Child support and benefits, fairness, world population and the nasty party
How do we make up our minds about issues? Do we need to? My opinion on over population is not going to change the world and yet, if we don’t think about issues, surely we just mindlessly accept what our leaders tell us? And that’s not a good thing?
Some of these people just seem to want someone to talk to? Can we really, as a society, not manage that?
someone to pick the kids up after school?
a cheaper way to make meals? especially veggie burgers
some info about their rights (exceptions to the rules)- this is well documented at the Citizens Advice Bureau
To pay for this we need £1.3 bn- extra windfall taxes, cuts to the Armed Forces, extra inheritance tax, borrow more money to pay for it? You’re the voter, you decide!
*****
2 child benefit cap
What is the two-child benefit cap?
It prevents parents from claiming child tax credit or universal credit for any third or subsequent child born after April 2017.
What impact has the cap had?
It has affected an estimated 1.5 million children, and research has shown that the policy has impoverished families rather than increasing employment. Last week a study found that as many as one in four children in some of England and Wales’s poorest constituencies are in families left at least £3,000 poorer by the policy. It also found that in the most ethnically diverse communities, 14% of children were hit by the cap.
How much would it cost to scrap the cap?
Abolishing the cap would cost £1.3bn a year but would lift 250,000 children out of poverty, and a further 850,000 would be in less deep poverty, according to campaigners. The End Child Poverty coalition says removing the cap would be the most cost-effective way of reducing the number of children living in poverty.
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/jul/16/two-child-benefit-cap-explainer
The benefit cap, first implemented in 2013, places a cap on the amount a household can receive in benefits if they have no, or low, earnings, with the average household losing £50 a week. The two-child limit was introduced in 2017 – an estimated 32,000 households containing 110,000 children were affected by both policies at the same time in March 2022.
Later in his BBC interview, Starmer said that “of course” it was worth ruffling feathers within the party to win the next election, saying his “central promise” to members when he took over was to change the party to make it electorally viable.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/jul/16/labour-keep-two-child-benefit-cap-says-keir-starmer
Lynn Perry, the chief executive of Barnardo’s, said: “Even before the cost of living crisis intensified in 2022, more than one in four children in the UK were growing up in poverty. That just not acceptable in a country with the sixth largest economy in the world.
What is poverty? No heat, no food?
The report
The benefit cap was first implemented in 2013. It places a cap on the amount a household can receive in benefits if they have no, or low, earnings, meaning that some families do not receive their full benefit entitlement. The cap affected 114,000 households and an estimated 280,000 children in February 2023 7 (CPAG, 2023; DWP, 2023). Affected families lose £50 per week on average (DWP, 2023). Some households are exempt from the benefit cap including those with earnings over £722 a month and households in receipt of certain disability or carer benefits.
The two-child limit was implemented in 2017. It prevents families from receiving additional means-tested support for their third or subsequent children, worth up to £3,235 a year per child in 2023/24. Because the policy only applies to children born since 6 April 2017, the number of children affected by it increases each year. By April 2023, 1.5 million children lived in families affected by the two-child limit: equivalent to one in ten of all children (DWP, 2023b). There are several exemptions to the two-child limit including multiple births, adopted children, those living with kinship carers, and children conceived as a result of rape and during abusive relationships.
These policies have contributed to the rising levels of child poverty in the 2010s, which have predominately affected larger families. However, our quantitative analysis shows that larger families were at risk of poverty even before the introduction of the benefit cap and the two-child limit as a result of wider cuts to social security benefits for families with children. In addition, the poverty rate among children in larger families was rising despite increases in the employment rates of their parents. Both policies are highly unusual in international context. Our analysis of EU countries found no equivalent to the benefit cap in any country bar Denmark. Only three EU countries impose a cap in financial support as the number of children in a household increase and in none of these is this as low as the UK (2).
Our qualitative analysis showed that the two-child limit is based on assumptions that clash with everyday experiences of families. Many of the families we interviewed did not know that the two-child limit existed until after their child was born and, in some cases, conception was not a choice, but was the result of failed contraception or an abusive relationship. In other cases, the family was not receiving benefits when the affected child was born, and parents only found out about the restriction when their circumstances later changed as a result of relationship breakdown or job loss. Additionally, while there is an exemption in place for children born as a result of non-consensual conception or within the context of domestic abuse, the majority of the participants eligible for this were not receiving it. Both policies ignore the everyday realities of people’s lives, and how choices are often constrained by circumstances, such as an accidental pregnancy or a child with additional needs that make working more hours impossible.
