Tackling in-work poverty is vital to growing the financial strength of families and helping them to avoid crises. Despite increases to the National Living Wage, levels of poverty within working households continue to rise.
The government promotes work as the best route out of poverty yet this is not always guaranteed. We know that 75% of children growing up in relative poverty live in a household where at least one person works (DWP, 2021).
Analysis by Policy in Practice from 2021 found that a single parent working full-time on the National Living Wage would be worse off by £1,035 a year by April 2022. We have updated our analysis to show where that household would be now, and where they’re likely to be in 2023.
Listen back to learn about
- The Autumn Statement and low income families
- Brand new analysis on how many low-income working families are in relative poverty
- How in-work poverty has risen since the end of the pandemic supports and how it is forecasted to change in 2023
- Case study: How Haringey Council uses data to target free childcare entitlement
- What practical actions frontline organisations and local authorities can take to support low-income working families
With guest speaker Richard Kaufman, Performance and Data Analyst, Haringey Council
View the webinar
One way to help households in work is to enable them to get childcare. Using the Low Income Family Tracker (LIFT) you can identify households with children below the poverty line and engage with them to let them know that they're eligible for support.
The core finding from our analysis is that more needs to be done for working benefit claimants to be able to meet their living costs. For example, lone parents working full time on the National Living Wage are worse off by £1,334 a year compared to 2021.
Make the best use of the data that's available to you - honing down on DWP lists, data from LIFT if you have access to it and information that you have on families that have applied and taken up entitlements.