Last week over 8 million households received their first of two cost of living paymentsThe government finally recognized that the cost of living crisis is affecting all people, but its effects are still very uneven. Households on means-tested benefits will receive £326 directly into their bank accounts, with a further payment of £324 due later this winter, just before the increased energy bills bite even further.
These payments will be welcome and will help families meet rising food costs. The fact that the payments are a flat-rate per household means that not everyone is receiving the same amount. This is because if you give £326 to a single person then they are receiving £326 per household member; whereas if you give £326 to a family of five then they are only getting the equivalent of £65 per household member. Even an extra £65 per person will help, of course, but households with children will have to somehow make the money stretch much further. The cost-of-living payments will only make a small difference in reducing the financial and emotional stress of rising prices for families with kids.
This is how the flat-rate payment makes little sense. The flat-rate payment is part of a wider reluctance to support children’s expenses, especially if there are more than one sibling. Children from larger families have been at greater risk of poverty for a long time, but recent reductions in social security support have hit larger families hard. Our researchThe majority of child poverty increases between 2012/13 to 2019/20 were experienced by families with three or more kids.
This is confirmed by a new report from the Institute for Fiscal StudiesAccording to the IFS, larger families are more likely than smaller ones to be in poverty. According to the IFS the absolute poverty rate of children in families with three or fewer children was twice that of children who were the only child or had only one sibling,
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Too often, we overlook household size when analysing poverty risk. Too often, policy responses fail to address or even acknowledge how the needs and wants of a household change when there are more mouths feeding. With the cost of living payments, as with the £20 uplift to Universal Credit before it, we see policies that ignore household size, failing to provide adequate help to those who desperately need it. This must change if we want to support all children. Social security must recognize and respond to the household’s needs if we are going to provide adequate support.
Today’s welfare system also includes social security policies that explicitly withdraw support from children in larger families. The two-child limit and the benefit cap are particularly notable. These policies cut off the link between need, entitlement and social security and cause severe and likely permanent harm to children affected. Last week we learned that one-in-12 children live in households with more than two children. Our qualitative longitudinal research is revealing the multiple ways in which this is affecting children’s lives, including the material impact and the wider social, emotional and relational harms. These effects are likely not to be temporary and will be difficult to address.
While the cost-of-living payments are welcome, it is a policy approach that almost entirely ignores the challenges faced children and families. This is particularly troubling as living in a larger household is not an uncommon experience. Around 30% of all children living in the UK live in a house.
Family with three or more dependent children will have many more children. These decisions do not affect a small minority of children.
We all have a responsibility as parents to do more to support families with the costs associated with children’s education. Poverty analysis should pay more attention household size. Policymakers should also reconsider their dependence on flat rate payments. We all need to demand the end of the benefit cap and the two-child limit, which penalize children based on the number of their siblings. Too many children will remain in poverty without real and urgent changes. This is due to policymaking decisions that must be reversed.
Ruth Patrick (University of York), Aaron Reeves (University of Oxford) and Kitty Stewart (London School of Economics and Political Science) are part of a team, researching the impact of the benefit cap and two-child limit on families with three or more children. Their benefit changes and larger families research programmeThe Nuffield Foundation funds this project.
