The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Mr Iain Duncan Smith)
On Thursday 15 November the Government laid before Parliament and published “Measuring Child Poverty: A consultation on better measures of child poverty”. The Command Paper is available online at:
www.education.gov.uk/aboutdfe/departmentalinformation/consultations/a00216896/measuring-child-poverty
The consultation will run until 15 February 2013.
The consultation is in three parts. It reaffirms the Government’s commitment to ending child poverty and makes the case for a better measure, examines what the dimensions of a new measure might be and explores a number of design questions.
The most recent statistics showed 300,000 children moved out of relative income poverty. However, this was largely due to a fall in the median income nationally that pushed the poverty line down; absolute poverty remained unchanged and children who were “moved out” of poverty were no better off than before.
Family income remains an important part of how we consider child poverty, but income alone is not enough. The intention is to design a multi-dimensional measure that includes but goes beyond income.
The consultation proposes eight dimensions; worklessness, unmanageable debt, poor housing, parental skills, access to quality education, family stability and parental health.
Once the consultation has closed, the Government will consider how to take forward multi-dimensional measurement of child poverty and will respond to the consultation in due course.