Poverty?
The parents we interviewed did not have adequate income to cover even basic living costs, such as food, clothing and essential bills. The policies prevented them from being able to save money, and they were therefore unable to replace essential items such as white goods and furniture.
Ten years ago, the UK’s Conservative-led coalition government introduced the benefit cap, which restricts the total amount a household can receive in benefits, where earnings are below £722 per month. Announcing the policy’s rollout in July 2013, then Secretary of State for the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), Iain Duncan Smith, said: Returning fairness to the welfare state in this country is long overdue. We will always be there to support those who need help, but the days of blank cheque benefits are over and the benefit cap is a key part of this. We need a system that no longer traps people in a cycle of dependency and is fair for the hardworking taxpayers who fund it. Seventy years after Beveridge helped establish Britain’s welfare state, we are restoring public trust in it. We are ensuring it is there as a safety net for those who need it but that no-one can claim more than the average household earns in work. – DWP, 2013
(What is an average household?) There is no absolute figure for poverty and yet there is an average household.
Someone to talk to….
But, more fundamentally, it was absolutely vital to try to make the interview encounter a positive one, and many of the interviewees reported that being given the chance to share their experiences was a beneficial experience. One of the participants told us:
I was kinda dreading it, you know how it’d go, but now that I’ve done it I’ve actually kind of enjoyed speaking to you.
– Daneen, three children, two-child limit, Yorkshire, wave one As
there has been a notable shift over time in the ethnic composition of children in larger families. Table 2 shows that children in larger families are increasingly likely to come from minority groups, reflecting the overall changing demographic of families in the United Kingdom, as well as the fact that children from Bangladeshi, Pakistani, Black and mixed-ethnicity backgrounds are much more likely than White children to live in larger families. In the early 2000s, 84% of children in larger families were White, falling to 72% two decades later. Meanwhile the share of children in larger families of Black African or Black Caribbean ethnicity had more than doubled to 8.5%, and the share in Pakistani families had nearly doubled to 7%.
*******************************************************
**************************************************************************
crisps and biscuits? crisps and biscuits?
I don’t have a lot, you know the girls that I met in this area, in this school, a lot of them have partners, they all have the extra, they will invite me “Oh do you want to go for coffee?” ... as a mum I’m stuck in a house with just five kids, I don’t have anyone else to talk to. So it would be nice to go out for a bit of coffee and have it with them and just get like a English breakfast … I can’t go and afford that big meal for 6/£7, just myself, I feel selfish if I do that, cos I know I can get with a lot, mincemeat and pasta, I think ahead that way, and then I have to excuse it and say “Oh my daughter got this, I have to go GP, I have 63 to go.” But mentally I’m like, ah it would have been nice just to go and have a coffee. – Yasmin, five children, two-child limit and the benefit cap, London, wave one
I started shopping at Aldi to supplement my rent ... there was no more Asdas, no more Tesco, like they haven’t seen Heinz beans for months, they haven’t seen a McVities biscuit, they haven’t eaten Walker’s crisps, they don’t think they exist anymore. But like we’ve had to supplement any brands for cheaper, smart price, like anything that’s Aldi. – Amanda, four children, two-child limit and the benefit cap, Yorkshire,
It’s just this constant hamster wheel that you just can’t get off and you’re robbing from Peter to pay Paul all of the time and so you’re just constantly playing catch-up, there’s, there’s no sort of months where there’s an easy rest to it. And Christmas was just horrendous, everything my kids had was second-hand, everything, and I beg, borrowed and stole from both my son and my daughter; I didn’t steal from them, but I borrowed money from them and so I’ve gotta pay them back for that and it just has a detrimental effect on everything. – Rachel, eight children, two-child limit, Yorkshire, wave three
Case study: Leylo’s experience of the two-child limit and the benefit cap Leylo is a single mum and has eight children, who were aged just under 1, 1, 3, 5, 7, 8, 10 and 12 years when we first spoke with her. She is affected by the benefit cap (£800/month) and the two-child limit (which is applied to her three youngest children). A family of this size is already quite a lot to manage, but things became worse for Leylo during the course of our research.
