The Live Wire

Child Poverty

Introduction

In 2006, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation published What will it take to end child poverty? Firing on all cylinders, which showed that new efforts were needed to meet the Government's child poverty targets for 2010 and 2020.

An ongoing programme of research is identifying what more needs to be done, and the impact of poverty on children's lives.

Key facts

  • The proportion of children living in poverty has doubled in the past generation.
  • The UK has proportionally more children in poverty than most rich countries.
  • In 1999, Tony Blair committed to ending child poverty by 2020.
  • In 2006/7, 2.9 million children were living in poverty.
  • 600,000 children were lifted out of poverty between 1998 and 2006.
  • This compares with a government target of 850,000 to be lifted out of poverty by 2004 and 1.7 million by 2010.

Our questions

  • What will it take to end child poverty?
  • What will policies to end child poverty cost?
  • Will current policies eradicate child poverty by 2020?
  • What will happen if we don't end child poverty?

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Sign up to our Child poverty mailing list to receive progress alerts on this project

www.jrf.org.uk/child-poverty

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