Britain is one of the world’s richest countries. So why do a third of its children live in poverty?

By Issy Ronald, CNN

London (CNN) — Thea Jaffe never expected to use a baby bank. In fact, she was responsible for referring other single parents from her local community group to the charity Little Village, which provides essential supplies for new parents who otherwise wouldn’t be able to afford them – everything from strollers and cots to clothes, diapers, toys and books.

But when Jaffe, who lives in London, became pregnant unexpectedly with her second child, she couldn’t afford to buy everything she needed. “It’s so overwhelming having to accommodate a baby with no budget,” she told CNN.

“I was already struggling financially… but I didn’t know how bad things were going to get… Now things are at a point where I’m working full time, and I cannot pay my bills.”

Child poverty has reached a record high in the United Kingdom as the country’s cost of living soars and its social security safety net falters following years of government austerity. With public services much weakened, charities like Little Village have stepped in.

Around one-third of Britain’s children – about 4.5 million – now live in relative poverty, often measured as living in a household that earns below 60% of the national median income after housing costs, a government report published in April found.

One million of these children are destitute, going without their most basic needs of staying warm, dry, clothed and fed being met, according to a 2023 study by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, which studies poverty and formulates policy to tackle it.

“We came across one family that were just existing on cornflakes and rice,” Little Village chief executive Sophie Livingstone told CNN.

“We have lots of families who are in one room, lots of mold, lots of very poor-quality housing even when people are housed,” she added.

‘Survival mode’

Even for families that are able to meet their children’s basic needs, life is a month-to-month struggle, without any financial security.

“You just live in fear all the time and that’s not a fun place to be when you’ve got children relying on you,” Lia, a single mother to 7-year-old twin girls, told CNN after being connected through the Changing Realities Project, which documents parents living on low incomes. She asked to use a pseudonym to protect her family’s privacy.

“They want to do all the same things that their peers are doing… but the budget won’t allow that,” she said. After paying for essentials each month, she has no money left.

“Every single time I go out, I have to vigilantly and diligently make sure I’m not overspending. That’s a really anxiety-provoking situation to be in.”

A law graduate who lives in Hampshire, southeast England, Lia initially returned to work but says she would often be called mid-meeting by her childcare provider if one of her daughters, who has complex needs, dyspraxia and global developmental delay, was having a “tantrum or a meltdown.” She eventually had to quit her job.

“I go into survival mode,” she said. “I was in the (foster) care system growing up and I remember feeling so much struggle and angst like, ‘if I can just get through this, it’ll be ok.’ Yet still, that situation hasn’t changed; as much as I know I have a lot to offer and I try to be a good member of society, I still feel like no matter where I turn, there’s difficulty.”

And even for families earning well above the poverty line, the cost of housing and childcare, especially in London, can be so high that there is simply no money to spend on anything else. Around 70% of children living in poverty have at least one parent in work.

Childcare is more expensive in the UK than in most other wealthy countries – costing about 25% of a couple’s and about 60% of a single parent’s net household income, according to figures released by think tank The Institute for Fiscal Studies in 2022.

Jaffe, the mother who makes use of the Little Village baby bank, works full-time in client solutions and says she earns £45,000 ($59,000) a year to support herself and her three children – well above the UK’s average. Still, she says she is “struggling every month to make sure everything is paid, not able to save anything, not able to do things for my kids.”

After paying for essentials – rent, childcare, food and household bills – she is left with £192 (around $250) a month for emergencies and to save for the next month in case there’s an error in her next social security payment – something she says is a regular occurrence.

‘No resilience left’

Although child poverty has always been present in the UK, the rate of it is rising – and much faster than in other wealthy countries. Between 2012 and 2021, it rose by almost 20%, UNICEF found. Now, in 2025, the UK’s child poverty rate is higher than that of any European Union country except Greece, according to the Resolution Foundation, a living standards think tank.

The organization estimates that another 300,000 children will fall into poverty by 2030 if nothing changes.

The current poverty rate reflects inequalities present elsewhere in society, too. Almost half of children in Black and Asian communities are living in poverty, compared with 24% of White children, while children living in single-parent families or in families where someone is disabled are also more likely to live in poverty, figures from campaign organization the Child Poverty Action Group show.

Part of this rise is down to the same economic conditions afflicting other parts of the Western world – sluggish growth, and employment no longer offering the same financial security, as well as stubborn inflation that disproportionately affects essential goods and, therefore, people on low incomes.

But academics and advocates say policy decisions have also played a part. Britain’s public services were slashed by the center-right Conservative-led coalition and subsequent Conservative government in power from 2010 to 2024.

And as part of its austerity program, which aimed to reduce public spending in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, the Conservatives introduced three policies that “are very largely responsible for the increase in child poverty today,” said Jonathan Bradshaw, an emeritus professor of social policy at the University of York who also served as one of the academic advisers to the current government’s upcoming child poverty strategy.

These limited the amount of welfare people are eligible to claim – one is an overall cap on the benefits a household can receive, another limits housing benefits and the third is a two-child benefit cap, meaning that parents cannot claim anything for their third or subsequent children born after 2017.

Charities and academics say it is this two-child benefit cap in particular that is largely responsible for Britain’s rising rates of child poverty.

“Most of the increase in child poverty has occurred in large families,” Bradshaw told CNN.

All this demonstrates the “inadequacy of the benefits system,” says Peter Matejic, chief analyst at the Joseph Rowntree Foundation.

“If you tot up how much you need for food, energy, all these things, and look at how much (benefits are)… it’s below that level,” he told CNN.

When UN envoys Philip Alston and Olivier De Schutter visited the UK in 2018 and 2023, respectively, they both condemned the poverty they saw there, though De Schutter noted that the country conformed to a pattern of increasing inequality seen in other wealthy countries.

Political conundrum

A spokesperson for the current Labour government, which has been in power since July last year, told CNN that “every child, no matter their background, deserves the best start in life.”

“We are investing £500 million in children’s development through the rollout of Best Start Family Hubs, extending free school meals and ensuring the poorest don’t go hungry in the holidays through a new £1 billion crisis support package.”

Addressing child poverty has been a stated priority for the center-left government and, at the same time, an issue that illuminates the fault lines within it.

Ever since Labour came to power, it has grappled with balancing the mandate for change on which it was elected, and its traditional inclination to invest in public services, with scant available funds and a manifesto pledge not to increase taxes on working people.

Its plans to reduce child poverty have thus far been stymied by this conundrum. More details of the government’s spending and tax plans are due to be unveiled in the budget on Wednesday, in which Chancellor Rachel Reeves, the UK’s finance minister, is expected to address the two-child benefit cap, a policy the government has oscillated between keeping and scrapping for the past year.

But for parents already on the breadline, their household budgets have been stretched too thin, for too long.

“People have got no resilience left,” says Livingstone, remembering that when she first began her role as the head of Little Village “we were talking about the safety net having lots of holes in it.”

“I’m actually not sure that there is much of a safety net anymore,” she says.

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