Poverty: Children

(asked on 15th October 2020) - View Source

Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, if she will make an assessment of the implications for her policies of the finding by the End Child Poverty Campaign that eight out of the 10 local authorities in which child poverty increased between 2014 and 2019 are in the North of England.


Answered by
Will Quince Portrait
Will Quince
This question was answered on 23rd October 2020

We have examined, from what has been published, Loughborough University’s methodology for estimating housing costs by constituency. We are unable to assess how robust the method for modelling local housing costs is and we do not know the process used for calibrating the local measures with regional level statistics on child poverty from Households Below Average Income.

National Statistics on the number and percentage of children in low income are published annually in the “Households Below Average Income” publication. These remain the most accurate published measurements of low income. The latest HBAI statistics (2018/19) show that since 2009/10, 100,000 children have been lifted out of absolute poverty (both before and after housing costs) and levels of combined material deprivation and low income for children are at their joint lowest level.

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