Is there such a thing as child poverty in Britain today. I see every day kids with expensive toys, bikes etc. Inside their houses they all have huge tv sets and expensive furniture and these are those on benefits. In the supermarket people I know who are on benefit are piling their baskets high with luxury foods. So where is the poverty and if children are in poverty are the parents not in poverty too, If the parents have money and are not spending on their kids would that not be called child neglect which is a different thing.
Growingup in the 60s was really hard, we ate sugar sandwiches or dripping on bread for supper, but at the same time we always had something, clothes were made by my mother knitting a jumper she would buy a ball of wool every week until she had enough to complete it. I was never allowed second hand clothes and sacrifices were made to make sure I had new shoes for the start of a new term.
So I say child poverty is rubbish, it is parental greed and neglect.
https://fullfact.org/finder/economy/poverty_inequality/
Wondered what that re. was doing on the end of the link.
Try again.
I can't find any actual income figures, though, so it's still not clear which families are in poverty (and their children, of course). What is the 'average income' yardstick? I think the last figure I heard bandied about was £26,000, so any family with an income of less than £15,600 is in poverty.
It seems that the standard definition of poverty is a household earning 60% or less of the average household income. The average was around £27k pre tax in 2013. I am not a mathematician but I think that 60% is just over £16,000 p.a. pre tax. Please correct me if I'm wrong ��
Didn't I just say more or less the same thing...? 
Sorry Ana
You had said you couldn't find actual figures and someone else had said the didn't know what the definition was, so in explaining the published definition, I elaborated with figures which basically do concur with yours.
The full definition and the proposal is here...though the proposal has just been put on the back burner. Interesting to see the Joseph Rowntree Foundation amongst the contributors.
www.official-documents.gov.uk/document/cm84/8483/8483.pdf
Interesting reading.
Thank you for the link durhamjen my blood is boiling now I am so angry!
thank you for your comments everyone, I would like to point out that I don't look through windows, I have a job that means I must go to peoples houses. I wouldn't like to go back to the 50s of course but I think that maybe 50s values would not come amiss, I too hear parents shouting at their kids and it is silly, my child was bullied constantly at school because she didn't wear clothes that fitted the latest craze. I would not allow her to be pushed into peer pressure. She was dressed in decent hew clothes that did not have the latest logo. I had an argument once because she wanted brand name nuts for her cooking lesson and I gave her supermarket ones, some of her 'friends' laughed at her. If more parents made a stand like I did there would be less expense in buying kids clothes.Also many young parents single or otherwise feel that they are entiltled to a night off, I think that once you become a parent you are entitled to nothing, your child must come first. You can of course take your kids with you-no probs but nights in pubs are out. Remember kids grow up quickly and you can have nights out once they grow up. I don't drink and had no nights out when my child was small and I don't regret it. (Im widowed). So to sum up, if parents saved drink and cigarette money and bought ingredients instead of convenience foods there would be more money to go around.
neglect and abuse is different from being too poor to feed the kids, even people in work by the time rent tax water gas and electric as been paid, there is little left for other stuff, more people are getting homeless due to not being able to pay the mortgage is growing all the time, and well paid jobs are getting harder even for those who have been to college, let alone those who are educationally unable to go to college. a lot of the designer stuff the poor families have come from charity shops what every they say.
or from catalogs that again eat into the food money
Rubbish, Cactus. People who do not see the poverty around them make my blood boil. Do you think the Joseph Rowntree Trust are making up all their figures? They are the most respected research group that there is. All other reports quote the JRT. They have been researching poverty for over a hundred years.
I was teased at school because I did not have the right clothes. My shoes were so worn that a teacher gave me a pair of hers. But I do not say there is no poverty now like there was then.
The new Bishop of Durham criticises the government because its welfare reforms are making more and more people have to go to food banks. My parents never had to go and beg for food. It must be the most demoralising and dehumanising thing to do, beg for food for your kids.
We were lucky enough to grow up in a period of high employment after the war, our parents would not have had to scrabble for work or accept zero hours contracts. Of course there was poverty then as there is now but I have never heard my mother talk about food banks - she is 95 and is appalled by what she is hearing and saddened. She had hoped that her generation had fought to put an end to all that.
durhamjen, I don't agree, many people are just feckless, they just want immediate gratification and if going to a food bank means cheap food then if they qualify they go, there is no pride nowadays. After all you shouldn't have kids if you cant pay for them. Why should people have kids for the taxpayer to keep. Im on a really low income and brought up my kid on little but I would do without as long as she was fed and clothed, I bought things (still do) from charity shops. I would go from one cleaning job to another to make ends meet. However I bet these scroungers still buy electronic games for their kids and huge TVs etc.
I see many council houses with huge gardens going to waste, why cant the unemployed grow veg, instead of throwing lovely expensive toys outside, no-one can tell me that they haven't seen big expensive toys lying around in the gardens of some homes. They just sit around all day and drink lager in their front gardens (Ive seen benefit street too)
A lot of people had the kids first then got made redundant. Fortunately there is no such thing as a workhouse now, although I expect you think there should be! What do you expect people to do with their kids when they get made redundant?
