Living Below the Radar: Severe child poverty in the UK

This briefing presents a new measure of severe poverty to help the government target children and families most in need.

June 2007

This report finds that one out of every ten children in the UK is living in severe poverty. A total of 1.3 million children have an income well below the government's poverty line and lack basic necessities that most people in the UK take for granted.

Policy-makers say that the first step to changing something is to measure it. Yet the government does not currently measure severe poverty. We argue that the government must focus its efforts on these children.

Following previous research on Britain's Poorest Children, this latest study adds a further dimension to our understanding of severe poverty, using a new measure that combines household income with recent data on other indicators of deprivation.