Child poverty does not only exist in a vacuum filled with hard-done-by urchins

‘What do children do to make themselves poor? And how we can we stop them doing it? It looks very bad having to announce that their numbers are growing (a 200,000 increase to 2.5 million children, the first rise in 10 years) [see footnote]so something should be done. About the figures, not the children or the poverty, you understand. The current definition of child poverty pertains to a child who lives in a household with an income below 60% of the national average. David Cameron does not like this way of measuring poverty and wants to redefine it. Of course he does: globalisation and technology have driven wages down while we are being asked to swallow the political narrative of a fast-growing economy.

The notion of a government’s success, competence even, does not sit well with growing numbers of children living in poverty or people using foodbanks. To ramp up the recovery, ways need to be found to measure poverty that don’t, you know, include a lack of money. Although money is the absolute measure of success for the rich, for the poor – who are not only always with us, but also utterly defined by us – money is somehow abstract. The poor are poor in multiple ways, many of which are self-inflicted. Otherwise, how can we explain such a level of child poverty in a rich country without being embarrassed?’

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