A report by the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) has revealed that the number of people in the UK who are living in poverty will rise.
The study which has been funded by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, shows that 2 million working aged adults and 2.2 million children in 2009-2010 were living in absolute poverty ikn the UK.
The IFS predicts that in two years’ time this figure will have risen by an extra 600,000 children and 800,000 working age adults. By 2013 there will be 3.1 million children in poverty in the UK, according to the IFS projections.
The coalition has pledged that its “wide-ranging reforms will have a dynamic impact on some of the poorest families”.
In terms of percentage, in 2009-2010, 17% of the children in the UK were living in absolute poverty and the IFS think that this will be 21.8% by 2012-2013.
Those deemed to live below the poverty line have a total household income of at least 60% less than the national average.
In 2009-2010 the poverty line was set for a couple with two children at an income of £347 per week after tax and national insurance had been taken out. For single adults without any children it was set at £165 a week.
The Government will be introducing a new benefit payment called the Universal Credit from 2013, which is to be paid monthly.
The IFS states that the Universal Credit will reduce the number of children in poverty by 450,000 and adults by 600,000 by 2020-2021.
Although the IFS also warns that the Universal Credit will not prevent increasing poverty, because it will “more than offset” by other reforms, for example the changing measurement of inflation that will be used for means-testing any benefits.
To this end, the IFS predicts that absolute child poverty will still rise and that by the year 2020 it will be at its highest level since 2001-2002. The report goes on to say that the Government will miss the targets it has set itself for reducing poverty in children as set out in the Child Poverty Act of 2010.
A spokesperson for the Government said: “The IFS acknowledge that Universal Credit will substantially reduce child poverty.
“It will make work pay for the first time, tackling in-work poverty and lift over one million people, including 450,000 children, out of poverty.”
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