A report out from the End Child Poverty Campaign as reported in the Guardian. Somewhat confusing as they do not apear to be using the normal definition of poverty here. (Which is, as Jim has corrected me, less than 60% of median, not mean, income.) They’re using numbers on benefits:

Research for the
coalition, which brings together more than 75 organisations such as
Barnardo’s, the Children’s Society and the Royal College of Nurses,
found that in 215 wards at least 30% of children were living on
benefits.

Of
these poorest wards, 75 were in Greater Manchester, 66 in Merseyside,
46 in Lancashire, 15 in Cumbria and 13 in Cheshire. Among the
worst-affected areas were Blackfriars in Salford, where 60.8% of
children live on benefits, Hulme in Manchester, where the figure is
68.5%, Princess in Knowsley (69%) and Granby in Liverpool (71.9%).

Now those figures are, or maybe, true as they stand, but what seems to be missed is that benefits being paid are a measure of how much is already being done to reduce poverty,  not evidence of poverty itself. Or, if you prefer, it is evidence of the amount of poverty extant before remediation attempts are made. If, for example, benefits were sufficient to bring those who receive them up to 60% of median income (no, I know that they’re not at present, this is just an example of the confusion that can be thrown up by measuring in this manner), then post remediation attempts we would, by the normal measure, state that there is no longer poverty. If we instead use the fact that we are paying our money to alleviate poverty as proof that poverty exists, then we can never state that poverty has gone…whatever we do, our attempts at greater equality, the system of support, are taken as the very evidence that we have not reduced poverty.

Some of the measures advocated are:

The measures include extending child benefit to pregnant women and providing grants for items such as school uniforms.

Which seems very odd. The payment of benefits is how we measure the existence of poverty, so we shall solve the problem by paying more benefits, which means that we are advocating, by our own system of measurement, an increase in poverty.

The full list of proposals is here (.pdf) and I don’t really have a major problem with much of what they propose, some of it is tinkering, usefully, at the edges of the system, except for one point which I vehemently oppose:

Ensure the National Minimum Wage provides a living wage.

Now I agree that there is some controversy over whether the minimum wage at its present level is good or bad for employment but there isn’t a single economist out there who believes that there is a level at which it will not damage such…the question is over what that rate is They argue for an hourly rate that would provide 60% of median earnings….somewhere between 6 and 7 pounds an hour. The justification seems to be that most minimum wage jobs are not likely to be offshored…which entirely misses the points made by Mr S&M, the blogger to whom we outsource tough economic questions. Bad idea that one.