INTERVENTION: reducing child poverty to X% by Y year

[ld-archer]

Creating this off the back of meeting with representatives of Scottish Government (28/4/23).

They suggested a new intervention targeting child poverty, where the target is to reduce the proportion of children in poverty to X% (5% suggested in meeting but not known for certain) by 2030 (again date may change). We should be able to find some of this information out by ourselves but will also hopefully follow up with Katherine Myant and colleagues about the specifics of this.

This can be achieved in a similar manner to the calculations in the living wage intervention.

Steps:

• identify households with children
• identify hh's in poverty (absolute or relative? Target of reducing proportion suggests absolute)
• Give magic money to a subset of these identified households to bring them out of poverty

With this being a reduce to X % by Y date, we will need to gradually reduce the levels of poverty. Which would mean identifying how many in poverty at the start, and reducing by a sensible amount over that timespan. I.e. if we start with 15% in poverty in 2020, and targeting 5% by 2030, then a 1% reduction per year is sensible.

Opening this issue before we have all the information because I think this could be a good 'generic' type of intervention. I.e. identify a subgroup that we want to reduce or increase (another example could be unemployed?), setting a target for that subgroup at a specific horizon, and change the population through some means (hh_income, employment, any further levers) to hit that target.

[ld-archer]

Lots of additional information from Nik:

Tackling Child Poverty Delivery Plan 2022-26

https://www.gov.scot/news/tackling-child-poverty-delivery-plan-2022-26/

• Fewer than 18% of children living in families in relative poverty in 2023-24, reducing to fewer than 10% by 2030.
• Fewer than 14% of children living in families in absolute poverty in 2023-24, reducing to fewer than 5% by 2030.
• Fewer than 8% of children living in families living in combined low income and material deprivation in 2023-24, reducing to fewer than 5% by 2030.
• Fewer than 8% of children living in families in persistent poverty in 2023-24, reducing to fewer than 5% by 2030. Definitions: https://www.gov.scot/publications/poverty-in-scotland-methodology/pages/poverty-definition/ Absolute poverty: Individuals living in households whose equivalised income is below 60% of inflation adjusted UK median income in 2010/11. This is a measure of whether those in the lowest income households are seeing their incomes rise in real terms. Relative poverty: Individuals living in households whose equivalised income is below 60% of UK median income in the same year. This is a measure of whether those in the lowest income households are keeping pace with the growth of incomes in the economy as a whole.

The simplest target for us to tackle right now is the reduction in absolute poverty (need some clarification on the relative poverty target).

Also on the point about low income and material deprivation, is material deprivation similar to our housing_quality variable? As our housing_quality is mainly about household appliances could it be a sort of proxy?