The UK: international child poverty outlier

Abstract

ABSTRACT The UK has not only one of the highest rates of child poverty in the rich world, but also the most rapidly rising rate in this grouping. Within the UK, a higher proportion of children are poor in the South East of England than in Scotland. The huge rise in economic inequality in the 1980s caused the UK to become an international outlier in terms of child poverty. All subsequent UK governments have maintained inequality at high levels – by choice. The results are telling: children in England are, on average, becoming shorter in height and child death rates in England are rising, almost certainly due to rising poverty and destitution. As inequality rises poverty rises, but so too does ignorance of each other. Those who study human geography in the UK, if they went to university in recent years, are the least likely graduates to have ever been poor. Child poverty remains off our mental maps and largely outside of our geographical imaginations. That has to change.