Where are all those 'poor' kids?

Did you know that in the UK, there are 2.3 million kids in poverty? Well, the Social Mobility & Child Poverty Commission says so and therefore it must be true.

 

So where are all these waifs and strays; hollowed eyed, malnourished, uneducated? On the Government’s sole measure of poverty, the poverty line is £272 a week. The old age pension is just going up. From £116 a week. They say that one in six children lives in poverty. That means in an average school two whole classes are impoverished.

 

The cost to the tax-payer in the last 7 years of the Labour government was £170 billion. That’s £170,000,000,000. Something wrong here, surely. Shared between 2.3 million kids that looks like an awful lot of mobile phones and burgers. And more than 60% of these pauper children live in homes where at least one person is in full-time employment

 

When internationally-recognised criteria are applied, the findings will be somewhat different.

 

Amongst these criteria are access to safe water and sanitation, availability of medical treatment, adequate housing (not more than 4 people per room), at least six years of education, and acceptable public services.

 

Uppermost is nutrition. A BMI of 16 is the starting point, and height for age, daily calorie intake, and incidence of diet-related conditions such as rickets are measures of poverty.

 

At the same time, the various health authorities are warning of an ‘epidemic’ of obesity in children between 5 and 15 years. By far the biggest group is children in the lowest income families.

 

If you are bemused by all this, you are not alone!