So if children are the future of a society….welcome to your future

[WeX]

A recent study by The Children's Society study revealed that 76 percent of British children are "often worried" about how much money the family had. Reports by the Department for Work and Pensions that around 3.5 million children are currently growing up in relative poverty in Britain. In 2011-12, 2.3 million or 17 percent of UK children were recorded as “living in homes with substantially lower than average income”.

 

Relative poverty means nothing. It means those earning less then 40% of the average mean salary in the UK. Work it out, its its a percentage of an average, this means you can never change it.

 

UK Average salary is £26,500pa. Anyone earning £10,600 or less are considered to be in poverty, but anyone working a full time job on minimum wage earns £11,484.20 pa (approx, working 5 days a week, 7 hours a day)

[Peer Gynt]

I'm always sceptical about things that talk of relative poverty.

 

As some people's standard of living increases, that means some people become more impoverished, not because their standard of living has declined, but simply by virtue of somebody else's increasing.

 

I don't think that poverty scale is judged like that.

[alchresearch]

In the last fifteen years cases of rickets have increased fivefold.

 

According to the NHS:

 

The most common cause of rickets is a lack of vitamin D and calcium. Vitamin D comes from foods such as oily fish and eggs, and from sunlight on our skin. Vitamin D is essential for a child to form strong and healthy bones.

 

Calcium comes from milk.

 

Eggs and milk are not expensive, certainly cheaper than junk food and fizzy pop, which I would suspect are more likely the reason why.

[Zamo]

Many families are facing stark and unacceptable choices, like heat or eat.

 

I guess this means that there are going to be a lot of cold fat kids this winter.

[Cyclone]

A recent study by The Children's Society study revealed that 76 percent of British children are "often worried" about how much money the family had. Reports by the Department for Work and Pensions that around 3.5 million children are currently growing up in relative poverty in Britain. In 2011-12, 2.3 million or 17 percent of UK children were recorded as “living in homes with substantially lower than average income”.

 

The new figure, however, rises to 3.5 million or 27 percent when housing costs are deducted from incomes.

 

The proportion of children in poverty has nearly doubled in the last 30 years. Six in 10 children living in poverty are in low-income working families.

 

 

Matthew Reed, Chief Executive of The Children’s Society said:

 

'For millions of children up and down the country, poverty is a grinding reality - and it is getting worse. Many families are facing stark and unacceptable choices, like heat or eat. This is disgraceful in any country - especially in one of the world’s richest.

 

 

In the last fifteen years cases of rickets have increased fivefold.

 

Rickets being down to a lack of Vit D, caused by parents being overly cautious about exposure to the sun and children spending more time indoors playing on consoles that they couldn't have if they really lived in poverty!

[jfish1936]

We had to watch our spending on food; we had a radio, and I tried to get invited to a rich family's house to watch their TV. We walked a lot, using trams and buses cost money.

 

If a child of today went back in time to live with us then, (s)he would surely be complaining about "poverty".

 

Now, why are these people poor?

They can't get money, either by work or from benefits?

Or is it that the money is spent on unnecessary things?

 

Funny; before leaving for Australia (where, OK, I became financially comfortable), we lived very economically. A lady was worried about how she could afford food, now her husband had retired. So we showed her our book in which we'd collected our cheap recipes.

"Oh, I couldn't ask my husband to eat THAT!!" she told us.

[Cyclone]

I don't think that poverty scale is judged like that.

 

Yes it is. The measure of poverty in the UK is a relative one, not an absolute one.

It's possible to define a household as being in poverty despite the fact that they have heat, they eat well, they have sky TV and two weeks of holiday every year. Which makes it a rather pointless measure IMO.

[Manlinose]

the point of relative poverty measures is to compare the wealth of people within the same country as opposed to comparing one nation's poor against another

 

of course most people who are in relative poverty in this country (compared to the wealthier in this country) are not in what most people would consider as poverty when their standard of living is compared to the poorest of, say, Bangladesh (or indeed, the poorest of the UK 100 years ago)

[chem1st]

http://www.sheffieldforum.co.uk/showpost.php?p=9464542&postcount=40

 

Tent communities, increasing amounts of people living in vehicles, even people sleeping under a motorway bridge. Some people are actively swapping rent, for vehicles and gym membership, and what with rent I don't blame them.

 

 

 

I want more housing, so the people have housing. I want housing built to generous standards. We should have higher standards than those set out in the Parker Morris committee!

 

 

 

Let's build the housing first. And where we build housing, build schools. And where there is lots of housing, built hospitals.

 

But let's not forget that HOUSING IS HEALTH.

 

A lack of housing is causing our hospitals problems!

 

In some parts of the UK overcrowding is leading to all kinds of health problems.

 

In Wakefield rickets have returned.

 

http://www.wakefieldexpress.co.uk/news/local/more-wakefield-news/wakefield-children-being-diagnosed-with-pre-war-illness-rickets-1-5279598

 

"Published on Saturday 5 January 2013 12:00

 

CHILDREN in Wakefield are being diagnosed with rickets.

