Good housekeeping: ensuring the basis for sustained poverty reduction.

• Author: Sutherland, Holly

Abstract

Reducing levels of child poverty (as well as poverty in general) in a way that can be sustained over time requires not only policy measures that create opportunities and future capabilities. It also depends on having a social protection system that keeps pace with economic and social change and is appropriate across all communities, and which does not itself preclude individual risk-taking and initiative. Some conflict is inevitable between the goal of providing adequate social protection for those unable to support themselves and that of maintaining incentives to work and to save for those who have the potential to do so. Nevertheless, there are aspects of the design and evolution of cash benefits (and associated policies) that can improve the terms of the trade-off between the two goals. This paper draws on the experience of the United Kingdom's child poverty agenda over the last eight years, and on assessments of the prospects for a sustained reduction in child poverty in the future, to explore what these features might be. It also considers evidence from international comparisons of poverty and social protection systems.

INTRODUCTION

This paper considers "social investment" in two ways. First, it considers what a framework for policy might look like that lays the basis for sustained poverty reduction. Second, it focuses on obvious ways to invest in the future: investment in children and reduction in poverty among children. The term "good housekeeping" in the title refers not to Margaret Thatcher's exhortation to "live within one's means" (2) but rather, since investment usually involves borrowing of one kind or another, it is intended as a reference to the need for social policy to have a stable and consensual framework to work within. Drawing on the experience of the United Kingdom's child poverty agenda over the last eight years, and on assessments of the prospects for a sustained reduction in child poverty in the future, I explore what lessons can be learned that might be relevant in other countries.

The next section explains how the UK targets for child poverty were set, briefly describes the associated policy reforms, and provides an assessment of their effects and prospects for the future. Several key issues for the longer term are identified and two of them are discussed in the following two sections: respectively, the basis for the regular uprating of benefits (and tax thresholds) and the complexities of understanding what matters in determining whether child poverty will fall in a sustained way. A subsequent section draws on evidence from the other countries of the EU about the relationships between cash support for children and child poverty. The concluding section summarises the main points of the paper and finishes with some open questions for discussion.

CHILD POVERTY IN THE UK: WHAT HAS HAPPENED AND WHAT MIGHT HAPPEN?

As is well known, the UK government has set targets for reducing child poverty and eventually "eliminating" it by 2020. The original pledge was made unexpectedly by Tony Blair in a lecture in March 1999 where he undertook to "end child poverty forever" within 20 years (Blair 1999). An immediate target was set of cutting the child poverty rate by a quarter against a relative target between 1998/99 and 2004/05. (3) Since then a more elaborate series of targets has been established, which to some extent recognise the multi-dimensional nature of poverty, some of which are backed up by the authority of Public Service Agreements (PSA). (4)

* There is a PSA target to halve the number of children in relative low-income households between 1998/99 and 2010/11. Relative low-income households are those with income below 60% of the contemporary equivalised median, measured without deducting housing costs. Meeting this target would mean reducing the number of poor children in Britain to 1.7 million.

* There is a second tier of the 2010/11 target (without a PSA) to reduce the number of children in "absolute low income" to under 1 million. Absolute low income is having an income below the 1996/97 poverty line, indexed for inflation. The latest estimate, for 2004/05, is 1.4 million children below this poverty line. (5)

* A third tier--currently in the form of a commitment to set an additional target (see Harker 2006)--consists of a measure of material deprivation and low income combined: a child is considered poor if it is both measured as being materially deprived (lacking a series of essential goods and services) and being in a household with income below 70% of the contemporary median.

