And local Tories brag about the 'success' of foodbanks in their area in handing out hundreds of thousands of parcels as if it's somthing theyre proud of. And nobody bats an eyelidMeanwhile local Tory supporting business owners, PR firms and entrepreneurs engage in 'CEO sleepouts' and hand out food packages to the needy at Christmas.
It's perverse.
Complete hypocrites if they voted for the welfare cuts in basic level payments, particularly the vicious Osbourne ones which are now really hitting home.And local Tories brag about the 'success' of foodbanks in their area in handing out hundreds of thousands of parcels as if it's somthing theyre proud of. And nobody bats an eyelid
Again, just shocking.
The article is using relative poverty. There's a drop down box in the article 'It's an appalling statistic but it's unclear whether it means relative or absolute poverty. The two are quite different.
It's appaling because any one area should not be that deprived when compared to other areas.
12 years of tory cuts would be the obvious reason, you would think. It is going to get much worse over the next 12 months too.
According to the article they're using the following definitionMathematically that's not quite right. Relative poverty is less than 50% of average household income, so it depends what the top and bottom ends are like. If everyone earned the exact same amount, then nobody would be earning less than 50% of anyone else so there wouldn't be any relative poverty.
Obviously in the real world we will always have relative poverty if we insist on being a country that has 200 odd billionaires and does everything it can to avoid taxing them.
According to the article they're using the following definition
"How is child poverty defined in the UK?
A child is considered to be growing up in poverty if they live in a household whose income is 60% below the average (median) income for that year, after housing costs are into account. "
So it's a definition of relative poverty
Osbourne objective was to balance the Government budget by 2019 by primarily cutting welfare payments (except State Pension) and public expenditure, opposed to say increasing taxes and cutting tax subsidies. He didn't seem concerned with the stresses caused and some of his comments implied his strategy was to squeeze the poor who were unable to financially support themselves.Complete hypocrites if they voted for the welfare cuts in basic level payments, particularly the vicious Osbourne ones which are now really hitting home.
Not only was Osboune not concerned neither was the majority of the public.Osbourne objective was to balance the Government budget by 2019 by primarily cutting welfare payments (except State Pension) and public expenditure, opposed to say increasing taxes and cutting tax subsidies. He didn't seem concerned with the stresses caused and some of his comments implied his strategy was to squeeze the poor who were unable to financially support themselves.
And that just reinforces the point I was making. Is Bill Gates impoverished becuse Jeff Bezos has a few more $Billion in the bank? The notion is absurd.There has always been relative and absolute poverty. If we were all millionaires the poorest would still be in relative poverty even whilst driving to work in a porsche.
You'll also see youngsters driving expensive cars and motor bikes, jetting off on holiday and following the Boro round country. They're not the ones living in poverty.Can we define poverty, as a lad who has lived in two boroughs across Teesside, i see no end of kids in North face gear on expensive bikes, young lads with latest footy tops on and all the rest? Under no illusion there is massive problems here, trust me i know, but what exactly does poverty mean in this instance how can they say child poverty because that word just brings up images of the third world to me and even here in Grove Hill it's far from that. Honest.
Not sure I said any of those things. I was pointing out, correctly that there is a difference between relative and absolute poverty. The distinction is important.And that just reinforces the point I was making. Is Bill Gates impoverished becuse Jeff Bezos has a few more $Billion in the bank? The notion is absurd.
Having to pull out the fact that some kid in sub-Saharan Africa is digging up diamonds with his bare hands for less than a dollar a day just to show that kids in the UK could be worse off is diversionary tactic.
Poverty is poverty.
These figures are not directly comparable with those quoted by Action for Children in the earlier linked article. The IFS figures are for relative poverty before deducting housing costs; the AfC figures were after deducting housing costs. This is not to deny that Labour's figures were very impressive.A report by the IFS.
https://www.facebook.com/InstituteforFiscalStudies
Not a complete success by Labour, but some good success and a desire to want to do something reducing poverty.
Home Publications Labour's record on poverty and inequality
Labour's record on poverty and inequality
Robert Joyce and Luke Sibieta
Observation
06 Jun 2013
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Today, the Oxford Review of Economic Policy publishes a special issue on Labour's economic record when in government between 1997 and 2010. As part of this, IFS researchers assess Labour’s record on income inequality and poverty. Here, we show how income inequality changed little but child and pensioner poverty fell significantly. We suggest, though, that these falls in poverty might prove fragile given that they were mostly based on very large increases in spending on benefits and tax credits. We also reflect on the main lessons for today’s policymakers. One such lesson is that how you spend money is more important than how much you spend. Governments need effective means to establish what works and what doesn't, and patience to see whether policies bear fruit in the long-run.
Labour had very clear objectives to reduce poverty amongst families with children and pensioners, and accorded these objectives high priority. Tony Blair made a famous commitment to end child poverty within a generation, and Gordon Brown promised to ‘to end pensioner poverty in our country”. However, it is much less clear that Labour took a strong view on the appropriate level of inequality within the top half of the income distribution, as indicated for example by Peter Mandelson’s famous statement that he was “intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich as long as they pay their taxes.'
What happened to poverty and inequality under Labour?
If our summary of Labour's distributional objectives is accurate, then outcomes reflected those objectives quite closely. Turning first to poverty, both absolute and relative measures of income poverty fell markedly among children and pensioners - although the scale of the changes did not always match the considerable ambition, as set out explicitly in the case of the government’s child poverty targets.
