Overview
- The University of Oxford study, published Monday, found about 23% of children born after 2013 spent six of their first 11 years in poverty.
- The researchers tie the surge to 2010s welfare cuts that removed roughly £37 billion from benefits by 2021.
- Policies cited include the benefit cap, the bedroom tax (a cut to housing help for a spare room), freezes to benefit rates, and the two-child limit that withholds support for a third or later child.
- Labour says it is ending the two-child cap and expanding free school meals and breakfast clubs, projecting these steps will lift about 450,000 children out of poverty by 2030.
- The authors say long spells of poverty damage health, learning and earnings prospects, and they urge restoring the wider safety net because higher minimum wages alone did not offset the cuts.