 

The illness which causes deformed bones was virtually eliminated by improved diets and living standards.

 

And although district health chiefs say the number of rickets cases is low, it marks a return of an illness associated with the slums and poverty of pre-war Britain.

 

Fifteen cases of the illness have been diagnosed in the district in the past three years."

 

 

In London and other large cities, TB is spreading. There are increased fire risks in overcrowded property.

 

The link between poor housing and poor health is well documented.

 

We had the housing of the working classes acts in the 1880s and 1890s.

 

Poor housing in the early 1910s alarmed the military, due to the health problems of recruits from poor housing in WWI. Leading to homes fit for heroes. Which led to council housing.

 

Health improved as housing improved (admittedly they invested in health too, and other social infrastructure such as free education), there was also a policy of near full employment

 

And destroyed by Thatcher and successive governments (including Labour), with the death of public housing for the working classes, the problems of old are beginning to return.

 

I'm now waiting for the same callous members to come on and be in total denial about this tragic situation just as they were about the plight of pensioners during the cold winters.

No doubt more children like pensioners will fall into the poverty trap with the recently announced fuel price increases but don't expect too much sympathy on here.

 

---------- Post added 29-10-2013 at 19:11 ----------

 

This is disgusting in the 21st century.

 

Waits with bated breath for the excuses of those in denial.

 

---------- Post added 30-10-2013 at 19:30 ----------

 

http://www.sheffieldforum.co.uk/showthread.php?t=1184041

 

 

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/children-in-working-families-fall-below-the-poverty-line-8658151.html

 

Children living below the poverty line are now twice as likely to come from working families struggling on low incomes and falling wages than those whose parents are unemployed, official figures have revealed.

 

The number of children growing up in absolute poverty in “breadline Britain” increased by 300,000 last year – an annual increase of 2 per cent, representing the biggest rise in two decades – according to official Department for Work and Pensions figures.

 

The rise means a total of 2.6 million children are now raised in poverty. After housing costs, the number is even higher, with 3.5 million in families whose incomes are significantly lower than the rest of the population.

 

Workers today are feckless.

 

Their children are being plunged into poverty. Workers have lost nearly all their rights, and their wages fall in real terms. Many do not even have job security.

 

As housing costs are engineered to increase above inflation by the state, workers have failed to keep up. They have not managed to secure pay rises above inflation to keep up with artificially high housing costs.

 

Nor have workers increased their hours to pay the land and money rentiers.

 

Quite frankly, workers today are a bit feckless. They do not stick together, they do not unionise. They do not fight for a fair share of the pie.

 

They foolishly attack unemployed workers (who would gladly take their jobs and work for less). They should be fighting for jobs for their fellow men.

 

The irony is, most of these workers, are not even debt incumbent mortgagees. They could strike, without fear of losing property rights (for they lack them in the first place).

 

Unless workers start working together and fighting for better wages (or alternatively, cheaper housing), then their children will continue to get poorer, and even more will get rickets (rickets and other types of disease are back and the frequency is increasing rapidly, as workers can't feed their children properly after paying to house them).

 

Older people have, you might say, had a good recession: A new analysis has revealed that the incomes of people in their 60s and 70s have continued to rise throughout the downturn.

 

But their grandchildren have been far less fortunate. Income among people in their 20s fell by 12 per cent between 2008 and 2012 - the largest fall of any age group.

 

The study, from the Institute for Fiscal Studies, found that average incomes fell between 2011–12, 5.8 per cent below their levels in 2009-10. The body’s David Phillips said the research showed that the “face of poverty” had become much younger.

 

“Whereas in the 1960s and early 1970s the poverty rate for pensioners was around six to eight times as high as for working-age adults without children, by 2011–12 the risks had near enough equalised. Indeed, once housing costs are accounted for, pensioners actually had a substantially lower risk of poverty,” he said.

 

Young workers (and their children) are now more likely to be in poverty than pensioners.

 

Unless they start fighting for better wages/cheaper houses, things can only get worse.

 

Not fighting for cheaper housing or better wages will plunge you into poverty. Fight for a better life, we all deserve a roof over our heads and food in our bellies. Hell we deserve a whole lot more. We are far more productive nowadays. We should be living far better than any previous generation.

[Parvo]

from nhs choices on rickets:

Rickets was common during Victorian times, but mostly disappeared in the Western world during the 1940s thanks to the fortification with vitamin D of foods such as margarine and cereal.

However, there has been and increase in cases of rickets in the UK in recent years. Children of Asian, African-Caribbean and Middle Eastern origin have a higher risk because their skin is darker and they need more sunlight to get enough vitamin D.

Other groups who are at risk include children born prematurely and children taking medication that interferes with vitamin D. However, any child whose diet does not contain enough vitamin D or calcium can develop rickets.

 

Multi faceted reasons: also kids indoors, factor 50 sunblock etc etc

and some-but not all poverty

 

and the kids living in parks are probably rickets free chem cos they get sunlight....