Monitoring Poverty and Social Exclusion 2012Tom MacInnes

New Policy Institute

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

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.

Child poverty – the existing measures

In work poverty - why did child poverty not fall further

Poverty and housing

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

Large numbers affected by welfare reform

Many people affected more than once

Homelessness on the rise

Growing health inequalities

Gaps in education are big but vary a lot

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