Nothing’s changed?
On the surface, it might appear that nothing has changed. But persistently high poverty rates lead to worsening real-world outcomes. Just as evidence shows that the longer a family spends in poverty the worse the effects on that family, the longer we tolerate unacceptably high levels of poverty the worse it is for our country. The corrosive impacts of poverty on families — fatigue, hunger, stress and reduced connectivity — hamper both their participation in society and their scope to make a bigger economic contribution. Failure to address poverty can hold back economic growth itself.
Every year, we see the same groups disproportionately trapped in poverty, with disabled people, people from some ethnic minority groups, people in larger families and renters all experiencing elevated rates. We see that being in work vastly reduces the likelihood of being in poverty, but it is far from a guarantee. Part-time workers, self-employed workers and workers in the accommodation and, food services (hospitality) sector, and in the administration and support activities sector, all see comparatively high rates of poverty, while in-work poverty overall has been rising across time. Looking at benefit rates, we see they remain inadequate, with the basic rate close to destitution levels.
Everything’s changed — it’s worse
But scratch below the surface, there are signs of change: a definitive deepening of poverty. The deeper you go, the further away from the poverty line you look, the worse things are. In 2023/24, 6.8 million people — or almost half of those in poverty — were in very deep poverty, with an income far below the standard poverty line, meaning their incomes are at most two thirds of the poverty line. This is both the highest absolute number of people, and the highest proportion, on record, going back to 1994/95.
We will have new information on the extent of the deepest and most damaging form of poverty — destitution, where people cannot afford to meet their most basic physical needs to stay warm, dry, clean and fed — towards the end of this year, but we already know levels more than doubled between 2017 and 2022 (Fitzpatrick et al., 2023). We see further evidence of deepening poverty in the large increases in the number of people who are struggling to access enough nutritious and varied food, with the total number of people who are food insecure increasing by 2.8 million between 2021/22 and 2023/24 (a 60% increase in just 2 years).
Reasons for past trends and future prospects
Why is this the case? We think it is because of a lack of coherent focus on the issue, with policy interventions over the past 2 decades being fragmented, reactive and, in very many cases, actually worsening poverty rather than reducing levels. An improving labour market pre-pandemic did not feed into lower poverty levels, because benefits were being cut at the same time, deepening poverty. Low interest rates did not feed into lower housing costs because growing numbers of people were stuck in the expensive private rented sector. A decade of weak growth in real incomes meant families had precious little breathing space when first the pandemic and then the cost of living crisis hit, which in turn drove up numbers of people going without essentials and having often to rely on emergency charity like food banks. The bottom line is that piecemeal and often misdirected interventions, often in the form of basic cuts in support rather than investment, will never shift a system that is producing deepening poverty.
This is the background to the Government’s recent Child Poverty Strategy (Child Poverty Unit, 2025.) This does represent change, with Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) modelling predicting a reduction in headline child poverty by 400,000 over the Parliament (DWP, 2025a). Poverty modelling is always uncertain (see Tims et al, 2026 for JRF’s look at how poverty trends change under different economic scenarios), but if this comes to pass, it would represent the biggest fall in child poverty over a Parliament since records began in the early 1960s. Scrapping the 2-child limit sits at the centre of this strategy. It was the single most effective policy decision the Government could have taken to lift significant numbers of children out of poverty. Further measures are welcome too: making childcare more accessible to families on Universal Credit (UC) and reducing the need for temporary accommodation, alongside boosting family incomes through our social security system, will mean more children have a better chance at the healthy, happy childhood that they all deserve.
The magnitude of policy change is hugely welcome, but it is focused on just one part of the picture. Certainly, child poverty is in chronic need of attention: poverty levels for children are much higher than for working-age adults and pensioners (and have been for the last 40 years), but this leaves many other groups with persistently high levels of poverty overlooked. Indeed, some changes, especially cuts to UC for people who fall ill, will make poverty worse including for many parents, as will some of the stigmatising language used which blames people for being in difficult situations. Even after the Child Poverty Strategy measures, DWP forecast over 4 million children will be in poverty in 2029/30, and we still need to see action on the manifesto commitment to end the mass dependence on emergency food parcels.
Despite the welcome Child Poverty Strategy, there remains a seeming lack of urgency and sense of direction towards building the comprehensive set of actions to start a sustained downward trend in the headline rate of poverty, moving beyond a focus on child poverty. We need a comprehensive plan that addresses a much wider range of causes and consequences of poverty across all who are held back by hardship.