The UK government is preparing to announce its long-awaited, delayed strategy to address the pressing crisis of rising child poverty. In a follow-up to a previous article advocating the urgent implementation of the socio-economic duty, colleagues from Academics Stand Against Poverty UK and the Equality Trust reflect on the scale of the challenge and argue for bold, coordinated solutions. This is a timely call for the activation of the duty, which would embed poverty reduction across all areas of public policy making – alongside targeted, evidence-based initiatives specifically aimed at tackling child poverty.
The scale of child poverty
Successive UK governments have come under sustained criticism from United Nations Special Rapporteurs on extreme poverty and human rights for the consequences of post-2010 austerity policies – including policy-driven destitution, rising child poverty and excess deaths. The ten-year anniversary of the landmark Marmot Review further underscored these concerns, offering a stark assessment of deepening health inequalities, worsening child poverty and stagnating – and in some areas even declining – life expectancy. The Institute of Health Equity attributed these outcomes to a decade of regressive social and economic policies.
According to the government’s figures in its annual Households Below Average Income (HBAI) publication, the end of the 2024 financial year saw 2.72 million children living in ‘Relatively Low-Income’ households. Relatively Low-Income households (or relative poverty) are households that earn less than 60 per cent of the median income aligned with income averages in that year. If this type of poverty were not bad enough, the same figures also identify that during the same period, 2.34 million children lived in households experiencing ‘Absolute Low-Income’. This means that in the UK, a G8 nation, one of the wealthiest in the world, we have over 2 million children living in absolute poverty. This is poverty defined as households with an income lower than 60 per cent of the median income of 2010/2011. Furthermore, figures from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation identify that at least one million children are experiencing destitution, the most severe form of poverty, where meeting the most basic physical needs of shelter – to be clean, warm and fed – is totally absent.
Whether it is relatively, absolutely low-income or total destitution, figures such as these are unacceptable. UNICEF’s recent research, a review of child poverty in high-income countries, evidences that child poverty has risen faster in the UK than in any other country analysed, and that racialised children are more than twice as likely to live in poverty than White children. While media headlines, charity campaigns and political pledges to tackle child poverty tend to be met with greater compassion, there is no escaping the fact that child poverty cannot be solved without tackling adult poverty; it’s not the kids who are juggling three low-wage, minimum-guaranteed-hours, insecure jobs and still unable to afford the essentials.
Undermining the goal to end child poverty: The intersections of harmful policy, deprivation and populism
Austerity cuts to public services and welfare support since 2010, combined with the ongoing cost-of-living crisis, have firmly established a context that will significantly hinder efforts to tackle child poverty. Wage poverty, inflated living costs, housing shortages, mouldy accommodation, high street decline, cuts to public services – from Sure Start centres to the NHS – and grudge-based populism are not conducive to improving children’s quality of life.
Action for Children has highlighted poor UK labour market conditions, with around 300,000 families with children in poverty despite all parents being in full-time work. Large businesses declare high profits and shareholder rewards, while the public purse tops up underpayment of their employees, unable to meet basic living costs. Increasing calls for fairer pay ratios, a maximum wage for CEOs and a wealth tax have not yet been met with courageous policies that encourage distributive equality.
Income, nutrition and housing security are key for children to thrive, but many are going without. Trussell reports that 2.9 million emergency food parcels were provided to people facing hardship across the UK between April 2024 and March 2025, with more than a million of these for children. This is equivalent to one parcel every 11 seconds and a 51 per cent increase compared to five years ago. Responding to the government’s statutory figures confirming 169,050 children are homeless in temporary accommodation in England – a 12 per cent increase in a year – Shelter shared daily accounts of families suddenly moved miles away from their friends and communities, stuck in grim B&Bs and hostels where they are crammed into single rooms, forced to live out of suitcases and often sharing facilities such as bathrooms. The charity painted a bleak picture of children’s items stacked against damp and mouldy walls. The number of households living in emergency accommodation such as B&Bs and hostels has doubled in the last decade to 22,700.
Despite the government’s manifesto pledges, housing costs are still spiralling and fuel prices are rising as another winter approaches. Offering a glimmer of hope, the government recently consulted on reforms to the administration and collection of council tax; this responds to inherent inequalities in the current system, which is based on outdated property valuations and involves more aggressive debt collection tactics than the regulated financial credit sector. Research by Debt Justice reveals that a third of people in council tax debt live below the poverty line, with 80 per cent in the bottom half of earners – indicating inability, not unwillingness, to pay. Aggressive enforcement tactics, such as bailiff visits, court orders and sudden full-bill demands only exacerbate hardship.
