The current cost of living is pushing more people into poverty, with almost 68% of low income...
International comparisons
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16/04/2012
Rising income inequality in European Union
A paper by the OECD in Paris has highlighted growing income inequality in European countries – with large income gains among the top 10 per cent of earners as the main cause. The paper’s author constructs an aggregate measure of EU-wide inequality that takes into account inequality both within and between countries.
Category: Reports -
06/04/2012
Child poverty is a ‘multidimensional’ phenomenon
The importance of understanding child poverty as a multidimensional phenomenon is highlighted in a new report from UNICEF, Child Poverty and Inequality: New Perspectives. The report argues that as long as policy debates focus solely on income poverty, children and their priorities will be overlooked, and the battle to end the cycle of poverty will be undermined.
The report brings together a series of expert contributions on how and where children globally are experiencing poverty, and on the kind of policy responses that would structurally address their different deprivations.
Although an adult may fall into poverty temporarily, the report suggests that a child rarely gets a second chance – falling into poverty in childhood can last a lifetime. Child poverty not only threatens the individual child, it is also likely to be passed on to future generations.
Separate chapters in the report:
Category: Reports -
31/03/2012
Child deprivation in Europe
UNICEF researchers have estimated the degree to which deprivation is experienced by children in 29 European countries, using a child-specific scale. Their paper highlights the considerable differences between countries, suggesting that specific policy measures can be effective in combating child deprivation.
The researchers argue that studying deprivation – alongside the overlapping situation of children living in families poor in monetary terms – is imperative for understanding the scope and nature of poverty among children. Deprivation analyses are especially useful when studying the situation of children because children do not have equal access to the household’s income, and are more dependent on social goods and services (especially education and health).
Category: Reports -
31/03/2012
Income poverty dynamics in the European Union
Two researchers in Italy have published a paper that provides an updated analysis of income poverty in European Union (EU) countries up to 2007 and covers the newest member states. The analysis focuses on the main determinants of households falling into or rising out of income poverty, and finds that events related to the labour market are the most influential because of both their frequency and their impact.
The paper provides a broad-brush picture of poverty dynamics for individuals living in the enlarged EU, using data from the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions. Previous studies had examined only the ‘old’ EU 15 member states, and were more than 10 years old.
The analysis identifies which types of event are associated with the probability of entering – and exiting from – poverty.
Category: Reports -
01/01/2012
Intervention in labour markets needed to reduce poverty
The delivery of New Labour’s anti-poverty goals was hampered by an unwillingness to countenance a wider range of labour market interventions to reduce employers’ reliance on low pay, according to a report by the Smith Institute, From the Poor Law to Welfare to Work: What Have We Learned from a Century of Anti-poverty Policies? The authors, led by David Coats, examined a wide range of studies to determine the long-term effectiveness of strategies, both in the UK and internationally, to reduce poverty and inequality. The cornerstone of the report’s analysis is the contention that while redistribution of income through welfare is essential, it can be only one part of the solution to combating poverty:
The evidence from more than a century of reform is that lasting reductions in poverty and inequality also demand pre-distribution policies, notably in the labour market (through work and pay).
Category: Reports -
05/12/2011
Income gap rising within and between countries
The gap between rich and poor countries and within traditionally more equal countries has been rising, finds the latest OECD report, Divided We Stand, Why Inequality Keeps Rising. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) report found that:
Category: Reports -
24/11/2011
UK children are left behind
A new UNICEF report on child inequality in developed countries, The Children Left Behind, shows that children in the UK are more disadvantaged in terms of material well-being than those in the large majority of other rich countries. The report examines child inequality in 24 developed countries, ranking countries in terms of how far the most disadvantaged children fall behind those at the median level in health, educational and material well-being. The study finds that children in the UK are more disadvantaged in terms of material well-being than the large majority of other rich countries. The UK comes nineteenth out of the 24 countries, well below France and Germany, though above the USA.
UNICEF UK’s Executive Director David Bull said:
Tackling income poverty should remain the number one priority for Government to reduce child inequality in the UK. At a time of austerity we must not widen this gap.
Category: Reports -
01/11/2011
Promoting a child focus in poverty impact analysis
Ways of generating evidence on the impacts of policy reforms on children are outlined in a joint paper from the World Bank and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), Integrating a Child Focus into Poverty and Social Impact Analysis.
This Guidance Note outlines some of the potential poverty and social impacts of common economic and social policy reforms on children and gives an overview of existing tools and methods that can be used for analysing these impacts. It also outlines approaches for mitigating negative and enhancing positive effects on children and discusses how children’s perspectives can be included in a Poverty and Social Impact Analysis (PSIA).
The full paper is available from UNICEF.
Category: Reports -
17/08/2011
South Africa
A common view exists about what is required for an acceptable standard of living in South Africa despite significant social, racial and economic inequalities. This standard is above that which much of the population obtains.
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