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Fighting child poverty: in work or insecurity?

Fighting child poverty: in work or insecurity?. UK goal: raise lone mum employment rate to 70% by 2010 Was 41% in mid-90s WFTC goes to 2x families as the in-work benefit it replaced. 1.4m out of 15m families w/kids receive it. If work works best, are benefits still beneficial?.

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Fighting child poverty: in work or insecurity?

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  1. Fighting child poverty: in work or insecurity? • UK goal: raise lone mum employment rate to 70% by 2010 • Was 41% in mid-90s • WFTC goes to 2x families as the in-work benefit it replaced. 1.4m out of 15m families w/kids receive it

  2. If work works best, are benefits still beneficial? UK married couple w/2 kids, 1995 • Gross earnings of £50/wk = £127 net income, including transfers • Gross earnings of £210/wk = £137 net income • Marginal tax rate of 94% • In 1995, ¼ of all employees earned less than £210/wk • US welfare roles cut in half • Poverty rates for African-Americans at all time low

  3. Rhetoric, reality, morality: the American Dream • Competing discourses of social exclusion • RED (Redistributive): they lack money • SID (Social integration): they lack jobs • MUD (Moral underclass): they lack morals • William Julius Wilson, Charles Murray • What money can’t buy – argues that, beyond a subsistence minimum, redistribution doesn’t help child outcomes • The American Dream: the Horatio Alger story • As Tim Newman notes re crime, the UK likes American rhetoric, but shies away from full-on American reality

  4. Rhetoric, reality, morality – the BSA, taken with a few grains of salt • “Gap btwn highest and lowest incomes is too large” • 82% agree • Including 70% who vote Tory • But who would it be redistributed from? “What income decile are you in?” • 0.4% believe they are in top 10% of incomes • A childless couple each earning only £22,000/year would be in top decile • The same people will be in favour of increasing spending on children in poverty, but also for cutting benefits for lone mums and the unemployed • “Support for identifiably redistributive spending is weak” • The psychology of acceptable redistribution • State welfare (eg benefits such as Family Credit) bad? • Fiscal welfare (eg WFTC paid through wage packet) good? David Walker, a Trustee of the National Centre for Social Research, which is responsible for the BSA. “Taxed by inconsistency”, The Guardian, 11 December 2003. http://www.guardian.co.uk/analysis/story/0,,1104223,00.html

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