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CHILD POVERTY IN SOCIAL INCLUSION PARTNERSHIPS
CHAPTER SIX CONCLUSIONS
CHILD POVERTY IN SCOTLAND
6.1 Child poverty increased dramatically in Scotland, and in Britain more generally, during the 1980s and 1990s. It did so at a faster rate than in almost all other advanced welfare states over this period. Scotland (and Britain as a whole) has one of the largest proportions of children in poverty among the OECD nations.
6.2 The evidence suggests, however, that child poverty in Scotland has fallen slightly since the late 1990s. Robust employment and rising real wages within a more stable macro-economy are likely to be important factors helping to explain this recent decline in child poverty. The Scottish Executive and UK Government's commitment to tackling the problem have also helped to reduce the number of children in poverty. As discussed in Chapter Two, a raft of measures at national and local level has been introduced to address child poverty and social exclusion more generally.
6.3 The latest available evidence indicates that the proportion of children in poverty in Scotland is at last beginning to fall, as is the proportion of children living in workless households. Although progress to date has not been dramatic, the numbers are now moving in the right direction. The fact that progress is slow is an indication of the magnitude and complexity of the problem.
6.4 However, despite signs of progress, the numbers of children in poverty remain large. The evidence suggests that, in 1999/2000, 3 out of every 10 children in Scotland were in poverty, defined as living in a family where disposable income, after housing costs, was less than 60 per cent of the GB median. This is still a very high figure compared with other countries in the European Union.
6.5 Child poverty is not distributed evenly across the population, but instead affects some types of household much more than others. This report has shown that, in 1999/2000, the incidence of child poverty in Scotland was especially high among children living in households where the highest income householder was not in work and particularly those where no-one was in work. It was also very high among lone parents, families with 3 or more children, parents under the age of 25, and tenants in social and private rented housing. These types of family consequently accounted for a disproportionate share of Scotland's children in poverty.
6.6 The rate of child poverty was also found to be higher in urban Scotland than in rural Scotland. Correspondingly, urban areas accounted for a disproportionately large share of children in poverty. The City of Glasgow was also found to account for a larger proportion of children in poverty than its share of all children in Scotland. Residential areas broadly characterised as 'disadvantaged council estates' and 'families in council flats' also accounted for a disproportionate percentage of children in poverty.
6.7 The risk of children in Scotland being poor varied according to different sub-groups of families and households, even when other factors were held constant. By far the most important determinant of child poverty was the employment status of adults in the household. This confirms that paid work is the surest route out of poverty, even if - in 1999/2000 - it was not always a sufficient one. Data are not yet available, but the position may have improved since 1999/2000 because of recent measures such as increases in the national minimum wage, improvements to the Working Families Tax Credit and substantial real increases in Child Benefit. These developments should have helped to reduce child poverty among working households.
6.8 The research also confirmed for Scotland that the risk of child poverty was significantly lower among households where there were 2 earners than among either couples with one earner or lone parents in employment. Esping-Anderson has argued that the 2-partner household may be the best model for ensuring that the risks of poverty are minimised (cited in Oxley et al, 2001). But equally it could be argued that the welfare state needs to adapt to take into account the fact the relationship breakdown and divorce are pervasive and that new ways are needed to minimise the risk of poverty among one-earner households.
6.9 An important obstacle to work for partners in couple households and for lone parents is the need for childcare. Research has indicated that this obstacle concerns not just the cost of childcare but also its quality and availability. The Working Families Tax Credit covers 70 per cent of the cost of childcare. However, since the credit covers only formal sources of childcare, which can be very expensive, the remaining 30 per cent which the claimant has to pay can be a considerable sum, especially for those whose earning potential is quite low (cf. Vleminckx and Smeeding, 2001). Moreover, formal sources of childcare may not be desirable, available or suitable when the jobs on offer involve weekend work, irregular hours or shift work.
6.10 While worklessness is a major cause of child poverty, employment alone is not going to abolish it (Bradshaw, 2001c). For a variety of reasons, there will always be some children living in households where nobody is in paid work. An important reason why the rate of child poverty is so high among workless households is that the level of social security benefits is insufficient to ensure that they have an income that is not below 60 per cent of median income. This is one reason why child poverty is so high in Scotland (and in Britain more generally) compared with other OECD countries (Bradshaw, 1999).
6.11 The recent substantial increases in Income Support and Jobseekers Allowance benefit rates for children, especially those for children under 11 years of age, should help to reduce the rate of child poverty among workless households. Nevertheless, further increases in benefit rates may be necessary if the goal of defeating child poverty is to be achieved. Annual uprating of benefits in line with average earnings instead of retail prices may also be necessary.
CHILD POVERTY IN SIPS
6.12 The level of child income poverty was not one of the explicit criteria used by the Scottish Executive to select bids for Social Inclusion Partnerships. Nevertheless, the research reported here has shown that area-based SIPs contain a disproportionate share of the problem. It was found that, in 1999/2000, SIPs accounted for 16 per cent of children in Scotland, but for 29 per cent of children in poverty (again defined as below 60% of median income). The rate of child income poverty within SIPs was much higher than in the rest of Scotland. Indeed, half of all children in SIPs were found to be poor, compared with a quarter of children elsewhere. In other words, the incidence of child poverty was twice as high within SIPs as elsewhere.
6.13 Not only was the incidence of child income poverty much higher in SIPs than in other parts of Scotland, its composition was different. Children experiencing income poverty within SIPs exhibited more socio-economic deprivation and other indicators of disadvantage than poor children living in the remainder of Scotland. To that extent, children living in poverty within area-based SIPs were worse placed than those living elsewhere.
