady rebuilding of the social state. </p>
<p>Tackling widespread corporate extraction would further help to strengthen the economy for all. Part of Britain’s towering private wealth mountain should also be harnessed for the common good, with all given a stake in economic progress through a citizen-owned <a href="https://neweconomics.opendemocracy.net/creating-britains-first-citizens-wealth-fund/">wealth fund</a>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/185743/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Stewart Lansley does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The late 1970s marked a high point for economic equality in the UK. Returning to the progressive policies that made that possible could solve today’s cost of living crisis.Stewart Lansley, Visiting Fellow, School of Policy Studies, University of Bristol., University of BristolLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1833232022-05-20T12:14:09Z2022-05-20T12:14:09Z1 in 6 US kids are in families below the poverty line<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/464062/original/file-20220518-12-5acnqn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=104%2C45%2C4271%2C2453&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The official child poverty rate is about the same today as in 1967.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/building-blocks-royalty-free-image/476743677">More Than Words Photography by Alisa Brouwer/Moment Open via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/464069/original/file-20220518-17-wpldb1.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/464069/original/file-20220518-17-wpldb1.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/464069/original/file-20220518-17-wpldb1.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=255&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/464069/original/file-20220518-17-wpldb1.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=255&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/464069/original/file-20220518-17-wpldb1.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=255&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/464069/original/file-20220518-17-wpldb1.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=321&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/464069/original/file-20220518-17-wpldb1.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=321&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/464069/original/file-20220518-17-wpldb1.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=321&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="attribution"><a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
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<p>In the United States, <a href="https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2021/demo/p60-273.html">children are more likely to experience poverty</a> than people over 18.</p>
<p>In 2020, about 1 in 6 kids, <a href="https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2021/demo/p60-273.html">16% of all children</a>, were living in families with incomes below the official poverty line – an income threshold the government set that year at about <a href="https://www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/demo/income-poverty/historical-poverty-thresholds.html">US$26,500 for a family of four</a>. Only 10% of Americans ages 18 to 64 and 9% of those 65 and up were experiencing poverty, according to the most recent data available. </p>
<p>The official child poverty rate <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/pam.21963">ticks down when the economy grows and up during downturns</a>. It stood at 17% in 1967 – just about the same as in 2020. In many recent years the rate hovered even higher – around 20%. </p>
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<h2>Another way to measure poverty</h2>
<p>Researchers <a href="https://www.census.gov/topics/income-poverty/poverty/guidance/poverty-measures.html">calculate the official poverty rate</a> by adding up a household’s income and comparing it with a threshold of what is needed to survive.</p>
<p>The government has calculated this rate the same way <a href="https://www.census.gov/topics/income-poverty/poverty/about/history-of-the-poverty-measure.html">since the 1960s</a>. </p>
<p>One of its shortcomings is that it <a href="https://www.census.gov/newsroom/blogs/random-samplings/2021/09/difference-between-supplemental-and-official-poverty-measures.html">excludes several sources of income</a>, including tax credits and the <a href="https://theconversation.com/snap-benefits-are-rising-for-millions-of-americans-thanks-to-a-long-overdue-thrifty-food-plan-update-167876">Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program</a>, which are intended to reduce poverty. </p>
<p>In 2011, the government began to calculate an alternative metric: <a href="https://www.census.gov/topics/income-poverty/supplemental-poverty-measure.html">the supplemental poverty measure</a>. It includes SNAP and tax credits. It also uses thresholds based on the cost of living in different areas of the country. For a family of four, <a href="https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2021/demo/p60-275.html">this threshold</a> currently ranges from $24,000 to $35,000, depending on where a family lives and whether they own or rent housing.</p>
<p>According to this alternative measure, 10% of children were living in poverty in 2020, the lowest rate ever recorded. </p>
<p>Depending on <a href="https://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/ssb/v75n3/v75n3p55.html">which measure you use</a>, either 7 million or 11.7 million U.S. children lived in poverty in 2020.</p>
<p>By both metrics, poverty is <a href="https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2021/demo/p60-273.html">higher for children of color</a>. The <a href="https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2021/demo/p60-273.html">official poverty rate</a> for Black children stood at 26%, and 23% for Hispanic children, while for white, non-Hispanic children it was 10%. </p>
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<h2>Before and after 2020</h2>
<p>Both child poverty rates had been declining before the COVID-19 pandemic. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2021/demo/p60-273.html">official rate dipped to 14%</a> in 2019 from 21% five years earlier. It shot back up to 16% in 2020, when the pandemic compounded economic hardships for many families.</p>
<p>The supplemental measure of child poverty tells a more complete story.</p>
<p>Steps the government took during the pandemic, including its series of <a href="https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2021/demo/p60-275.html">economic impact payments</a>, the <a href="https://ideas.repec.org/p/aji/briefs/20412.html">child tax credit expansion</a> and a <a href="https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/chart-gallery/gallery/chart-detail/?chartId=102273">boost in SNAP benefits</a>, led the supplemental child poverty rate to keep declining even during the economic crisis.</p>
<p>The government will release its child poverty data for 2022 in <a href="https://cps.ipums.org/cps/release_dates.shtml">September 2023</a>. But some researchers at Columbia University have monthly data suggesting that <a href="https://www.povertycenter.columbia.edu/forecasting-monthly-poverty-data">child poverty rose steeply</a> after the expiration of the pandemic-era programs. They estimate that <a href="https://www.povertycenter.columbia.edu/news-internal/monthly-poverty-january-2022">3.7 million more children were living in poverty</a> in January 2022 than in December 2021 because of the <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/millions-kids-thrust-back-poverty-child-tax-credit-expired-s-rcna13450">expiration of the child tax credit expansion</a>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/183323/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Callie Freitag receives funding from the Center for Financial Security at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Heather D. Hill currently has research funding from the Perigee Fund and the Center for Financial Security at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. </span></em></p>An alternative approach to measuring poverty detected a decline in 2021, amid a surge in government support for low-income families.Callie Freitag, Ph.D. Candidate in Public Policy and Governance, University of WashingtonHeather D. Hill, Professor of Public Policy and Governance, University of WashingtonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.