NEW LABOUR POLICY AND CHILD POVERTY

New Labour Policy and Child Poverty

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to identify the significant and comprehensive arguments in Labour policy that is for Child Poverty. The paper focuses on strengths and weaknesses related to Labour policy regarding child poverty. Child Labour and poverty has been a long controversial issue around the world there are several labour policies that came into being, however they are amended on the frequent basis. United Nation has played a pivotal role in solving this sociological issue. The new Labour policy has potentials to overcome the child poverty issues. However, the policy has some weaknesses that will be discussed in the paper.

New Labour Policy and Child Poverty

Background

The aim of Government is to eliminate child poverty from the country, and for this purpose the government has put strong emphasis on the labour policies. However with the extensive researches it has been found that the child poverty will rise in the upcoming decade rather than decreasing. The government need to be careful while designing policies for labour and child poverty. The researchers could not see the relationship of economic growth and poverty. There are some sociological and racial problems that have affected the labour policies also. The past labour policies do not seen effective in decreasing child poverty. There are a number of children who are working, the government seem slow to overcome the problem. The new Labour policy has highlighted the key problem i.e. child poverty. In order to overcome the problem and bring children poverty at half around 600,000 children need to be pulled out of poverty (Gallo, Smith, 2006, p. 109-119). If the government pull out 600,000 children from poverty it would cost £4.2 billion a year approximately. The labour policy for the reduction of child poverty brings that there will be reduction in 1.1 million children poverty in upcoming years than 1998. This amount will fall 600,000 id evaluated globally (Paul, 1986).

Introduction

According to the fact, (Refugee Council, 2004)19 million children lived below the poverty line in the 27 EU countries. 19% of them were at risk of poverty, Compared to 16% of the population total. In most EU countries, children are more exposed to poverty than the rest of the population - except Denmark and Finland (where 10% of children live below the threshold poverty), Cyprus (11%), Germany and Slovenia (12%) and Belgium (15%) where the rate of Child poverty is less than or equal to the total population. In almost half of EU countries, the risk of child poverty is 20% or higher, the highest levels (26%) (Alcock, 1997)were recorded in Latvia and Poland. In the UK, children whose parents are under 30 years are more exposed to poverty than those living with older parents: 27% when the mother is less than 30 years, against 19% when she was between 30 and 39, and 16% when between 40 and 49. This is due mainly by the fact that young parents early in their careers earn ...