More than a fifth of all “austerity generation” British children have been scarred by poverty for at least half their childhood, a direct legacy of the welfare benefit cuts imposed by Conservative governments in recent years, research reveals.
The proportion of children born after 2013 who spent at least six of their first 11 years of life in hardship surged after ministers froze working age benefits levels and imposed policies such as the two-child limit, it found.
Austerity policies, which drastically shrank annual welfare spending by tens of billions a year and took thousands of pounds a year out of low-income family budgets, effectively pitched hundreds of thousands more children into sustained poverty.
The University of Oxford study said the austerity-era growth in children exposed to poverty for most of their formative years was a “significant social problem” that would cause long-term harms to their health, education and life chances.
The study’s co-author, Selçuk Bedük, said the post-2013 austerity cuts to welfare increased both the numbers of children experiencing poverty and the time they spent in it. As a consequence, long-term poverty was now a defining factor in the childhood of about 23% of British youngsters.
“Our study shows that policy matters; when support for families on low incomes is stronger, long-term childhood poverty falls. When that support is reduced, more children are pushed into long-term poverty,” said Bedük.
Austerity cuts masterminded by the former Tory chancellor George Osborne and the ex-welfare secretary Iain Duncan Smith included the benefit cap, the bedroom tax, the two-child benefit limit, cuts to the generosity of universal credit, and years of benefit rate freezes. By 2021, they had stripped about £37bn a year from welfare spending.
Although the Tory government increased minimum wage levels during the period, on the assumption that work was the best route out of poverty, the study found the overall impact of this was effectively outweighed by the scale of benefit cuts and had little effect on rates of relative poverty.
The dire impact of austerity on childhood poverty is contrasted in the study with the anti-poverty reforms introduced by the then Labour chancellor Gordon Brown in the late 1990s, when spending on child benefits and tax credits increased by about 60% over a seven-year period.
Under Labour’s drive to cut the numbers of youngsters in hardship, long-term childhood poverty levels that had stood at 25% for children born in 1991 fell to 13% for children born in 1998-99, its lowest point over the last three decades.
Earlier this month, the government abolished the two-child benefit limit, which restricted families to universal credit support for their first two children only, as part of its long-term plan to tackle child poverty. The move will lift an estimated 450,000 children out of poverty by the end of the decade.
Ministers have also unveiled a series of measures including raising the minimum wage and expanding eligibility for free schools meals to all families on universal credit. However, the benefit cap and the bedroom tax remain in place.
The Oxford study tracks cohorts of children born in England, Wales and Scotland between 1991 and 2017 and uses data up to 2024. The study provides the first evidence that the effects of changes in benefits policy can be shown to influence the long-term exposure of children to poverty.
Pat McFadden, the work and pensions secretary, said: “One of the finest achievements of the last Labour government was lifting hundreds of thousands of children out of poverty and improving their life chances.
“The policies pursued by the Conservative party in their time in power saw too many children and families suffer. We can’t turn back the clock on that period, but this Labour government is turning the tide on these Tory decisions.
“That’s why Labour is rolling out free breakfast clubs, extending free school meals, and ending the two-child benefit cap – policies which will pull nearly half a million kids out of poverty. There’s lots done, but far more to do as we make sure poverty does not hold children back from achieving their full potential.”