By contrast, the incomes of poorer working-age adults without dependent children - the major demographic group not emphasised by Labour as a priority - changed very little over the period. As a result they fell behind the rest of the population and relative poverty levels rose. Since childless working-age people started the period with low levels of poverty compared with other demographic groups, one consequence of these trends was that the risks of poverty across the major demographic groups converged under Labour. This is illustrated in the Figure below.
Figure: Relative poverty rates since 1996-97
Notes: Years refer to financial years. Poverty line is 60% of median income. Incomes measured before deducting housing costs.
Source: Family Resources Survey.
With falls in income poverty, one might expect to have seen a fall in income inequality. Indeed inequality did fall across much of the distribution. Those on relatively low incomes did a little better than those with incomes just above the average. However, those right at the top saw their incomes increase very substantially with the result that, on most measures, overall inequality nudged up slightly.
What drove these changes?
The substantial falls in pensioner and child poverty were largely driven by very significant additional spending on benefits and tax credits. Reforms since 1997-98 resulted in an £18 billion annual increase in spending on benefits for families with children and an £11 billion annual increase on benefits for pensioners by 2010-11 (see here). Our modelling suggests that child and pensioner poverty would either have stayed the same or risen, rather than fall substantially, had there not been these big spending increases. Meanwhile, Labour’s tax and benefit changes had relatively little net impact on the top half of the income distribution, or on low-income adults without dependent children – the group whose poverty rate did not fall. However, there is evidence to suggest that these reforms prevented a larger rise in inequality than actually occurred under Labour.
There were also increases in employment which had a small but detectable effect on income poverty. For example, reductions in the proportion of children living in workless families acted to reduce relative child poverty by about 2 percentage points.
There were many other Labour initiatives that could be considered anti-poverty policies. These include the introduction of the National Minimum Wage, Sure Start, increased financial support for childcare, significant increases in education spending and an expansion of the number of young people going on to higher education. Any payoffs from most of these measures will be long run, rather than immediate. It is of course very difficult to predict precisely what effects they will ultimately have on overall levels of poverty and inequality - and we will never know for sure, as their effects will inevitably happen alongside many other factors which continue to affect the income distribution. The verdict on the effects of Labour’s period in power on poverty and inequality is necessarily incomplete.
And the only reason we have a distinction between relative and absolute is to somehow show that a child not getting three meals a day is better than a child getting one meal a day.Not sure I said any of those things. I was pointing out, correctly that there is a difference between relative and absolute poverty. The distinction is important.
Maybe so, but again I didn't say what you are suggesting I said. In the article poverty is a dimensionless term. It matters when understanding the context. If 2 definitions are in use, for whatever reasons, the one being referred to is important for understanding.And the only reason we have a distinction between relative and absolute is to somehow show that a child not getting three meals a day is better than a child getting one meal a day.
It's heading into gaslighting territory. Assuming all else is equal, a millionaire is not in poverty even if he is relatively poorer than a billionaire.
Poverty has it's own definition that precludes any subset of wealthy.
It's 38% across the North East
Let those numbers sink in.
Thank God the Red Wall collapsed eh? What had Labour ever done for us? They took us for granted, but now, thankfully, we have the levelling up
My wife in her job has seen this at first hand and some of the stories you here are genuinely jaw dropping and sad, giving ALL children the best opportunities in life should be the cornerstone of any government, violent abuse against children has risen 24% in the last 12 months, I'm not defending it at all but surely there must be some correlation between this rise in poverty rates and the incidences of these horrific, sometimes fatal, attacks.
These figures will only get worse as the cost of living crisis continues to worsen, I hate to think of the consequences that a cold winter could bring observing how bad things are currently and how little has been done that could genuinely bring widescale improvement, 1000's of hungry, cold children, what an advertisement for 12 years of Conservative misrule and 3 years of supposed levelling up.
Glovers Elbowagreed but lets not kid ourselves labour were much better, they tried to close the poverty gap and did to a small extent, but far far more should have been done.
And in the last 12 years we've reversed most of that but spent more doing so. How?Glovers Elbow
I agree mate- I think the key differences between the Labour Govt 97 onwards and the preceding 3 terms of Thatcher were that Labour tried to bring long term fairness and equality of opportunity as well as some short term fiscal economic interventions reversing years of neglect. Eg
- National Minimum Wage
- more police
- more doctors
- more nurses
- more teachers and teaching assistants
- crime down
- child benefit up
- sure start
- education levels up
- employment up
- paid paternity leave
- devolution
- winter fuel payments
- child tax credit
- free tv licences
- peace in Northern Ireland
- universal right to 24 days paid holiday
- million pensioners out of poverty
- 600,000 children out of poverty
- civil partnerships
- free local bus travel for OAPs
- Inpatient waiting lists down half a million
- Cleaner rivers, beaches, drinking water and air
- Free breast cancer screening
- 3 million child trust funds
- free eye test for over 60s
- doubled apprenticeships
- free entry to museums and galleries
- Overseas aid doubled
- heart disease deaths down by 150,000
- cancer deaths down by 50,000
- long-term youth unemployment down 75 per cent
- free nursery places for three and four-year-olds
- free fruit for four to six-year-olds
- free swimming
- stopped school playing fields sell offs