The dynamics of child poverty in Britain: Trends, transition and trajectories. An analysis of the BHPS (1991-2002).

The context for the thesis is the Government's ambitious target to eradicate child poverty by 2020 with interim targets to reduce it by a quarter by 2004/05 and to halve it by 2010/11 compared with its level in 1998/99. This remarkable pledge, with its implication of long-term commitment, is based on static headcount indicators, which measure the proportion of poor children in the population in a given year. These take no account of whether the same children experience poverty over a number of years or escape this condition. Furthermore, this pledge has not been matched by a sustained interrogation into the longitudinal nature of child poverty, which considers time in the mediation of poverty. While research on cross-sectional trends in child poverty and the associated risk factors is well established, there has been a dearth of research into the dynamic aspects of child poverty. Investigating the dynamic aspects of poverty is important since the longer the time a child spends in poverty, the more serious are the consequences to the quality of childhood, future outcomes across the life-course, and to society as a whole. The primary objective of this thesis is to explore the heterogeneity of child poverty experiences using twelve annual waves of the British Household Panel Study (1991-2002). Poverty is explored across three distinct time dimensions, namely, cross-sectional trends, short-term transitions between two consecutive years, and longer-term trajectories over the entire twelve year period. Low income is used as a proxy for poverty, with poverty defined as living in a household where income is below 60 per cent of the median adjusted for household size. As the poverty line is essentially arbitrary, the sensitivity of the findings are tested at different thresholds. Children are systematically compared with the overall population in order to assess similarities, differences, and progress over time