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Child poverty

Campaigners measure this in terms of a child living in household with less than 60% (or 54%) of the national household median income. Rather than meeting needs for say clothing, food, heating, education etc etc

Campaigning for 'End of child poverty' would then seem to be essentially the same as campaigning for a universal basic income equivalent to 60% of the median income - equivalised to households.  So why don't they just say so?

I guess because the emotional term child poverty conjures up images of Victorian waifs shivering in filthy rags surviving on a crust of bread.  Whereas the reality is that children can be living in homes with supersized TVs, Netflix subscriptions, and parents affording a drug habit and still be labelled as in child poverty.

FAOD I would support UBI if they also eliminated all other welfare benefits, except those to which people had made hypothecated contributions. i.e. state pension, and free education up to sixteen and the NHS.

 

What is wrong with using emotive terminology to attract support to a political cause? There is nothing deceptive about it - it highlights one of the key consequences of low incomes and one of the key evils that might be prevented by the policies they advocate. One that, through its emotive power, might persuade people to the cause and thereby achieve a change in policy that might, as you highlight, address a lot of other issues too..

Also, it's not like other campaigners on other issues, from all ends of the political spectrum, don't do the same thing. Which emotive catchlines people choose to complain about usually depends on which causes they are personally hostile to, or favourable to.

" Whereas the reality is that children can be living in homes with supersized TVs, Netflix subscriptions, and parents affording a drug habit and still be labelled as in child poverty"

Possibly this derives not from some huge warp in the public's perspective, but from the fact that having a big TV and a netflix subscription don't actually mean you're not poor, especially if your parents spend the rest of their money on drugs

Nothin wrong at all with emotive language. Indeed it is essential in broadcasts in order to win and keep attention. 
 
I guess that my problem is when it is the only message.  Without some specific proposed policies it just comes over as whiny bleating from do-gooders wanting to display their faux moral rectitude.

I think British children are much poorer now than thirty years ago in terms of what makes life worthwhile. Not merely a financial observation but the role money now plays in people's lives is a problem.

As a child, you're not earning the money, so how much money your parents earn or receive in benefits is only one component of whether you are poor. A child whose parents draw down GBP100k a year but spend 90k of it on smack is going to be poor.

I also agree with Rhamnousia

Didn’t have a mobile phone because they weren’t invented. Don’t have one because you can’t afford one. The same. 
 

The difference is in what other people have. Not in what’s worth having.

If you learnt that everyone in Mongolia, or the planet Zog, now drives a Ferrari would that make you poorer?  What about people in Kernow?

That isn't the point. The child is still poor. There are various ways to alleviate child poverty, and probably several such ways need to be pursued simultaneously in order for it to work. It was you who reduced the question to one of family income - you're right, that is not the way to look at it, or not exhaustively.

Elfffi - I don't actually believe you are as stupid as that last post makes you sound so maybe take a step back and switch your brain on.

Exclusion is a massive issue. If you don't have a mobile phone as a teenager then you are excluded from a large amount of society/friendship groups amongst your peers (where communication takes places via mobile phone).  That is not remotely the same thing as living when mobile phones weren't invented.

If you are a child growing up on an estate in a rough part of Manchester it matters little if all Saudi princes are given Ferraris on their 18th birthday, it matters greatly if the children you go to school with have mobile phones and arrange all of their social activities through their phones and you don't have one.  It also matters if you are not able to join them in anything they do because it costs money and you don't have the money to do so. 

Also, it is human nature to judge ourselves at least in part against what others have, particularly those we regard as our peers.  We are pack animals ultimately and genetically driven to care about status.

Finally - who the fvck are you to decide what is 'worth having'.   

The broader point is that (in part because of the reasons set out above about human nature) as a civilized society we should aspire to give the poorest more than food and water enough not to perish.  We should aspire to have them be part of our mainstream society in a meaningful way.  Like it or not being part of 21st century mainstream society in a country like the UK does require more material stuff than was necessary 50 years ago. 

It’s not me who reduces the measure to family income!  It’s the child poverty campaigners who complain about 25% of children living in poverty in the UK after they have defined poverty as 60% of median income

I agree with Madders, but that doesn't take away the concern that mobile phones are BAD for you - and especially for kids. There is a reason Steve Jobs (and other Silicon Valley big wheels) don't give their kids phones and send them to schools where they are banned etc. 

I'm struggling with this tbh. 

