UNICEF UK submission to England’s child poverty consultation

Date: 1st March 2013
Category: Disability, Basic Health and Welfare

UNICEF UK responded to England's public consultation on better measurements of child poverty that closed on 15th February 2013.

They welcomed the government's reaffirmed commitment to ending child poverty and agreed that child poverty is multidimensional in nature and that improvements can be made to better monitor it.

However, UNICEF UK made clear their belief that income is a key part of understanding child poverty. In their view, the way forward is to retain the relative income poverty measure as central and to balance it by better directly measuring material deprivation.

An important new addition UNICEF UK would like to see is a measurement of the poverty gap. Overall, they recommended that the government continues to use the measures set out in the Child Poverty Act 2010.

• Find out more and download UNICEF UK's submission here.