Poverty still the reality for too many

Jan 25 2010 by Kevin Rowan, The Journal

WHILE much of the political discourse is focusing on the ‘need’ to reduce the public deficit as quickly as possible, forming a key battleground for the General Election, some apparently less glamorous discussions are struggling for airtime.

In the North East one of the things we should be hoping to hear is how the incoming government is going to tackle the persistent and determined prevalence of poverty in our region.

One in four children in the North East is growing up in poverty now, today, a figure likely to increase as the recession and unemployment continue to grip the region.

Being in work is no guarantee of escaping poverty. More children living in poverty are in households where at least one person is in work than there are children in poverty in workless households.

A report by the Institute for Fiscal Studies last week emphasised the dramatic lack of impact work has on parents in poverty entering employment. Work is important, clearly, but while a large percentage of parents entering work do escape poverty (65%) it is worrying that this research showed that over three years over a third of parents moving into work are still below the poverty line.

There is a clear gender split, with families more likely to move out of poverty if a father moves into work, while lone mothers are the most likely to remain in poverty, only 41% scraping above the poverty line over a three-year period of work. The nature of employment is, of course, a highly relevant factor, with the poverty exit rate being much higher where parents move into full-time work.

Changes in working hours are influential too on exits from poverty, so the significant degree of short-time working adopted in the current recession may well have a clear impact on poverty. Although the evidence is not conclusive it does appear that job-related training may guard against falling back into in-work poverty.

It does seem anarchic to be talking about poverty in the UK in 2010, but this does remain a key public policy challenge facing the government today. As we await the next set of recommendations from the Low Pay Commission we might want to consider how many families might be lifted out of poverty if it were to provide a significant lift to minimum wage rates. In addition the vulnerability of employment, its temporary and casual nature, plus the ability for all workers to develop their skills remain public policy challenges that can have a significant effect on tackling poverty.

Kevin Rowan, regional secretary, Northern TUC