Children: Poverty
(asked on 29th June 2021) - View Source
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what estimate her Department has made of the number of children living in poverty in (a) Coventry North East constituency, (b) Coventry, (c) the West Midlands and (d) England; what recent assessment she has made of the effect of the covid-19 outbreak on the levels of child poverty in those areas; and what assessment she has made of the adequacy of the welfare system in helping to alleviate levels of child poverty in those areas.
National Statistics on the number and percentage of children in low income are published annually in the “Households Below Average Income” publication. Data for Coventry North East constituency and Coventry is unavailable due to insufficient sample size.
Latest statistics for the number of children who are in low income in the West Midlands and England, covering 2019/20, can be found at: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/households-below-average-income-for-financial-years-ending-1995-to-2020 in children-hbai-timeseries-1994-95-2019-20-tables data table 4.17ts (relative low income, before and after housing costs) and in data table 4.23ts (absolute low income, before and after housing costs).
In the three years to 2019/20, the number of children in absolute child poverty, before housing costs, in the West Midlands was 300,000.
In the three years to 2019/20, the number of children in absolute child poverty, before housing costs, in England was 2,100,000, down by 200,000 since the three years to 2009/10.
The Department now publishes supplementary official statistics on the number of children in low income families at constituency level and at local authority level. Children in Low Income Families data is published annually. The latest figures on the number of children who are in low income in Coventry North East constituency and Coventry, covering 2019/20, can be found at:
Due to methodological differences, the figures in these two publications are not comparable.
No assessment has been made of the effect of the covid-19 outbreak on child poverty in those areas, nor the adequacy of the welfare system in helping alleviate child poverty in those areas.