THAT 14 million people in the UK, including more than four million children, are living in poverty is a “wearily familiar” statistic that masks human suffering, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation’s (JRF’s) chief executive, Paul Kissack, has said.
In his foreword to the JRF’s latest poverty report, the first to appear under the new government, he writes: “There are few things more foundational for national life than economic security: the ability of families to afford the essentials, and of children to go to school from a secure, warm home, properly clothed, with food in their bellies. But for too many families, this is not the reality of their lives.”
The report, UK Poverty 2025, published last week, is based largely on data from before the General Election, and says that 21 per cent of the UK population are living in poverty, of whom 8.1 million are working-age adults, 4.3 million are children, and 1.9 million are pensioners.
These figures, JRF says, are similar to those reported in 2021/22, suggesting “a picture of stability”. Poverty levels for all three groups had returned to pre-pandemic levels. Child poverty rates have been consistently higher than pensioners’ and working-age adults’.
The report says: “Taking a longer view, we can see that overall poverty barely changed during the Conservative-led Governments from 2010 to the latest data covering 2022/23. The last period of falling poverty was during the first half of the previous Labour administration (between 1999/2000 and 2004/05), but it then rose in the second half of its time in power.”
In that 20 years, poverty has deepened. People described as being in “very deep” poverty, with an income far below the standard poverty line, is now the largest group.
“Between 2020/21 and 2022/23, the average person in poverty had an income 28% below the poverty line, with the gap up from 23% between 1994/95 and 1996/97. The poorest families — those living in very deep poverty — had an average income that was 57% below the poverty line, with this gap increasing by almost two-thirds over the past 25 years.”
Larger families with three or more children have consistently faced a higher rate of poverty, it says: 45 per cent of children in large families were in poverty in 2022/23. Disabled people, carers, renters, people claiming benefits, and people in workless households were also at a disproportionately higher risk of poverty.
More recent figures were equally bleak, owing to the continued affects of the cost-of-living crisis. In October 2024, about 2.6 million of the poorest fifth of households (44 per cent) were in arrears with their household bills or behind on scheduled lending repayments; 4.1 million households (69 per cent) were going without essentials; and 3.2 million households (54 per cent) cut back on food or went hungry.
“It is clear that levels of poverty and hardship in the United Kingdom are unacceptably high,” the report concludes.
It recommends steps to: improve employment rates and job security; improve financial protection if people lose their jobs or cannot work for a period, with, for example, paid leave for meeting caring demands or in sickness; increase the value of carer benefits; ensure social security base rates are high enough to afford essentials, including permanently re-linking the Local Housing Allowance (LHA) to local rents and removing the two-child cap on benefits; help people to accrue modest savings, obtain affordable credit, gain relief from problem debt, and hold assets; and expand access to affordable, secure, decent homes, whether rented or owned.