One in three Peterborough children ‘living in poverty’

Analysis of government and HMRC data shows that in 2019/20 9,524 children aged 0-15 in the Peterborough constituency were impoverished.

This places Peterborough 34th out of 650 constituencies for the highest levels of child poverty.

The figures are based on people in ‘relative low income’ (living in households with income below 60 per cent of the median in that year) and does not take into account housing costs.

The North West Cambridgeshire constituency (which includes parts of Peterborough) is 417th on the list, compared to 275th for North East Cambridgeshire, 375th for South Holland and the Deepings, 415th for Corby, 440th for Grantham and Stamford and 514th for Huntingdonshire.

Birmingham, Hodge Hill (53 per cent) and Birmingham, Ladywood (50 per cent) were the two areas with the highest levels of child poverty, while Esher and Walton and Richmond Park (both six per cent) have the lowest levels.

Nationally, in 2019/20 11.7 million people were said to be in relative low income (18 per cent of the population), including 3.2 million children (23 per cent).

Over the longer term there has been a reduction in poverty rates since the late 1990s for children, pensioners and working-age parents, although the likelihood of being in relative low income has increased for working-age adults without dependent children.

Poverty rates are highest for people in households where the head of the household is from the Pakistani or Bangladeshi ethnic groups and lowest for those from white ethnic groups.

Around 40 per cent of working-age adults in workless families were in relative poverty before housing costs in 2019/20, compared to 11 per cent in families where at least one adult was in work.

Moreover, 46 per cent of social renters and 33 per cent of private renters were in relative poverty in 2019/20, compared to 15 per cent of people who owned their home outright and 11 per cent of those who have a mortgage.

The proportion of people in relative low income before housing costs was 27 per cent for families where someone is disabled, compared to 15 per cent for people living in families where no one is disabled.