(UK) 400,000 children will fall into relative poverty by 2015, warns IFS

[alp227]

Source: the guardian

The government shakeup of the tax and benefits system will see a further 400,000 children fall into relative poverty during this parliament, leaving Britain on course to miss legally binding targets to reduce child poverty by 2020, according to the Institute of Fiscal Studies.

In a bleak assessment of changes in the government's new social contract, the IFS said the number of children in absolute poverty in 2015 will rise by 500,000 to 3 million. Even worse, by 2020 3.3 million young people – almost one in four children – will find themselves in relative child poverty.

This is 2 million short of the 2020 target to reduce child poverty to 10% or less of all children and represents an increase of 800,000 on the figures for 2011.

The IFS, the UK's leading public finance thinktank, warns: "Absolute and relative child poverty are forecast to be 23% and 24% in 2020–21 respectively. These compare with the targets of 5% and 10%, set out in the Child Poverty Act (2010).

Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2011/oct/11/children-poverty-institute-fiscal-studies

[PSPS]

1. Well who cares? What do you want anyway? To tax the rich?

The top tax "band" (bracket) in the UK is 40% (applies only to income over £34,800 -- about $55,000.) Thatcher halved it, just like Reagan did here. And the misery has been building ever since.

[dipsydoodle]

3. Its 50%, not 40%

and the figures you mentioned are after all personal allowances etc. Aside from which she reduced the top rate down from 60% so she didn't half it.

So for example if personal allowances were say £8000 then tax stays at 20% up to £42800 using your figures.

[dipsydoodle]

2. And here's the USA for comparison

Soaring Poverty Casts Spotlight on ‘Lost Decade’

WASHINGTON — Another 2.6 million people slipped into poverty in the United States last year, the Census Bureau reported Tuesday, and the number of Americans living below the official poverty line, 46.2 million people, was the highest number in the 52 years the bureau has been publishing figures on it.

And in new signs of distress among the middle class, median household incomes fell last year to levels last seen in 1996.

Economists pointed to a telling statistic: It was the first time since the Great Depression that median household income, adjusted for inflation, had not risen over such a long period, said Lawrence Katz, an economics professor at Harvard.

“This is truly a lost decade,” Mr. Katz said. “We think of America as a place where every generation is doing better, but we’re looking at a period when the median family is in worse shape than it was in the late 1990s.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/14/us/14census.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all

Appears to be little difference between the UK and the US.