A new report has found that poverty is so bad, lifting the two-child cap won’t actually make that much difference. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) has predicted that overall poverty will only reduce by 1% by 2029.
Lifting two child cap will help some kids, but not enough
While it’s great that 400,000 children will be taken out of poverty in April, many more will still suffer. The charity estimates that 4 million children will still be in poverty by the next general election.
The report projected that thanks to the cap, the poverty rate will fall in April. However, it probably won’t fall any further for the next three years. The JRF said:
While a severe recent harm has been removed from the social security system in the form of scrapping the two-child limit, we still need to hear what the Government hopes to achieve on poverty over the rest of the parliament beyond this, in terms of driving levels further downwards, and what ministers intend to do to bring about that change.
So more is needed. This cannot be the only step. If it is, then progress will likely stall after April.
And even then, it’ll only fall by just over 1% point in April. From 22.3% to 2.1%. Because, despite lifting the cap, the government have not pledged any other ways to support poor people.
Pretty shit for anyone not rich
Using a range of data from sources including the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) and the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), the charity was able to predict how growth will impact poverty. From growth alone poverty, there’s only 0.2% difference between best and worst case scenarios.
In the central scenario (neither best nor worst case), it still wasn’t a very positive outcome. The number of working age adults will fall from 20.4% in April 2025 to 19.8% in April 2026. But after that they will have fallen by just 0.06% by 2029.
The child poverty rate is expected to fall by just 0.05% per year up til 2029, so 4 million children will still be in poverty. It will fall to 28.7% this April though, from 31.6% in April 2025.
Pensioners, though they’ll benefit from the triple lock, will still only see a less than 1% drop in the poverty rate. From 16.7% this April to 15.9% in April 2029.
As the report points out, growth is typically felt most by middle and high income households, not low income ones. So to rely just on growth would mean more people are actually at risk of falling into poverty, not getting out of it.
Cannot rely on economic growth alone
JRF says this is because we cannot rely on the economy alone. The Labour government must also work to improve living standards and work to bring as many people out of poverty as possible. Which at the minute, it’s not doing.
The charity also called out Keir Starmer, who has once again gone back on his promises:
These levels of poverty are incompatible with the Prime Minister’s ambition that ‘no child is held back by poverty’ (Starmer, 2025), nor will improvements in the economic security of low- and middle-income households be widely felt. Such a scenario will also see little progress towards the manifesto commitment to end the mass dependence on food banks.
The JRF recommends that other measures must be taken to ensure more people are pulled out of poverty
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Introducing a protected minimum floor into Universal Credit (UC) to embed for the first time the principle of a safety net below which no one should fall and to better protect the link between circumstance and support that removing the two-child limit has started to restore
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Permanently re-link the local housing allowance to further strengthen the link between support and needs, and to give the child poverty strategy a better chance of tackling the scandalous number of children living in temporary accommodation.
The report points out that these are immediate fixes. However, long-term, the government must commit to tackling poverty. They say this must be done through strengthening social security and ensuring households do not go without. It must also ensure all types of worker are better protected when they are temporarily out of work.
What about people who can’t work, though?
There’s one group very obviously missing from this, though – disabled people. According to JRF’s own research, disabled people face higher rates of poverty. 28% compared to 20%. The government is on course to cut disability benefits, which will push even more disabled people into poverty.
Under-22-year-olds won’t be eligible for Universal Credit. While cutting the Work Capability Assessment from UC and moving it to Personal Independence Payment (PIP) will make it harder to qualify for. Whilst PIP is still under review, going off cancelled plans we can make some assumptions. Making it harder to qualify for and potentially limiting what PIP can be spent on would put many at risk.
There’s also the fact that the government scrapping specialist “high end” cars from Motability will mean many will face an extra bill. Or lose their independence completely.
Labour doesn’t care about lifting people out of poverty
But expecting Labour to do something to actually help people is like waiting for pigs to fly. The two-child cap could’ve been lifted in 2024, but they all refused to vote for a Tory amendment. They also could’ve done much more to actually support poor people. instead they spend all their time demonising benefit claimants.
Let’s be honest, Labour doesn’t actually care about getting people out of poverty – or they would’ve already done it.
Featured image via the Canary
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