Britain's War on Poverty

Introduction

Introduction i n March 1999, British prime minister Tony Blair made a dramatic pledge to end child poverty in the next twenty years. The announce­ ment startled the journalists, advocates, and academics he had invited to hear him address child poverty at Toynbee Hall, a settlement house in the East End of London. None among them would have dared imagine he would make such a bold pledge or commit his government to such an ambitious agenda of reform. Yet, once the pledge was made, it took on a life of its own. Overnight it seemed only right that the government should be aiming to reduce child poverty significantly and to promote more equal life chances for children. And this was not just the view of Blair’s Labour Party and its supporters. Even the tabloid press got on board, agreeing with the prime minister that “the child born on a run­down housing estate should have the same chance to be healthy and well­educated as the child born in the leafy sub­ urbs.”1 What did Blair mean when he pledged to eliminate child poverty, and where did this remarkable pledge come from? What did the government do to reduce child poverty, and what success has it had? Has child pov­ erty been significantly reduced in Britain, as the government pledged, and if so, how has this been accomplished? After a decade of reform, what are the next steps for Britain? And what can the United States and other countries learn from Britain’s experience? This book answers these questions, telling the story of Britain’s war on child poverty and drawing out lessons for future antipoverty efforts, both in Britain and elsewhere. The story is a timely one: the ten years that have elapsed since Britain’s war on poverty began give us enough time to see the scope of the effort and begin to gauge its effects. When Britain declared its war on child poverty in 1999, 3.4 million chil­ dren—one in four—lived in poverty. Within five years, the child poverty rate (measured in relative terms, as is customary in Britain) fell from 26 percent of all children to 22 percent as half a million children moved out of poverty.2 This was no mean achievement given that a relative poverty line moves up as average incomes rise (as they did quite rapidly in Britain during this period). On an absolute poverty line, like the one used in the United States, Brit­ ish progress was even greater. Child poverty measured with an absolute 2 introdUction line fell by nearly half in the first five years of the British antipoverty ef­ fort, from 26 percent to 14 percent, as the number of children in poverty fell by 1.6 million. So, on both measures, Britain made substantial progress in reducing child poverty in the first five years of its initiative. Although progress slowed after those first five years as public finances were strained and other spending priorities came to the fore, the record nevertheless contin­ ues to be impressive. Data from 1999 to 2007 (the most recent year for which figures are available) indicate that 500,000 children have been moved out of poverty defined in relative terms, a reduction of about 15 percent, while 1.7 million have been moved out of poverty defined in ab­ solute terms, a reduction of 50 percent. The relative child poverty rate has fallen from 26 to 22 percent; if measured in absolute terms, child poverty was reduced from 26 to 13 percent. As of late 2009, the Labour government was still holding to the target of cutting child poverty in half in ten years and ending it in twenty. And the government had filed legislation to enshrine this commitment in law so that future governments would be bound by it. While Britain was tackling child poverty, the United States was focus­ ing on “ending welfare as we know it.”3 Beginning with “waivers” that allowed states to alter their welfare programs in the early 1990s and cul­ minating with the passage of the federal Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) in 1996, the United States drastically reformed its approach to cash assistance for low­income families. Under PRWORA, no family could claim federal welfare benefits for more than five years (in their lifetime), and states were free to impose even shorter limits. At the same time, a number of measures, including substantial increases in the...