Children on a school trip

Use these charts to compare policies for reducing child poverty and to examine how child poverty rates have changed over time across different groups.

4.3 million children (30%) in the UK now live in relative poverty. The new government has made reducing child poverty one of its key policy objectives, and has launched a Child Poverty Taskforce to make recommendations. 

Our new IFS Green Budget chapter explains which children are most at risk of poverty and explores the options the government has to tackle it through benefits policy, earnings and employment.

These charts allow you to dig deeper into child poverty statistics, and to compare the costs of a range of benefits policy options and their effects on children in lower-income households.

To see how poverty and living standards more generally have evolved over time and different ways of measuring them, check out our living standards, poverty and inequality data page.  

Compare poverty rates

Click the arrows to see how the relative and absolute poverty rates for children differ by parental employment status, family size, ethnicity and more.

Relative child poverty shows the proportion of children with household incomes (adjusted for household size) below 60% of the contemporary median, and tracks how well the incomes of poorer households with children are keeping pace with growth in average incomes.

Absolute child poverty shows the proportion of children with household incomes (adjusted for household size) below a line which is fixed (after adjusting for inflation) over time, at 60% of the 2010–11 median. This focuses directly on how the living standards of poorer households with children are faring and tends to fall over time as their incomes grow, even if they don’t grow as fast as the average.

You can also choose to see what the statistics look like if you consider a lower poverty line, to see which children are most at risk of the deepest poverty. Click the legend to see what happens if we consider a deeper poverty line set at 50% of the reference median, or an even deeper poverty line still set at 40%.

Compare policy options

This chart allows you to compare a range of options for tackling child poverty through the benefits system. Our IFS Green Budget chapter explains these options in more detail, as well as other options the government might consider through minimum wage changes and employment policy.

Click the arrows to compare the policies across a range of metrics, including their cost (and who this money would go to), the impact on absolute poverty, and the impact on the incomes of those affected.

It is important not just to focus on the policies which bring children over the poverty line – this is ultimately an arbitrarily drawn line. We should also consider other consequences, including which policies alleviate the depth of poverty by boosting poorer households’ incomes the most, and the costs to the exchequer.