The potentially helpful small reforms on the table are undermined by harmful policies in other areas such as inadequate social security, underfunded public services and long waiting lists for social housing, alongside inflated living costs. Against a backdrop of high street decline, reliance on food banks and scarcity narratives, these bleak conditions have been a source of discontent. This environment has created fertile ground for community tensions, inflamed by years of racist scapegoating in tabloid media owned by wealthy elites with a vested interest in divide-and-rule narratives, and echoed from the mouths of politicians, emboldening those with previously quieter festering bigotry. The resulting climate of resentment has been easily exploited by populist and far-right actors, contributing to a rise in hate crimes, civil unrest and incidents of criminal damage – including the bewildering arson of a Citizens Advice branch – adding to problems in left-behind and deprived communities.
The socio-economic duty: Policymaking for social good instead of social harm
As we argued in our previous article, the long-neglected dormant socio-economic duty (Section 1, Equality Act 2010) must be activated in Westminster. The governments of Scotland and Wales have already commenced the clause, and over 40 local authorities in England have voluntarily adopted it as good practice, generating success stories. Screening out strategic policy positions that could cause or worsen disadvantage and proactively seeking opportunities to embed positive effects into policy design has the potential to make a difference. The Westminster Labour government has been slow to bring a Commencement Order to see its manifesto pledge reach fruition. But its plans to develop a child poverty strategy may be a great opportunity to use the duty to develop new strategic thinking.
The socio-economic duty requires public authorities to consider how their plans could reduce inequalities which result from socio-economic disadvantage. One way this could be put to good use would be to embed the After Housing Cost (AHC) measure of poverty. Families in poverty often spend a larger proportion of their income on housing – especially in the current cost-of-living crisis. Adopting this measure would provide a more accurate picture of child poverty, highlighting the impact the cost-of-living and housing costs are having on actual poverty levels. This measure would also align with the outcomes focus of the duty and reflect the lived consequences of socio-economic disadvantage – the extra financial burdens that arise from poor health, educational inequality and social exclusion. This would also enhance accountability for policy interventions to tackle child poverty.
Applying the socio-economic duty to other policy areas is also key. The two-child benefit cap introduced in 2017 has been a focus of debate in the lead up to and aftermath of the 2024 general election. It can be argued that this cap breaches the duty. Research shows the policy disproportionately affects low-income families, single parents, racialised* families and households with disabled children, impacting longer-term development and life chances, and further entrenching disadvantage across generations. Candidates in the Labour deputy leadership campaign have hinted that the policy could be scrapped this November, bringing urgently needed relief.
Similar arguments can be made in relation to the chronic shortage of social housing in the UK. This shortage causes overcrowding, insecure, poor-quality private rentals, a reliance on temporary accommodation and homelessness, impacting 164,000 children, according to the National Housing Association. In these circumstances, children will experience poor physical and mental health, disruption to their education and emotional stress and instability. Implementing the duty would not only require public bodies to consider how their housing allocation practices reduce or reinforce inequality, but would also generate actions to revise housing strategies, make transparent and equitable allocation criteria and invest in social housing as a preventative measure against child poverty.
Finding the political will
When the Labour government was elected in 2024, there was high dissatisfaction with the effects of 14 years of austerity politics as well as with the Conservatives’ Covid contracts and lockdown party controversies. There was a strong mandate to deliver on the new government’s manifesto pledges and to reverse austerity. However, instead of bold action to repair public services, social welfare and living conditions, thus far we have seen a continuation of austerity harms and pandering to the populist and far right.
While those at the sharp end feel the worst effects of poverty, health inequalities and community tensions, The Spirit Level by Professors Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett, and its 15-year review, provides a strong evidence base concluding that more equal societies deliver benefits to everyone. Where the wealth gap is narrowed and resources are distributed more equitably, the positive effects on rates of crime, trust in democracy, social cohesion and wellbeing are enjoyed by all.
This moment calls for a change of direction, with courageous leadership on progressive policies to do what charities, communities and the children living in poverty are crying out for.
* “Racialised” highlights how race is socially constructed and used to oppress, particularly affecting those without white privilege through experiences like othering, microaggressions and disproportionate policing.
Lee Gregory is an Associate Professor at the University of Nottingham and Chair of Academics Stand Against Poverty UK Trustees.
Vanessa Boon is a Senior Project Officer at The Equality Trust.
Dave Beck is a Lecturer in Social Policy at the University of Salford.
Read all the articles in the Academics Stand Against Poverty blog series here.
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