Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the relative importance of (1) improving health and education, and (2) increasing GDP per capita, in reducing poverty in the UK.

Increasing GDP per capita leads to higher individual income on average, though its impact on poverty will depend on how that increase is distributed. If there is a real terms increase in household incomes for those at the bottom of the income distribution, this reduces the number of people in absolute poverty. Higher household incomes for those at the bottom would also reduce the number of people in relative poverty, if the household incomes for those at the bottom of the income distribution were to increase relative to the median household income.

For example, from 2010 to 2019, GDP per capita grew by 10.4%. Over a similar period, from 2009-10 to 2019-20, the number of people in absolute poverty before housing costs fell by 700,000, and the number of people in relative poverty before housing costs increased by 1.4 million.

As our economic recovery gathers pace, we are continuing to help people to move into and to progress in work through our expanded Plan for Jobs. Our approach is based on clear evidence that work, particularly full time, is the most effective way of tackling poverty. In 2019/20, working age adults in households where all adults were in work were 6 times less likely to be in absolute poverty (after housing costs) than adults in a household where nobody works.