By Ronan McCabe, Research Associate at the Medical Research Council / Chief Scientist Office Social and Public Health Sciences Unit
Child poverty is a key determinant of health and health inequalities. Experiencing child poverty is linked to worse health and it is well established that harmful experiences in childhood can have lifelong impacts on health and wellbeing.
Child poverty levels in the UK have risen in recent years following the austerity measures enacted since 2010, such as the retrenchment of social spending and local government budgets. However, a recent change in government offers the possibility for renewed efforts to address child poverty and therefore prevent the harm it inflicts. As such, in our recently published study we wanted to model how different aspects of child health might respond to reductions in child poverty levels over the next ten years.
We looked at three different child poverty reduction scenarios – low- (15% reduction), med- (25% reduction), high-ambition (35% reduction) – and compared these to a hypothetical scenario in which child poverty continued to increase (by 15%) over the next ten years in England. We modelled what effects these scenarios might have on infant mortality, children entering local authority care, child hospital admissions for nutritional anaemia, and child emergency hospital admissions. We also modelled how these effects might differ by level of deprivation and by region.
We found that all reductions in child poverty would significantly improve child health, with greater improvements for more ambitious reductions. Notably, a 35% reduction in child poverty over the next ten years would decrease the number of cases of:
- infant mortality by 293
- nutritional anaemia by 458
- children entering care by 4,696
- emergency admissions by 32,650
We also found that benefits would be greatest among those experiencing the highest levels of deprivation and those living in northern regions such as the North East.
This research is important because it shows the scale and regional distribution of health benefits that would likely follow decisive policy action to reduce child poverty at this moment in time in England. These benefits would likely be larger when considering the whole UK and exist for a wider range of health measures.
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This article is featured in our 4 September newsletter.
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