TACKLING CHILD POVERTY IN SIPS
6.14 It was noted above that child poverty was not one of the explicit criteria used to evaluate and select Social Inclusion Partnerships. SIPs aim to improve the lives of residents of designated areas, with a remit including, but not restricted to, economic change and urban regeneration. Whereas area-based SIPs, as the name implies, target specific geographical localities, thematic SIPs target particular groups at risk of social exclusion, such as young people, black and ethnic minority communities, and prostitutes.
6.15 Given that they are potentially an important vehicle for helping to tackle child poverty at the local level, it is important to understand how SIPs perceive the problem. It was found that, despite the varying nature of the situations in which SIPs work and their differing objectives, SIP managers and other respondents held a broadly similar perception of child poverty. The one exception to this was that they differed in their definition of the term 'children'. SIPs and SIP-supported projects worked with a variety different definitions of 'children', in some cases because funders or statutory agencies themselves used different definitions.
6.16 Respondents in SIPs did not generally differentiate between the causes of poverty and its impacts on children. Nor did they differentiate between child poverty and the poverty of the area in which they were working. Indeed, they argued that neighbourhood effects meant that children could be affected by poverty even where their own family's income was above poverty levels. Indeed, SIP respondents understood child poverty in a much broader way than simply lack of income. Respondents also pointed to a lack of opportunity, low aspirations, and social problems (such as drug misuse, domestic violence, and anti-social behaviour) as important components of the problem of child poverty.
6.17 While SIP respondents considered child poverty to be a fundamental part of the social inclusion agenda, few had explicitly identified it as a substantive theme of their work. The projects that they identified which helped to tackle child poverty did not necessarily have 'children' or 'poverty' as key objectives. In so far as these projects helped to prevent or alleviate child poverty, it was as a beneficial outcome of services developed for some other primary purpose.
6.18 To the extent that child poverty is bound up with, or cannot be isolated from, wider aspects of social exclusion, this indirect approach has considerable merit. Tackling social exclusion and disadvantage in general will inevitably help to reduce child poverty (broadly conceived) or at least to reduce the impact of poverty. Nevertheless, it appears that SIPs are not at present giving strategic priority to tackling child poverty and that this may have implications for their contribution to defeating it.
6.19 However, it is important to note that SIPs cannot tackle child poverty in isolation. The causes and impacts of child poverty frequently lie beyond the powers of SIPs. For example, while they can pursue an income maximisation strategy (for example, via benefit take-up campaigns) they cannot raise claimants' income above benefit levels set by the Government. This serves to underline the importance of mainstream public services such as health, education and social services, not to mention national-level measures such as the minimum wage, Working Families and Disabled Persons Tax Credits, and the various New Deals for the unemployed.
6.20 Nevertheless, SIP managers identified a wide range of gaps in services that could have an impact upon child poverty. The most frequently mentioned included a shortage of suitable, well-paid employment opportunities, deficiencies in childcare, inadequate public transport, and insufficient funding for mainstream health, education and social work services. The Scottish Executive has announced commitments to substantial increases in expenditure on health, education and transport which should help to reduce many of the gaps identified. However, it also appeared that SIPs' responses to child poverty were perhaps not as fully co-ordinated as they might have been if SIPs had been required to give strategic priority to child poverty.
RECOMMENDATIONS AND ISSUES ARISING FROM THE RESEARCH
6.21 While the rate of child poverty is much higher in SIPs than elsewhere, the majority of poor children in Scotland do not live within the boundaries of an area-based SIP. Actions to tackle child poverty should therefore reach poor children wherever they are living and not just those living in deprived areas. Hence it is important to ensure that national-level initiatives and mainstream public services have a remit that includes tackling child poverty.
6.22 Nevertheless, this research suggests that there may be considerable merit in seeking to focus, at least to some extent, locally-based efforts to defeat child poverty on areas of acute social and economic deprivation such as Social Inclusion Partnerships. Not only is the rate of child poverty particularly high in SIPs (and probably in similarly deprived but undesignated areas), but poor children face a worse start in life there than do poor children elsewhere.
6.23 Although SIPs are playing an important role in the battle against child poverty, it is not an explicit one. Instead, it is more of a positive by-product of the work they are doing to tackle socio-economic deprivation and disadvantage more generally. The Scottish Executive might therefore wish to consider whether SIPs should be given an explicit goal of targeting child poverty, broadly conceived, in order to make clearer and more co-ordinated progress towards the ambitious goal of defeating this problem within a generation. There is of course the danger that SIPs might suffer from goal overload - and local identification of priorities remains important - but there is equally the danger that, without such a goal, their contribution to defeating child poverty may be unfocused.
6.24 The Scottish Executive could also consider how it might enable SIPs and mainstream public service providers to fill the gaps identified in the case study interviews with SIPs. Particular attention could be given to gaps in provision that may be creating barriers to SIP residents taking up work opportunities - such as childcare (cost, quality and availability) and transport (again, cost, quality and availability). These efforts could focus especially on improving provision outside of 9 to 5 office hours and at weekends, when childcare and public transport may be difficult to access or be very limited in availability.
6.25 Finally, consideration could be given to undertaking further research on child poverty and especially on the contribution that SIPs are or could be making towards defeating it. An important limitation of the research reported here is that it did not involve interviews with the users of SIP services and facilities, which of course include children as well as their parents. For example, relatively little is known about how children in SIPs and elsewhere in Scotland perceive and experience poverty and how it affects their expectations and aspirations. There may also be a case for an evaluation of the contribution that SIPs are making towards defeating child poverty. This would ideally have a longitudinal component and also include interviews with parents and children.
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