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How Effective is the British Governments Attempt to Reduce Child Poverty?

Author

Listed:
  • David Piachaud
  • Holly Sutherland
Abstract
The new Labour Government in Britain has made the reduction of child poverty one of its central objectives. This paper describes the specific initiatives involved in Labour's approach and weighs them up in terms of their potential impact. After setting out the extent of the problem of child poverty, the causes are discussed and Britain's problem is set in international perspective. The impact on child poverty of policies designed to raise incomes directly is analysed using micro-simulation modelling. A major emphasis of current policy is on the promotion of paid work, and we explore the potential for poverty reduction of increasing the employment of parents. We find that at its maximum, increasing paid work could roughly double the reduction in child poverty achieved by tax and benefit policies alone - a combined decrease of 1.85 million children in poverty. However, a more realistic forecast of increases in parental employment suggests that the number of children in poverty may be reduced by 1 million by 2002. The policies that address long-term disadvantage are also discussed and finally the whole programme is assessed and future strategy is considered.

Suggested Citation

  • David Piachaud & Holly Sutherland, 2000. "How Effective is the British Governments Attempt to Reduce Child Poverty?," CASE Papers case38, Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion, LSE.
    • Handle: RePEc:cep:sticas:case38
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    File URL: https://sticerd.lse.ac.uk/dps/case/cp/CASEpaper38.pdf
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    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. P. Jenkins, Stephen & Micklewright, John & Bradbury, Bruce, 2000. "Child poverty dynamics in seven nations," ISER Working Paper Series 2000-39, Institute for Social and Economic Research.
    2. Giovanni Andrea Cornia & Richard Strickland, 1990. "Rural Differentiation, Poverty and Agricultural Crisis in sub-Saharan Africa: Toward an appropriate policy response," Papers iopeps90/48, Innocenti Occasional Papers, Economic Policy Series.
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    4. Immervoll H & Mitton L & O'donoghue C & Sutherland H, 1999. "Budgeting for fairness? The distributional effects of three Labour Budgets," Microsimulation Unit Research Notes MU/RN/32, Microsimulation Unit at the Institute for Social and Economic Research.
    5. Bruce Bradbury & Markus Jantti, 1999. "Child Poverty across Industrialized Nations," Papers iopeps99/70, Innocenti Occasional Papers, Economic Policy Series.
    6. Olga Cantó Sanchez & Magda Mercader-Prats, 1998. "Child Poverty in Spain: What can be said?," Papers iopeps98/24, Innocenti Occasional Papers, Economic Policy Series.
    7. Teimuraz Gogishvili & Joseph Gogodze & Amiran Tsakadze, 1996. "The Transition in Georgia: From collapse to optimism," Papers iopeps96/11, Innocenti Occasional Papers, Economic Policy Series.
    8. Pudney, Stephen & Sutherland, Holly, 1994. "How reliable are microsimulation results? : An analysis of the role of sampling error in a U.K. tax-benefit model," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 53(3), pages 327-365, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Child poverty; tax and benefit policy; welfare-to-work;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • I32 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty - - - Measurement and Analysis of Poverty

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