What was behind this dramatic change? For Leylo, it was ‘the financial struggle’ 69 and how this conflicted with her desires as a parent: I’m a single mum and the kids ask me to buy them some things that I cannot afford but I usually try.
. Recognising her dire financial situation, Leylo had been looking for paid work and had recently been interviewed for a position, but did not get the job.
In November 2016, the benefit cap was reduced from £26,000 per year to £23,000 per year for families in London (£15,410 for single people) and to 70 £20,000 (£13,400 for single people) outside the capital. We treat this reform as a natural policy experiment, comparing those at risk of being capped and those who were not. We drew on a survey of around 900,000 people, some of whom were interviewed before the cap was lowered and some who were interviewed afterwards. We therefore compared the risk of experiencing poor mental health for both those at risk of being capped and those not at risk of being capped, before and after the reform.
By the end of our study period, the risk of experiencing mental ill health among those at risk of being capped had increased by around 50%. To put this into perspective, in November 2019 there were around 76,000 households subject to the cap. Our estimates suggest that lowering the cap increased the number of people experiencing depressive-like symptoms by around 6,600.
Case study: Rachel’s experience of the two-child limit Rachel is a coupled mum with eight children (six of whom live at home) aged 1, 3, 7, 12, 17, 19, 21 and 23. She is a full-time carer for her husband, who is disabled, and for two of her children, who are autistic. Rachel is subject to the two-child limit (she does not get the child element for her youngest two children).
…had to reduce the nutritional value of the food the family consumed: We’ve all been really poorly and apparently it’s my fault because I refused to put the heating on. So I’ve had pneumonia, our eldest daughter is upstairs with pleurisy, everybody’s had a cough and cold … So yeah, horrendous … the kids moan that they’re cold all the time. We’ve actually even started doing less meat dishes; so like last night we just did like a fried rice, cos rice is still relatively cheap.
Rachel struggled to afford new shoes for her one-year-old: [One-year-old daughter] was in size four shoes and she had her feet measured the other day and she’s a six, so for the last two months she’s been wearing shoes that are two sizes too small, but I couldn’t do anything about it … it’s not even Clarks shoes she’s getting, it’s Asda’s, you know, cheap and cheerful. – Rachel, eight children, two-child limit, Yorkshire, wave one
One of my children has been wearing trainers that she’s not actually allowed to wear at school because I can’t afford her a new pair of school shoes … so things like not being able to wear the school uniform properly is affecting her wanting to go to school … my child’s going to school and getting picked on cos she can’t wear the right school shoes because I don’t have £10. – Jessica, four children, two-child limit and the benefit cap, Yorkshire, wave one
Case study: Alisha’s experiences of the benefit cap and the two-child limit Alisha is a single mum with five children aged 16, 9, 3, 2 and 0. At the first round of interviews, Alisha was subject to the two-child limit and the benefit cap. The two-child limit initially applied to the three youngest children, who were all born into a situation of domestic abuse. After the birth of her third child, Alisha left the relationship and successfully applied for an exemption to the two-child limit on the grounds of coercion. But because she was now also receiving support for housing costs, the extra money for her third child pushed her into the benefit cap. Instead of the full £237 per month, she therefore ended up receiving only £30. Partly in order to meet her children’s material needs, Alisha got re-involved with her ex-partner. That led to the birth of two more children.
Housing???????
Our qualitative evidence shows how households are routinely living in incredibly substandard accommodation, which is often damp, rodent infested and overcrowded, yet they are paying high rents that lead to them being capped, and thus left with less than they need to get by on. This is a problem bound up with the private rented sector itself, and the incredibly high rents often charged for inadequate accommodation.
It’s not fair on the kids. I think, you know, the kids, being a single parent it affects the kids anyway and then having that financial burden on top, it’s not nice and our kids are our future. – Kalima, single mum, five children, two-child limit and the benefit cap, London, wave two
If they could look into this, the decision again and change it, make change to that decision, because it does really affect a lot of families, I mean not only me, like there’s a lot of family same as my situation that are affected financially; I know some people that are lot like mentally depressed, you know. I’m sure everyone would, would, would want to work and do something with their life. Yeah, that’s all I can say really, if they could look into the decision and change it. – Khadra, six children, two-child limit, Yorkshire, wave two
https://largerfamilies.study/publications/needs-and-entitlements/
crime?
under 18 ? Children?
