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Britain is one of the richest countries. So why do children live in poverty?

https://www.cnn.com/2025/11/24/uk/britain-child-poverty-intl-scli
25•rawgabbit•29m ago

Comments

IncreasePosts•22m ago
If you're getting the paywall on cnn, you can either disable javascript, or replace "www." in the url with "lite."

https://lite.cnn.com/2025/11/24/uk/britain-child-poverty-int...

llamasushi•2m ago
This is amazing. Thank you for this.
baal80spam•13m ago
Because governments are best at wasting resources. It's a classic example of "not your money spent on not yourself"=maximum waste.
smallmancontrov•11m ago
Because markets are best at concentrating wealth.
whimsicalism•9m ago
Exactly, there is a reason the pre-market feudal period is known as the ‘great flattening’ of wealth and hierarchy.
whimsicalism•13m ago
Because ‘poverty’ is a moving waterline generally pretty divorced from material circumstance in developed countries.

> 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.

It makes no sense for poverty to be a fully relative measure, it should be against a basket of goods.

kurthr•8m ago
It's interesting, because I read that and the following comment, “Most of the increase in child poverty has occurred in large families,” as almost getting the point.

The point should be, "how to we forestall demographic collapse?" Well, one way was immigration, but they're doing the opposite of that, so better make it easy to have lots of kids!

telotortium•5m ago
[delayed]
nerdponx•7m ago
[delayed]
actionfromafar•5m ago
Not against some kind of social metric then?
whimsicalism•2m ago
What is a social metric?
n4r9•5m ago
That was a weak sentence, but the following one is stronger:

> One million of these children are destitute, going without their most basic needs of staying warm, dry, clothed and fed being met

This is still scandalous in a highly developed country like the UK.

whimsicalism•3m ago
I simply do not buy this. I don’t know the UK context very well, so cannot comment on this - but I do know the US context and we vastly inflate malnourishment numbers relative to what is actually measurable by relying on self-survey with misleading questions.
lars512•2m ago
Here's data based on absolute poverty lines

Distribution: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/distribution-of-populatio...

Share: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-in-poverty-relative...

The share tells a story that poverty is decreasing at all levels, relatively speaking. The distribution tells the additional story that population has increased: there may be less change in the number of people at the $20-30 level and the $30-40 level in recent decades than the share alone would suggest.

rwmj•12m ago
The answer is buried 2/3rds of the way through the article.
input_sh•7m ago
Yes, that's how articles work.
curtisblaine•7m ago
Article perfectly timed to justify the UK Budget in two days, where they will raise taxes.
dweinus•6m ago
Capitalism.
neilv•3m ago
Children are in poverty because some people grab vastly more than their share of the world's wealth, and then they buy legislation and elections, to take even more.

A challenge is that usually, in an attempt at a fair and equitable society, some TPOS will try to be a king or billionaire, or to ride the coattails of one. The society needs to tell those people no, and get them mental health care, to heal whatever makes them act like a TPOS.

HPsquared•3m ago
It's nothing new. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condition-of-England_question
Bang2Bay•3m ago
Its a misnomer to say British kids live in poverty. Poverty is living without access to food and education. these are guaranteed for them. If they are worried of going under dressed to school then that is not poverty.