'More than one in three children in poverty'

More than one in three children and a quarter of adults are in poverty in the UK after deprivation levels have risen to their highest in the 21st century, according to a report.

- Josh Halliday

The study by the Social Metrics Commission (SMC), which used measures recently adopted by the UK government, found that the cost of living crisis had plunged 2 million more people into severe hardship since 2019. In total, more than 16 million people, or 24% of the UK population, are defined as living in poverty - the highest figure since comparable records began in 2000.

Children accounted for the biggest rise of any social group falling into poverty, the report found, with an extra 260,000 on the breadline since before the Covid pandemic, meaning a record 36% - or 5.2 million children - were in deprivation.

The figures are likely to reignite calls for Labour to scrap the two-child benefit cap because, of those 5.2 million, more than half (55%) lived in families with three or more children.

About one in four children in poverty lived in a single-child household, with the same proportion in a two-child family.

Keir Starmer has resisted calls to abandon the policy - introduced by George Osborne when he was chancellor - saying that the government would not take on the "unfunded pledge" without identifying a source for the £3bn annual cost..

The report, seen by the Guardian, is significant because it measures a family's resources, not just their income, which is widely accepted to be the most accurate definition of poverty in the UK.