TWO-CHILD BENEFIT LIMIT IMPACTS 1.7 MILLION CHILDREN

NEARLY 1.7 million children in Universal Credit households were impacted by the two-child limit last year.

- By DAVID DUBAS-FISHER

The two-child benefit limit prevents parents from claiming child tax credit or universal credit for more than two children, and was introduced by the Conservative Government in 2017.

It affected a record high of 469,780 households across Great Britain in the year to April 2025, according to the latest figures from the Department of Work and Pensions. The majority of those households (59%) were in work, and were home to a total of 1.7 million children.

The impact of the policy isn’t felt evenly across the country, however, with more than two in every five kids in some constituencies living in households affected by the two-child limit.