This was interesting, but not unexpected. By Michael Marmot in The Guardian (full article here).
In the meantime...
Unicef reports child poverty among 41 OECD (mostly rich) countries. It uses a relative measure of poverty: children living in households at less than 60% median income. On this measure, the UK ranks 31 out of 41 countries (1 is the best); the US ranks 38. Using the same measure, where people are relative to others, child poverty in England, after housing costs, rose from 27% in 2010 to 30% in 2019. The government prefers an absolute measure of poverty – one that bizarrely takes relative poverty in 2010/11 as the standard – because that looks more favourable. A better absolute measure is the Joseph Rowntree Foundation’s minimum income standard. Under this measure, 39% of children were in poverty in 2008/9; 40% in 2020/21.
Not only is child poverty high, and rising, in the UK; we don’t spend very much on young children. The same Unicef comparison looks at public spending on child education and care for children aged nought to five. The average for OECD countries is $6,000 per child per year. Norway and Sweden spend around $12,000, France close to $9,000. In the UK, we spend $4,000, limping along below average. The US is worse, at $3,000.
In our evidence to the Covid inquiry, Clare Bambra, professor of public health at Newcastle University, and I concluded that we entered the pandemic with “public services depleted, health improvement stalled, health inequalities increased and health among the poorest people in a state of decline”. David Cameron and George Osborne, the architects of a decade of austerity, looked at the evidence of the damage their policies had caused – and rejected it.
Toodle pip
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