DSPI study shows long-term childhood poverty in Britain rose sharply after austerity reforms
Image: yupachingping / stock.adobe.com
Our study shows that policy matters: when support for families on low incomes is stronger, long-term childhood poverty falls. When that support is reduced, more children are pushed into long-term poverty. If the government wants to bring those numbers down, it needs to restore benefits to their real pre-austerity value. Dr Selçuk Bedük
New research from DSPI’s Dr Selçuk Bedük shows that more than one in five children born after 2013 experience poverty for at least half of their childhood (from birth to age ten). This study provides the first comprehensive evidence that long-term childhood poverty in Britain has significantly surged following the austerity-era welfare reforms.
Tracking children born in Britain between 1991 and 2017, the study shows that long-term childhood poverty fell for children born after the late 1990s, remained stable for children born in the 2000s, and then rose sharply among children born after the 2013 when the austerity reforms started to be implemented. By the 2016-2017 cohort, 23% of children experienced long-term childhood poverty.
Poverty during childhood is known to have damaging effects on children’s life chances, including educational achievement, employment prospects, earnings and health. Also, longer exposure is linked to more damaging consequences.
Key findings
The study, Long-term childhood poverty in Britain: Trends and drivers across the 1991-2017 birth cohorts, by DSPI’s Dr Selçuk Bedük and UCL’s Anna Yong finds that:
- 25% of children born in the early 1990s experienced poverty for at least half of their childhood
- This fell to 13-14% of children born in the 1998-1999 cohort, partly due to rising employment and earnings among low-income households following welfare reforms after 1997
- Rates of long-term childhood poverty remained stable for children born in the 2000s, despite the 2008 financial crisis, partly because of increased support for lower-income families following the post-1997 welfare reforms
- Following the post-2013 austerity reforms, the long-term childhood poverty rate rose sharply, reaching 23% among children born in 2016-2017
- Over the past three decades, nearly one in six (17%) of children in the Britain have experienced poverty for at least half of their childhood, rising to above one in five (23%) among cohorts born after 2013
Relevance to UK Government policy
The findings are highly relevant to the UK Government’s 2026 Child Poverty Strategy which identifies child poverty as a national priority and highlights its long-term social and economic cost. However, the strategy does not specifically address long-term childhood poverty.
Dr Selçuk Bedük, Departmental Lecturer in Comparative Policy at DSPI, commented: ‘For nearly a quarter of children in Britain today, poverty is long-term and defines much of their childhood. Our study shows that policy matters: when support for families on low incomes is stronger, long-term childhood poverty falls. When that support is reduced, more children are pushed into long-term poverty. If the government wants to bring those numbers down, it needs to restore benefits to their real pre-austerity value.’
The research findings also suggest changes, such as removing the two-child limit and uprating of Universal Credit, could reduce long-term childhood poverty. In contrast, an increase in the minimum wage alone, without adequate benefit support, would be unlikely to have a significant impact on long-term childhood poverty.
Read the full study published in the Journal of Social Policy
