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Monitoring Poverty and Social Exclusion 2012Tom MacInnes
New Policy Institute
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Monitoring Poverty and Social Exclusion
• For 15 years NPI have produced a report covering a range of measures of disadvantage
• This year we have chapters on income, work, education, disability, housing and social security
• All the data we use is from official sources – task is to reflect government’s work back at them
• DWP launched a consultation around new “better” measures of child poverty. What might these be?
• We look at the existing measures, then at some important emerging issues that should be monitored
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Poverty and low income
• At the moment, when we talk about poverty we talk about people in low income households
• A household is in low income if, after taxes and adjusting for the size of the household, its income is below 60% of the national average (median)
• In 2010/11, the low income thresholds were £251 pw for a couple with no children, £384 for a couple with 2 and £301 for a lone parent with 2
• This is sometimes referred to as “relative” low income
• We also need to consider how people’s living standards are compared to previous years.
• We measure this against a fixed income threshold. This is sometimes called “absolute” poverty. When the economy is growing, this falls anyway.
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Child poverty – the existing measures
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In work poverty - why did child poverty not fall further
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Poverty and housing
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Big changes and emerging issues
• None of this is to say that only income matters. Our report covers housing, education, work, health
• For our report, though, the intersection with low income or some similar measure is important
• In some of these areas, the next few years will see some big changes. We highlight welfare reform, homelessness, health and education
• These are big, structural issues, requiring responses from institutions and organisations in all sectors
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Large numbers affected by welfare reform
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Many people affected more than once
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Homelessness on the rise
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Growing health inequalities
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Gaps in education are big but vary a lot
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Final points
• Talk about measurements and statistics can seem dry, but the choice of what to focus on sets priorities
• But the measurements that exist are fine – changing them is not key
• A focus on “fixing” poverty through individual work incentives and welfare reform is wholly insufficient
• Current changes to housing and benefits will affect a lot of people and risk making some not just poor but actually destitute
• And some families will be hit by multiple changes to benefit – these intersections matter and are not being picked up