Figures by the Social Metric Foundation show a third (31%) of people in poverty – or 4.5 million people – are more than 50% below the poverty line, and this proportion has not changed since the millennium.
Just under half (49%) of those in poverty are also in ‘persistent’ poverty, meaning they are in poverty now and have been in poverty for at least two of the previous three years.
This totals 7 million people, including 2.3 million children, 1.2 million people living in lone-parent families, and 1.8 million of those living in workless households.
Upon hearing of the figures, Sarah Wallace, programme director of the Church Urban Fund’s Just Finance Foundation said: “I think it was shocking but not surprising unfortunately, after years of austerity and squeeze on income and increases on house prices it’s not at all surprising for me to see that families are really struggling.”
She explained that this isn’t necessarily due to unemployment.
“There’s so many more people working in insecure jobs and one of the things that really struck me was the number in in-work poverty – so people that work, sometimes two family members working fulltime, and still aren’t able to make ends meet”.
She said there’s a mixture of low-income and insecure hours, high cost credit on borrowing when essential items go wrong, such as repairing a washing machine,
“Unfortunately, there seems to…
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