How many under 18s are there in the UK?
In 2019 there were 7.6 million 10-19 year olds and 11.8 million 10-24 year olds. There were slightly more aged 20-24 than aged 15-19 or 10-14. Young people aged 10-19 represent 11% of the total population of the UK.
In 2021, about 17.66 percent of the population in the United Kingdom fell into the 0-14 year category, 63.42 percent into the 15-64 age group and 18.92 percent were over 65 years of age.
29.1% of all people in England and Wales (17.3 million) were under 25 years old. 20.2% (12.0 million) were aged 25 to 39 years. 26.3% (15.6 million) were aged 40 to 59 years. 24.4% (14.5 million) were aged 60 years and over
As of 2020, the population of young children aged between 0 and 4 years old in the United Kingdom was estimated to be 3.78 million
compare with 2002
50 percent of the global population now lives in cities. That's 3.2 billion people.
China alone is going to move four to six hundred million people into cities in the next decade and a half.
I don't know what data would impress you, but how about, 43 percent of the refined fuel produced in the world is consumed by cars in metropolitan areas in the United States. Three million people die every year in cities due to bad air, and almost all particulate pollution on this planet is produced by transportation devices, particularly sitting in cities.
If -- in China, in the year 1998, 417 million people used bicycles; 1.7 million people used cars. If five percent of that population became, quote, middle class, and wanted to go the way we've gone in the last hundred years at the same time that 50 percent of their population are moving into cities of the size and density of Manhattan, every six weeks -- it isn't sustainable environmentally; it isn't sustainable economically -- there just ain't enough oil -- and it's not sustainable politically.
https://www.ted.com/talks/dean_kamen_to_invent_is_to_give
“for one week in their lives, someone listens to them.” Jerry Springer
Maybe the Tories had been watching Idiocracy?
Rees Mogg
Clark on Heseltine-”in Jopling's damning phrase 'bought all his own furniture'“
“He’s better off making cars and engineering than at predicting the trajectory of the population,” said Joseph Chamie, a consulting demographer and a former director of the United Nations Population Division, who has written several books about population issues.
“Yes, some countries, their population is declining, but for the world, that’s just not the case.”
The world’s population is projected to reach 8 billion by mid-November of this year, according to the United Nations. The UN predicts the global population could grow to around 8.5 billion in just 8 years.
By 2080, the world’s population is expected to peak at 10.4 billion. Then there’s a 50% chance that the population will plateau or begin to decrease by 2100. More conservative models like the one published in 2020 in the Lancet anticipate the global population would be about 8.8 billion people by 2100.
https://edition.cnn.com/2022/08/30/health/elon-musk-population-collapse-wellness/index.html
In terms of population growth, the 20th century was an anomaly.
“That century was the most impressive demographic century ever. It had more gold medals than all the other centuries,” Charmie said.
The human population nearly quadrupled, something that had never happened before in recorded history. That’s largely because of improvements in public health.
The world has antibiotics, vaccines, public health programs and improved sanitation to thank for people living longer and more mothers and children surviving birth.
With contraception, especially in 1964, when the oral pill was widely introduced in the US, couples were now better able to determine when and how many children they had.
“Contraception, the oral pill had a much more significant effect on the world than the car,” Charmie said.
In the US, the fertility rate is down in part due to what Ken Johnson, a senior demographer at the Casey School of Public Poilcy and a professor of sociology at the University of New Hampshire, characterized as a “significant” decline in teen births.
“Most demographers would see that as a good thing,” he said.
****
The term Nasty Party was first used publicly by Theresa May where in October 2002 she described the Conservative Party of the United Kingdom as "There's a lot we need to do in this party of ours. Our base is too narrow and so, occasionally, are our sympathies. You know what some people call us -- the Nasty Party."[1] The phrase applies to the Conservative Party because of their hostility to disabled people and other vulnerable people.
The term "Nasty Party" applied to Conservative Party members with traditional conservative stances which included being anti-gay, anti-minorities, and pro-business, and lacking concern for the poor.[2][3]