Question to the Department for Education:

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what is their latest estimate of how many children live below the poverty line; and what assessment they have made of the impact of living below the poverty line on the future well-being of those children.

Estimates of the number and proportion of children in relative and absolute low-income are published in the National Statistics ‘Households Below Average Income’ (HBAI) series. The latest publication estimates that 2.3 million children (17%) lived below the relative low income line in 2012/13, measured on a before housing costs basis. We have made progress on this, there are 300,000 fewer children living in relative poverty since 2010 and the number of children growing up in workless families is at a record low.

The government recognises the importance of action to drive real change in children’s lives, by tackling the root causes of poverty: entrenched worklessness, family breakdown, problem debt, and drug and alcohol dependency. Evidence suggests that children who are raised in low income families are more likely to end up as poor adults.