And about 70% of these children living in poverty have at least one working parent
Thea Jaffe never expected to use a baby seat. In fact, she was responsible for referring other single parents from her local community group to the Little Village charity, which provides essential items to new parents who might not otherwise be able to afford them – everything from prams and cots to clothes, nappies, toys and books.
But when Jaffe, who lives in London, unexpectedly became pregnant with her second child, she didn’t have the money to buy everything she needed. “It’s very difficult to accommodate a baby without a budget,” he tells CNN.
“I was already having financial difficulties, but I didn’t know things would get worse. Now things have gotten to the point where I’m working full time and can’t pay my bills.”
Child poverty has reached a record high in the UK as the country’s cost of living rises and its social safety net falters after years of government austerity. With public services badly weakened, charities like Little Village have sprung into action.
This issue is in the spotlight as action groups have called on the British Labor government to prioritize measures to reduce child poverty in its annual budget.
Around a third of British children – more precisely 4.5 million – currently live in relative poverty, often measured as living in a household that earns less than 60% of the national median income after housing costs, according to a government report published in April.
According to a study carried out in 2023 by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, which studies poverty and formulates policies to combat it, one million of these children are considered destitute, having not met their most basic needs of staying warm, dry, clothed and fed.
“We found a family that lived solely on cereal and rice,” Sophie Livingstone, executive director of Little Village, tells CNN.
“We have many families who live in one room, a lot of mold, a lot of very poor quality housing, even when people are housed,” he adds.
“Survival Mode”
Even for families who are able to meet their children’s basic needs, life is a struggle from month to month without any financial security.
“We always live in fear and that’s not good when you have children depending on you,” Lia, a single mother of 7-year-old twins, tells CNN. She spoke to CNN after being contacted by the Changing Realities Project, which documents parents living on low incomes. Lia asked to use a pseudonym to protect her family’s privacy.
“My daughters want to do the same things that their colleagues are doing. But the budget doesn’t allow it”, she says. After paying for essential goods every month, you have no money left.
“Whenever I go out, I have to make sure I’m not spending too much. It’s a very anxiety-provoking situation.”
A law graduate residing in Hampshire, in the south-east of England, Lia initially returned to work, but says she was often called away in the middle of a meeting by the childcare provider if one of her daughters, who has complex needs – dyspraxia and global developmental delay – was having a “tantrum or a meltdown”. He ended up having to leave his job.
“I go into survival mode,” he says. “I was in the foster care system growing up and I remember feeling so much struggle and anguish of ‘if I can just get through this, everything will be fine’. However, that situation hasn’t changed: as much as I know I have a lot to offer and try to be a good member of society, I still feel like wherever I turn there are difficulties.”
And even for families earning well above the poverty line, the cost of housing and childcare, especially in London, can be so high that there simply isn’t money to spend on anything else. Around 70% of children living in poverty have at least one working parent.
Childcare is more expensive in the UK than in most other rich countries – it costs around 25% of a couple’s net income and around 60% of a single parent’s net income, according to figures released by think tank The Institute for Fiscal Studies in 2022.
Jaffe, the Little Village Baby Bank mum, works full-time on customer solutions and says she earns around €50,000 a year to support herself and her three children – well above the UK average. Still, he says he “struggles every month to make sure everything is paid for, I can’t save anything, I can’t do things for my children.”
After paying the essentials – rent, childcare, food and household bills – he has €220 a month left for emergencies and to save for the following month in case there is an error in his next social security payment, something he says is a regular occurrence.
“There is no longer resilience”
Although child poverty has always been present in the UK, its rate is rising – and much faster than in other rich countries. Between 2012 and 2021, it increased by almost 20%, according to UNICEF. Now, in 2025, the UK’s child poverty rate is higher than that of any other European Union country except Greece, according to the Resolution Foundation, a living standards think tank.
The organization estimates that 300,000 more children will fall into poverty by 2030 if nothing changes.
The current poverty rate also reflects existing inequalities in other sectors of society. Almost half of children in black and Asian communities live in poverty, compared with 24% of white children, while children living in single-parent families or families where someone is disabled are also more likely to live in poverty, according to data from campaigning organization Child Poverty Action Group.
Part of this increase is due to the same economic conditions affecting other parts of the Western world – slow growth and employment that no longer offers the same financial security, as well as persistent inflation that disproportionately affects essential goods and therefore people on low incomes.
But academics and advocates say political decisions also played an important role. British public services were reduced by the Conservative-led centre-right coalition and subsequent Conservative government in power from 2010 to 2024.
And as part of their austerity program, which aimed to reduce public spending in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, the Conservatives introduced three policies that “are largely responsible for the rise in child poverty today”, says Jonathan Bradshaw, emeritus professor of social policy at the University of York, who was also one of the academic advisers on the current government’s future child poverty strategy.
These measures limit the amount of social assistance people can apply for – one is an overall cap on the benefits a household can receive, another caps housing benefits and the third is a cap on benefits for two children, meaning parents cannot apply for anything for their third or subsequent children born after 2017.
Charities and academics argue that it is this upper benefit limit for two children, in particular, that is largely responsible for the rise in child poverty rates in the UK.
“Most of the increase in child poverty occurred in large families,” Jonathan Bradshaw told CNN.
All of this demonstrates the “inadequacy of the subsidy system,” says Peter Matejic, chief analyst at the Joseph Rowntree Foundation.
“If we add up the needs in terms of food, energy, all these things, and look at the amount of benefits… it is lower than that level”, he tells CNN.
When UN envoys Philip Alston and Olivier De Schutter visited the United Kingdom in 2018 and 2023, respectively, they both condemned the poverty they saw in the country, although De Schutter noted that the country was conforming to a pattern of growing inequality seen in other rich countries.
Political enigma
A spokesperson for the current Labor government, which has been in power since July last year, tells CNN that “all children, regardless of their background, deserve the best start in life.”
“We are investing €573 million in children’s development by launching Best Start family centres, extending free school meals and ensuring the poorest don’t go hungry during the holidays through a new €1.15 billion crisis support package.”
The fight against child poverty has been a declared priority of the center-left government and, at the same time, an issue that illuminates the fault lines within it.
Since the Labor Party came to power it has struggled with the need to balance the mandate for change on which it was elected and its traditional inclination to invest in public services, with scarce funds available and a manifest commitment not to increase taxes on workers.
The Government’s plans to reduce child poverty have, to date, been hampered by this conundrum. Something that remains until more details are revealed about the Government’s fiscal and spending plans – in which Chancellor Rachel Reeves, UK Finance Minister, is expected to address the issue of the maximum benefit limit for two children, a policy that the Government has oscillated in the last year between maintaining and eliminating.
But for parents already on the poverty line, their family budgets have been stretched too thin for too long.
“People no longer have resilience,” says Livingstone, recalling that when she began her role as director of Little Village, “we said the safety net had a lot of holes.”
“In fact, I’m not sure there’s a big safety net anymore,” he concludes.
