(1/10) A thread on poverty stats after the discussion between the PM and Keir Starmer today. What is poverty? At JRF we say it is when a person’s resources (mainly their material resources) is well below what they need to meet their minimum needs (including social participation).

(2/10) There are four main measures: incomes can be measured before or after housing costs have been deducted and the poverty line can be based on the average income in the current year (relative poverty) or just increased with inflation (absolute poverty).

(3/10) I’ve already tweeted today about the @JRF_UK & @savechildrenuk campaign to give a #LifelineForChildren by increasing the child element of Universal Credit and Child Tax Credits by £20 a week. That reduces poverty whatever measure is used.

(4/10) It was great to see this campaign raised at #PMQs today but I wanted to put on record the official changes in poverty numbers for children, working-age adults, pensioners and overall for each of the measures according to the latest Government stats: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/875261/households-below-average-income-1994-1995-2018-2019.pdf

(5/10) Looking at changes in recent years is affected by which year you start with. Starting with 2009/10 is sometimes done as that is the last year of the Labour Government. Comparing this to the latest available data for 2018/19 shows this:

(6/10) For all groups, more people have been swept into relative poverty with the largest effects for children and working-age adults. Absolute poverty is down slightly but this shows people aren't getting better off very quickly and is still pretty poor progress historically.

(7/10) At JRF, we usually use 2010/11 as our starting year, as that is a consistent period of growing average incomes, but the pattern is similar, except child poverty has increased on all measures:

(8/10) Thus overall relative poverty has increased between 2009/10 or 2010/11 and 2018/19 on either measure. Keir Starmer quoted a projection of what would happen to poverty in the future. As he mentioned the projection doesn’t take into account the effects of coronavirus.

(9/10) But what are the likely effects of coronavirus on the measures? That’s the subject of a future article I’m preparing, but the truth is, it is very hard to tell, with big, complicated effects for people of all incomes.

(10/10) What is evident is that it is critical our benefits system acts as a #lifelineforchildren and an anchor protecting people’s living standards in such turbulent times. Please do support our campaign.