Proposed child poverty measurements will fail to monitor the full extent of deprivation, experts have warned.
In a letter to the Guardian, academics have told ministers that government plans to monitor child poverty through a new combination of factors risks under-appreciating the impact of income.
Ministers have proposed tracking child poverty by combining figures on the number of children in poverty with information on factors leading to poverty and barriers to life chances.
Signing the letter, representatives from the University of York, the London School of Economics, the Institute of Education, Loughborough University, the University of Kent and the University of Sheffield urged the Government to reconsider its proposals.
Tomorrow will mark the end of the consultation period for the Government’s proposals.
The letter said: ‘We agree that as well as tracking how many children are in poverty as currently measured, it is helpful to track what is happening to the factors that lead to poverty and the barriers to children's life chances.
‘But it does not make sense to combine all of these into a single measure. To do so would open up the Government to the accusation that it aims to dilute the importance of income in monitoring the extent of “poverty” at precisely the time that its policies will be reducing the real incomes of poor families.’
