If we want to end poverty in this country we are going to have to deal with the way voters think about people in poverty.
Richard Exell is a senior policy officer at the TUC.
In my lifetime, nothing in domestic politics has seemed as unfair as the increase in child poverty in the 1980s and 90s. In 1979, 1.7 million children were poor; by 1998, this figure had risen to 4.2 million. Being poor when you are a child hurts you for the rest of your life:
- Poor families have unhealthier children,
- These children do worse at school (children who aren’t poor but had lower intelligence scores as babies get better qualifications),
- When they leave school they are less likely to get jobs,
- Those who do tend to get lower-paid, lower-status ones,
- When they retire they are entitled to lower pensions,
- And they die at an earlier age.
On top of all this, people who were poor children are more likely to be poor adults, so there is a strong chance their children will be born into poverty as well.
This is so obviously unjust, we have to ask why it hasn’t been sorted out.
The TUC conference 