Efforts to end poverty fail parents who work

EFFORTS to combat child poverty are failing to help poor parents who are holding down a job.

The number of youngsters in poverty despite having at least one working parent has stayed the same since 1997 at 1.4 million, according to think tank the Institute of Public Policy Research today.

It means the government's much-vaunted progress in reducing child poverty has been almost exclusively to the benefit of families in which neither parent works.

Some 600,000 children have been raised above the official poverty line since Labour came to power. But the government is committed to helping all 2.8 million poor children out of poverty by 2020 – of which half have at least one working parent.

In a report published today, the IPPR warned there was little incentive in the benefits system for a second parent to enter work and enable this "forgotten million" to increase their prosperity.

Kate Stanley, IPPR head of social policy, said: "More action is needed to combine financial support and measures to boost parental employment with action to deliver fairness on pay and opportunities at work."