Poverty in the United Kingdom: from bad to worse-By design and drift the UK has become more unequal, less inclusive, and less caring

摘要

In 1973 the National Children's Bureau published Bom to Fail, which described how large numbers of children in the United Kingdom were being born and brought up to fail-first in the educational system and then in employment and the wider economy. In 1980 the Black report on inequalities in health recommended that "above all, the abolition of child poverty should be adopted as a national goal for the 1980s." In 1979,10% of children were being brought up in households with less than half of average income-the definition of child poverty at that time. A decade later, it was 30%. A Unicef report on child neglect in rich countries laid the blame firmly at the door of the laissez faire market based policies introduced by most Anglo-American countries as they sought to extricate themselves from recession. An editorial in The BMJ put it succinctly: "Markets fail children."