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More than one in five children born after 2013 experience poverty for at least half of their childhood, finds new research by UCL and the University of Oxford.

Credit:Annandistock

The study, published in the Journal of Social Policy, provides the first comprehensive evidence on trends and drivers in long-term childhood poverty across birth cohorts in Britain.

Tracking children born in Britain between 1991 and 2017, the new analysis found that 25% of children born in the early 1990s experienced poverty for at least half of childhood.

This fell to 13-14% among children born in the 1998-1999 cohort, following welfare reforms after 1997.

Rates of long-term childhood poverty remained stable for children born in the 2000s, despite the 2008 financial crisis, which the researchers noted was partly because of increased support for lower-income families following the post-1997 welfare reforms.

Following the post-2013 austerity reforms, the long-term childhood poverty rate rose sharply, reaching 23% for the 2016-2017 cohort.

Across the past three decades, nearly one in six (17%) children in Britain have experienced poverty for at least half of childhood, rising to above one in five (around 23%) for cohorts born after 2013.

Poverty during childhood is associated with worse outcomes later in life, including for educational achievement, employment prospects, earnings and health. Longer exposure is linked to more damaging consequences.

Led by Anna Yong (UCL Social Research Institute) and Dr Selçuk Bedük (University of Oxford) ‘Long-term childhood poverty in Britain: Trends and drivers across the 1991-2017 birth cohorts’,

comes as child poverty has returned to the centre of policy debate. In January 2026, the UK Government published its Child Poverty Strategy, which identified child poverty as a national priority. The strategy highlights the high societal cost of child poverty, including its long-term impact on education, employment, earnings and health, but does not specifically address long-term childhood poverty.

Anna Yong (UCL Social Research Institute) said: “The longer children spend in poverty, the deeper the harm. Our study shows long-term poverty is not inevitable; it is the result of policy choices that can be reversed. The recent removal of the two-child limit could be an important step in the right direction, but restoring the wider safety net is equally urgent.’

Dr Selçuk Bedük (University of Oxford) said: ‘For nearly a quarter of children in Britain today, poverty is long-term and defines much of their childhood. Our study shows that policy matters: when support for families on low incomes is stronger, long-term childhood poverty falls. When that support is reduced, more children are pushed into long-term poverty. If the government wants to bring those numbers down, it needs to restore benefits to their real pre-austerity value.’

The research findings suggest that changes such as lifting the two-child limit and uprating Universal Credit could reduce long-term childhood poverty. By contrast, an increase in the minimum wage alone, without adequate benefit support, would be unlikely to have a significant effect on long-term childhood poverty.

Links

• Read: Long-term childhood poverty in Britain: trends and drivers across the 1991–2017 birth cohorts
• Anna Yong’s academic profile
• UCL Social Research Institute
• UCL Institute of Education

Image

• Credit:Annandistock

Media contact 

Sophie Hunter

sophie.hunter[at]ucl.ac.uk