My older one is 8 and plays on our phones all the time. We can control that (only weekends with a few exceptions), but I'm not sure I can hold off giving him his own phone by the time he is 11-12. He's already asking and I usually say "18", but in practical terms it has to be around 12 at the latest because of the exclusion/social contact issue Madders mentions. 

But I hate the idea of him having his head in it constantly. It's bad enough with the iPad now. 

Not sure how to square the circle. 

PS - Also agree with Elffi's broader point is that if you define poverty in relative terms (instead of living standards, nutrition, health etc), then by definition you will never be able to eliminate it - the baseline will keep going up, no matter how good the objective quality of life is or how much it has improved. 

It was Clergs who introduced the concept of ‘what makes life worthwhile’.

I don’t know whether Saudi princes get a Ferrari on their 18th birthday, though I suspect its earlier. I do know that those children in Africa, or India which have access to television would think its ludicrous to talk of child poverty in the UK.

Until UK  Child Poverty campaigners develop much better measures of poverty and operational policies to do anything about it, I’ll make donations elsewhere

I think you largely have to go with the flow stru and manage what you can e.g. time limits, an absolute rule that you can see what they are doing/who they are talking (at least until they are a good bit older than 11). Life is different now to how it was when we were kids and it's not good be (too) different from the pack unless they have made an active choice they want to be. You can't try and force them have the childhood we had in a world that has changed. We all remember the kid at school who didn't have TV at home or whose mum still cut their hair with bowl when they were 15 or whatever. I don't think any good comes of being that kid.

Stru - that's not actually true (that you'll never eliminate relative poverty). It's perfectly possible to have an income distribution in a society that means that no child (or at least almost no child) grows up in a household with less than (say) 60% of the median income.

Almost no child in the UK grows up in a household which has an income of less than 30% of the median income because state provision is set higher than that. It's a pure policy decision where you set the provision.

 

Yes, point taken. It'll have to be done and managed instead of just not doing it which is much harder. 

If he's anything like I was, though (on the Internet from age 13-14) he'll run rings around me and only show me what he wants me to see on his phone and hide what he wants to hide no matter how much I say I want full access to it. Too many tricks ar epossible

What Elffi said.

While I know there are a tiny proportion of children living in poor conditions in the UK, defining poverty in the UK as a level of deprevation far better than hundreds of millions of children worldwide is ludicrous. 

Having a definition of poverty relative to a very high standard of living cheapens the meaning of poverty. 

AP There is absolute and relative poverty they are both meaningful terms and both require policy intervention- thankfully there is limited absolute child poverty in the uk (although there is some) but a huge amount of relative poverty - broadly defined as an inability to partake in the things society regards as normal - 

AP There is absolute and relative poverty they are both meaningful terms and both require policy intervention- thankfully there is limited absolute child poverty in the uk (although there is some) but a huge amount of relative poverty - broadly defined as an inability to partake in the things society regards as normal - 

I think we differ on what poverty is then Guy.

My personal view is that poverty is not having things that you need.

I didn't grow up in absolute poverty, but by this definition I grew up in relative poverty.  I had what I need.  Poverty campaigners cheapen the cause of people who are actually in poverty when they talk of 3 million children living in poverty.  They just fooking aren't.  People aren't morons.

genuine super massive ??? @ mindless supporters of “take back control” and “get brexit done” like elfffi and thomas pink being triggered by emotive language used to support an opposing political cause

couldn’t get more hypocritically stupid

As I said above I don’t have a problem with emotional language. It’s the crap definition of poverty that I have a problem with.  Which is a technical issue. 
 

That and the lack of specific policies

genuine super massive ???? @ mindless supporters of “brexit means brexit” complaining about crap definitions and lack of specific policies

i correct my 0908. it appears u have surpassed urself in hypocritical stupidity elfffi. bravo my sun

FFS - I honestly despair at ROF sometimes.

I know kids who *still* haven't got a Switch or PS4.

Some of those kids are kids of those on here.

Check your fvcking privilege.

And sort it out this Christmas.

Yep, my son still limps thru life with his DS3, his Wii (each with a fcktun of games) and so this xmas I shall be forced to sell the car and buy him a Switch.  And a fcktun of games which are almost but not quite identical to those on the aforementioned.

Mario is laughing his little ass off at me, whilst kirby and pikachu do the gangnam style dance

I believe it is right that government policy should aim for all children to have access to things society considers normal and not just things they "need" (by which I assume you mean adequate calories, shelter and clothing).   I am no expert but perhaps 60% of average income does broadly equate to that....I do agree though that this aim should be called something other than elimination of "poverty" which has subtleties of meaning in context that most people will not grasp.

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