Much of the information used in that report is six years old. In the last six years a good deal of progress has been made in cutting levels of teen conceptions, cutting teen smoking and, most importantly, reducing the number of children living below the poverty line. We've still a long way to go, but the progress made is serious progress, we aren't talking shaving a couple of per cent off the figures. Surestart centres, family tax credits and children's forums have all helped a great deal, as have the targeted education programmes for schools with high teen pregnancy rates etc, but the situation was allowed to get very serious before anybody started to tackle it and so it isthe taking a long time to turn the juggernaut around. In 1995, for example, a third (yes 1/3) of children in Yorkshire lived below the poverty line. I believe that is now down to about 1/4 and falling. Though in some urban centres, like Leeds it is still abysmally high.
Another consideration is that this report is based primarily children's own responses to questionaires....some of the sections had a very low take up rate (with significant regional variation) which may have skewed the figures somewhat.
That said this shouldn't be ignored. Large numbers of children still live below the poverty line, lots of children feel unhappy and that's not really acceptable in a wealthy, developed nation. There is still a lot to do.
I have an excerpt from a national study on Households Below the Average Income, conducted by the Dept. for Work and Pensions in 2005:
Quote:
Child poverty grew very rapidly in the 1980s, more slowly in the 1990s and has since begun to fall:
· 1979 14 per cent;
· 1994/95 31 per cent;
· 1996/97 33 per cent;
· 1998/99 33 per cent;
· 2002/03 28 per cent;
· 2003/04 28 per cent.
In terms of numbers, not percentages:
· In 2003/04 3.5 million children were poor;
· Since 1996/97 the number of children who were poor has fallen from 4.2 million to 3.5 million - 700,000 fewer children in poverty;
· Between 2002/03 and 2003/04 the number of children in poverty fell by 100,000.
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http://www.cpag.org.uk/info/briefing...AI_2003-04.doc