How can we tackle child poverty in Northern Ireland?
The Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) has published a Viewpoint examining what the Northern Ireland Assembly can do to help meet the 2020 target to end child poverty.
The Viewpoint can be downloaded free from http://www.jrf.org.uk/
Persistent poverty in Northern Ireland (21 per cent before housing costs) is more than double that in Great Britain (9 per cent), in a society emerging from over 30 years of conflict.
In order to reduce child poverty in the region, the Northern Ireland Assembly should consider these measures:
- Work with employers to provide more well-paid, good quality jobs.
- Support those in work to gain qualifications.
- Consider increasing the threshold for earnings allowed within the benefit system for ‘mini-jobs’.
- Address the lack of good quality, affordable childcare.
- Ensure school budgets can provide for all the costs of education.
- Provide better access to leisure and social activities for young people in poverty.
- Increase educational attainment for disengaged young people by providing more Alternative Education Programmes.
This work builds on previous research from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) in 2008, which estimated that child poverty costs £25 billion each year in costs to the Exchequer and reduced GDP.
A series of reports focused on key policy areas relevant to the 2020 target. They showed:
- the importance of improving the incomes of parents out of work and the earnings of those already working;
- the need for a major change in four policy areas: childcare; job flexibility and quality; parents' skills; and benefits and tax credits.
If you would like to discuss these issues further, please do contact Helen Barnard who is leading on this work. Helen can be contacted at helen.barnard@jrf.org.uk or by telephone 019 0461 5933.