Whitewave, your mother sounds a very caring woman. My husband's mother is 92, and she is horrified at the idea of foodbanks. It all reminds her of when she was growing up and the family did not have enough money. Her father had been a miner and had his back broken by a pit prop. Family helped them to survive, but nowadays many families live much further away. She went into service when she was 14. She was the youngest of six children. Although she was bright, her family could not afford to not have her pay coming in.
I would expect more sympathy from people of our generation, Cactus.
cactus60 undoubtedly there are feckless people, but there are also people who after holding a reasonable job are made redundant and then take a low paid job which means that they are now in a position of having a family which over a period of time they find it more and more difficult to cope financially. There are also people who because of a poor education have no skill to offer and so are also paid very poorly. We know that there is now a degree of malnutrition in the UK.
Now of course we have a choice, we can generalize about how feckless all those on benefit are and penalize all those poor people who can't make ends met or we can show compassion and care as our parents did when deliberating over the welfare state 50 or so years ago.
Whether it is working as intended is another debate, but to take away from those who have nothing in order to change the system is absolutely shameful.
www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/belief/2014/feb/21/church-bloody-angry-attacks-poor
Please read this, Cactus.
Well said, Whitewave.
I understand your arguments whitewave, but when I see people I know who pile up their supermarket trolley with luxury items and convenience foods it makes my blood boil, I cant afford that and I work, I need to work to pay my bills, Im on zero hours too like many of them and I've sacrificed too. I sometimes hear people talking about holidays as if they are essential, Ive never had a holiday for 20 years. I see some people who have no skills they are low intelligence and they get lots of benefits and keep on having kids. In the past employers would give them easy jobs for less wages than anyone else but these people were grateful and at least they were earning, they had pride but nowadays these jobs have been taken away and they have to rely on benefits.
Society is not changing for the better, no matter which party is in power but there are many people who like me see the scroungers for what they are.
Durhamjen, Ive read it and seems to me the church is trying to gain supporters through peoples hardships. Lets face it hardly anyone goes to church these days. I bet they go to eat their free meals but don't go to the service in church
oh cactus60 - life seems to have been hard for you, and I can understand how you must feel when you work so hard but seem not to get any benefit from it.
Of course there is abuse of the system - there always will be, but to put everyone in the same bucket - well even you must realize that there are lots of people like yourself working hard to make ends meet, and where these people fall on hard times then we as a country should be able to hold out our hands and give them a lift up.
All I am saying is that throwing the baby out with the bath water is not the answer
Sadly there are some of this generation who never needed for anything while they were growing, as a result they now do not know how to 'cut their cloth to suit their needs'.
Our generation had the benefit of being taught how to cook from scratch, nowadays it seems like a badge of honour to giggle and say 'I can't cook'. Domestic Science should be reinstated in school as a priority.
My former mother in law (bless her) was left to look after 7 children all were fed well on imaginatively cooked cheap food (couldn't face the beast heart though). Never had anyone else to lean on or any food banks to rely on.
Ive got pride, whitewave, Ive also got a 90 year old auntie who is 10 times worse than me, If she was prime minister a workhouse would be a luxury, she reckons no one should have kids outside of marriage and if they do they should not be given any benefits at all, not be given a free council house but live on the streets until they could find work.
I also know several people who are on benefits who are studying until they can get a job, a girl I know had 5 kids and her husband left her, she is studying and another girl does voluntary work and is a school governer etc so yes I know that everyone is not scrounging-just some.
I originally started this thread by saying that child poverty does not exist in this country and compared to third world countries it doesn't, none of our kids are running bare footed or naked through poverty and when I see some kids in the TV adverts I get annoyed that our whining brats (not all of them I know) feel neglected if they haven't got the latest computer game. all poverty is relative and compared to third world kids we have it easy
a lot of child malnutrition is that they are fed adult foods, children's bodies need fats and sugar and the good old nursery foods, but they also need to run about in the fresh air.
Cactus, that's just so bigoted and prejudiced. You do not have to take over from your aunt.
Both my sons had children before they were married. One of them still isn't married, and he and his partner have been together for nearly 20 years. However, neither of them have had council houses or lived off the state. The assumption, by you or your aunt that everyone who has kids outside marriage gets a council house is just so out of order.
Child poverty does exist in this country. Bury your head in the sand if you want to.
A European commissioner is warning the government in this country that it should not go down the route of America and accept foodbanks as part of the welfare state, which we are in danger of doing.
This is not a debate, simply an exchange of prejudices. In other words, worthless.
That's very rude, Anno. At least I can back my statements up with facts. If you think this discussion is worthless, you do not need to join in.
The Trussell Trust, which runs most of the foodbanks in this country, was set up by the church, Cactus, so of course the church is trying to get people to see their views.
In 1964, there were two foodbanks. In 2013, the number was increasing at 2 a week. I find that, frankly, quite appalling.
I still think that an income of around £17,000 doesn't mean that a family is in 'poverty'. That income equates to around £9 an hour if there's a single earner in the household, and I know many single parents who earn less than that and would never consider themselves poverty-stricken.
I concede that it might be difficult to survive on that amount in London or thereabouts but those of us 'up north' have been managing on much less than the average wage for years.
Registering is free, easy, and means you can join the discussion, watch threads and lots more.
Register now »Already registered? Log in with:
Gransnet »Get our top conversations, latest advice, fantastic competitions, and more, straight to your inbox. Sign up to our daily newsletter here.