Child poverty will be considered to be falling if all three measures are moving in the right direction (DWP 2003). Success in "eradicating child poverty"--the implicit target for 2020--is being interpreted as having a material deprivation rate for children that approaches zero, together with having a relative child poverty rate that is "among the best in Europe". Exactly what this means is not clear but has been assumed to be equivalent to a child poverty rate that is in single figures like those of the Nordic countries. Figure 1 shows the latest available figures for child poverty rates in the EU, corresponding to 2003 incomes. The value of 22% is lower than that shown for the UK at the time when child poverty reduction became a high profile policy goal (using 1998 incomes) at 29%. Nevertheless it remains far short of being one of the lowest rates in Europe, at the sixth highest in the EU25. (6)

[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]

I return to how the UK might learn lessons from its EU neighbours in the section "What do other countries do?" Here, I consider further the extent to which British child poverty rates have fallen and how far child poverty rates must fall if the targets for 2010/11 and 2020 are to be met.

In 1998/99 the British child poverty rate (at 24% using national conventions for measurement) was among the highest in Europe and the OECD. It fell to 19% (according to the latest estimate for 2004/05), at least partly due to the policy measures introduced in response to concern about this situation. The trajectory is shown in Figure 2 alongside the path that child poverty rates should follow if there was to be a smooth reduction in child poverty to meet the 2004/05 target followed by the 2010/11 and 2020 targets (the level corresponding to "among the best in Europe" being assumed to be 5%). As can be seen, the 2004/05 target was not quite met: child poverty fell by 23% of its level in 1998/99 rather than the targeted 25%. In order to speculate whether the fall in child poverty can continue on a sustained basis, or even accelerate in order to meet the targets, we need to understand what contributed to the reduction observed so far.

[FIGURE 2 OMITTED]

Effects of Policy Reforms

From 1999 onwards a whole battery of policy reforms was introduced with the aim of reducing child poverty. These ranged from increasing benefit payments for children, to devising new forms of cash support for parents with low earnings, to encouraging and enabling entry into paid work (particularly for lone parents), to setting up new services for disadvantaged children. For more information about the specific policy measures, see HM Treasury (2004).

It is not straightforward to establish how much the extra measures cost or how great their effect. One estimate is that up to 2004 the cash income changes amounted to an increase in spending equivalent to 0.6% of GDP on child-contingent parts of the tax-benefit system and 0.3% on services for children, not including education (Hills and Sutherland 2004). The Treasury itself expressed the spending on benefits and credits for children over the same period as a "real terms rise of 72%" (HM Treasury 2004). This serves to pose the question of what to assume about the counterfactual policies (what would have happened otherwise) and, relatedly, what to assume about how taxes and benefits should adjust over time. This latter point is considered in the following section, "Principles for regular tax-benefit uprating".

Generally the approach to policy reform has been, on the one hand, to seek solutions through "work for those who can; security for those who cannot" (DfEE/DSS 1998) and, on the other hand, to "focus both on the direct ways of helping today's children and on improving the capacity of tomorrow's parents to lead fulfilling lives, free of poverty" (Hirsch 2006:49). In essence, this latter agenda has been seen as being best addressed through improvements in the effectiveness of formal education. (7)

The focus of this paper is on the medium-term agenda. Delivering a higher-capacity generation of parents through improved educational outcomes may well contribute to lower child poverty rates, and policy with this aim is clearly an appropriate component of any long-term strategy. At the same time, if child poverty rates do not continue to fall in the short and medium term, and the medium-term target in 2010/11 is missed by a long way, it is implausible that improved parental capacity alone can deliver the eradication of child poverty by 2020. (It is also, of course, uncertain whether educational outcomes can be improved enough and fast enough, or whether such changes necessarily lead to the returns to work that are required to have a major impact on child poverty.)

The evidence in Figure 2 suggests that the medium-term target might be met through "more of the same", given that the strategy so far has been quite successful, even though the 2004/05 target was not met. The trend appears to be downward at about the right gradient. However whether this is feasible depends on our assessment of why child poverty rates did fall. The two main drivers were an increase in parental employment and the direct boost to incomes provided through increased out-of-work benefit rates (for children) and a new and more generous system of in-work tax credits. While it is generally agreed that work is...