POOR? It’s your own fault. It may sound harsh, but that’s what everyone else thinks, says the Institute for Public Policy Research, a think-tank.

In an essay on child poverty, Lisa Harker, a trustee of the Daycare Trust, a childcare charity, says that the Government’s pledge to eradicate child poverty could fail because it has not caught the public’s imagination.

Most people believe that poverty is less of a problem now than it was a decade ago, and many regard hardship as a symptom of personal failure, she says. The slowing of the economy is another factor, because it means that ministers must work harder to win support for spending on anti-poverty initiatives.

“People often attribute poverty to individual failings — such as laziness or an inability to parent effectively — rather than simply a lack of material resources,” she says in her report.

The Government must thus make a “self interest” case for eliminating child poverty, by showing how its reduction could benefit society as a whole, as well as making a moral argument for its elimination, the research says.

What is needed is a high profile, popular campaign like Make Poverty History, the celebrity-led campaign against Third World poverty, Harker argues. “The extent and nature of child poverty in Britain will only become clear when it is told in stories that have resonance with people’s own everyday experiences.”

The Government has a communication problem, agrees Tom Sefton, a child poverty expert at the London School of Economics’ centre for the analysis of social exclusion, in New Start (June 9).

“We need examples (that) people can relate to on the effects of poverty on life chances,” he says, and they should be written in “language people (can) relate to”.
www.ippr.org

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