The Future Looks Poor for Children in Wales

In Wales over 200,000 children are currently living in poverty, that’s 1 in 3.

This week sees the launch of Save the Children’s latest report  called ‘A Fair Start for Every Child’ which examines the causes and major consequences of poverty on the lives of children and families living in Wales and the rest of the UK.

The Report concludes that although the UK economy is gradually recovering from the recession, this will have little or no impact on the many thousands of children and families who are struggling to make ends meet today. Indeed new modelling suggests that the number of children living in poverty across the UK in 2020 maybe higher than those forecast by the Institute of Fiscal Studies.

For the poorer families within our community, the daily struggle to make ends meet is relentless. It costs more to be poor because of the ‘poverty premium’ i.e.  due to the way that low income families purchase every day goods and services and their limited access to cheap financing options, means that very often they end up paying more.

For example, low-income families are more likely to use a pre-payment metre for their energy. As a result, they pay a higher rate per unit than customers on direct debit. A typical annual dual fuel bill could be around 21% (£241) more expensive.

‘We are struggling to keep on top of bills and have enough to pay for food, it’s hard’

‘I wanted to go onto a quarterly bill to pay for the heating, and when I phoned them up and asked, they said that it wasn’t a problem, but its £150 to change the metre and you have to pay. It works out more than paying by direct debit. This is hard for us.’

Family, Merthyr Tydfil

Save the Children’s research shows that the poverty premium could be as high as £1,639 per year. Work no longer offers a complete solution to poverty. Despite an increase in employment, real wages are broadly unchanged; more than half of poor children in Wales live in working households. Wage growth for families with younger children was slightly worse than for older children.

‘My husband works full time in a call centre six days a week. The only day off he gets is Tuesday, so he misses putting the kids to bed because of his unsociable hours. He works 11am until 8/9pm, including weekends when the kids are off school.

‘We are desperately trying to save for a mortgage on this house we’re renting. We got rejected for a mortgage last year but will keep trying until we get it. My husband has got a budget and we have to stick to it. We really want this mortgage and if we can go without it, then we will.’

Parent, Cardiff

The Welsh Government has retained its commitment to eradicate child poverty by 2020. We welcomed the introduction of measurable milestones in the refresh of the Tackling Poverty Action Plan in 2013 but voiced concern that it failed to address the growing problem of in-work poverty and to acknowledge that many of the children living in poverty in Wales do not live in an area where they can fully benefit from all the Welsh Government initiatives to address child poverty in Wales.

The 2020 child poverty targets will not be met on the current course or any easily realistic alternative, a fact that has been widely acknowledged by analysts and commentators.

Save the Children believes that policy makers should either re-commit to the 2020 child poverty targets and come forward urgently with a credible and necessarily radical strategy for how they will achieve this or introduce the most ambitious achievable interim aims to tackle child poverty by 2020, with a corresponding plan.

The status quo is not acceptable. The situation and risk grows worse for the children in poverty in the UK, but the political response remains stuck in time. Fixing this is a responsibility for all political leaders.

The UK report ‘A Fair Start for Every Child’ and the Wales briefing can be found here

Mary Powell-Chandler is Head of Save the Children in Wales