Kate Pickett OBE and Matthew Johnson
Common Sense Policy Group
Gordon Brown has denounced UK child poverty rising to its “highest levels in living memory” and called for a £3 billion investment fund for the children of austerity. We applaud and support his intervention – child poverty has devastating impacts on children and their families, and imposes a huge cost on the whole of society.
Shockingly, in the fifth largest economy in the world, 300,000 more UK children fell into absolute poverty during a single year at the height of cost of living crisis. Our children are not just poorer, they are getting sicker too.
The Academy of Medical Sciences have released a stark report highlighting wide-ranging evidence of declining health among UK children under five, calling for urgent action. That report warns that major health issues like infant mortality, obesity and tooth decay are not only damaging the nation’s youngest citizens, but also its economic prosperity, with the cost of inaction estimated to be at least £16bn a year. Similarly, 60% of food insecure households surveyed last month by The Food Foundation charity said they are buying less fruit than usual, while 44% said they were buying fewer vegetables than normal in January 2024.
In the past, we might have expected these inequalities to be mitigated by public services. Instead, the greatest cuts to services supporting children have hit the areas with the highest proportions of poor children. Cuts to local authority spending have been significantly higher in deprived areas and the north compared to the south, leading to worsening health outcomes. The north saw larger cuts to Sure Start children’s centres, with funding cut by £412 per eligible child, compared to £283 in the rest of England. London Schools receive almost 10% more funding per pupil than schools in the north.
Mental health conditions that children in the north of England developed during the pandemic will cost an estimated £13.2bn in lost wages over their lifetime. That loss, compounded by all of the losses caused by inequalities in physical health and skills development, make the consequences of not investing in children obvious.
The common sense notion that investments in childhood are critical to outcomes in adulthood is too often dismissed on grounds of cost, or ignored by politicians focused on short-term gains. Whether it be the removal of free milk in 1971 by then-education secretary Magaret Thatcher or
