Poverty: Children
(asked on 21st May 2019) - View Source
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, pursuant to the Answer of 20 May 2019 to Question 254154 on Poverty: Children, what assessment she has made of the reasons for the decline in the number of children in absolute low-income households between 2004-5 and 2009-10.
Absolute low income takes the 60 per cent of median income threshold from 2010/11 and moves this in line with inflation. This is designed to assess how low incomes are faring with reference to inflation. The percentage of individuals in absolute low income will decrease if individuals with lower incomes see their real incomes rising (increasing by more than inflation).
Trends in the number of children in absolute poverty can be found using the link below, in table 4.4tr, in the file “children-trends-hbai-1994-95-2017-18-tables.ods”.
Between 2004/05 and 2009/10 the number of children in absolute low income households before housing costs fell, indicating that children in lower income households saw their real incomes rise by more than inflation. However, the number of children in absolute low income households after housing costs was 3.8m in both 2004/05 and 2009/10. This suggests that for low income households with children, these real rises in income were offset by increasing housing costs during this period.