Speaking in Parliament yesterday, the work and pensions secretary Iain Duncan Smith announced the introduction of a ‘new’ and ‘strengthened’ approach to measuring child poverty.
Mr Duncan Smith, who launched a consultation to consider ways in which to widen the measure of child poverty in 2012, believes the current income method of measuring child poverty is too simplistic and a poor test of whether children’s lives are genuinely improving.
Currently, a child is considered to be living in poverty if their household income is less than 60 per cent of the average (median) UK income.
In place of the Child Poverty Act 2010, the Government will be legally bound to report on the proportion of children living in workless household, long-term workless households and the educational attainment of all pupils and the most disadvantaged pupils at age 16.
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