Policy Hub
A report (Strategies against poverty; a shared road map) published on 13 December 2004 by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF), suggests that challenging new indicators which reveal the concentrations of child poverty, poor housing, school under achievement and crime in Britain's most disadvantaged neighbourhoods, should be used by government to intensify the struggle against deprivation and social exclusion during the next 20 years.
The report welcomes the Government's commitment to reducing poverty and points to growing consensus, across the political spectrum, that action to tackle disadvantage is in the interests of society as a whole. It argues that only a modest share of economic growth in the next 20 years would be redistributed to raise the ten million poorest people in Britain above the poverty threshold.
But it also highlights new figures that expose the intense concentrations of disadvantage that exist within neighbourhoods in some of Britain's major cities. An analysis of family poverty shows that:
The report argues that the figures should be used with existing measures of household poverty to track whether the number of neighbourhoods with concentrated child poverty is being reduced over time - and whether the levels of concentration in the worst-affected areas are becoming less intense.
Other data becoming available at neighbourhood level should soon make it possible to produce useful indicators of progress on the geographical concentration of other aspects of deprivation. These include the proportion of young people leaving school at the minimum age, the percentage living in overcrowded homes, local burglary rates and the proportion of working-age adults claiming Incapacity Benefit.
The report sets out a 'road map' for a long-term anti-poverty strategy, drawing on consultations the Foundation has held during its centenary year with people living in disadvantaged neighbourhoods as well as policy makers, think-tanks, practitioners, researchers and voluntary groups.
Lord Richard Best, Director of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, said, 'A twenty-year strategy to raise those who are worst-off above the poverty threshold is a commitment our nation can demonstrably afford. But it should no longer be something that government does quietly while the taxpayer is not looking.'
The report can be viewed on the JRF website