Tackling Poverty in Leicester
Which groups are most affected by poverty?
Poverty can affect any individual or family. Anyone can experience life changes – such as unemployment, illness, or family separation – that lead to financial difficulties. Also, the rising costs of food, housing and fuel will affect most people.
However, certain groups of people face a higher risk, including disabled people, women, families with children, lone parents, and people from minority ethnic groups, due to the greater barriers they face in areas such as access to employment. Some population groups may also have greater living costs than others, which will contribute to their experience of poverty. Of course, some people face multiple difficulties or belong to multiple groups at risk: cumulatively the impact of poverty on them will be greater.
The Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG) provides examples of some groups that face a much higher risk of living in poverty than others (national data).
SOURCE: Child Poverty Action Group
CPAG draws the following broad conclusions from their research:
“Families with children face higher risks of poverty because of the extra costs of children and because of the effect on parents’ working hours. Children’s benefits do not fully compensate.
“Lone parents are more likely to experience poverty than those in a couple. 49% of children in lone-parent families are in poverty.
“Pensioner poverty [at 16%] has fallen as a result of increases in benefits to pensioners, the growth of private pension incomes and rising pensioner employment.
“The overall number (3 million) of women who are low paid is still much higher than the overall number (1.9 million) of men who are low paid.
“Disability is strongly connected to poverty. Parents with disabilities often face multiple barriers to work, and additional costs arise for families caring for a disabled child. 37% of children in families where someone is disabled are in poverty, compared to 26% of children in families where no-one is disabled.
“People from ethnic minorities are also more likely to live in poverty. 46% of children living in minority ethnic families are in poverty, compared with 31% of all children.”
How poverty affects minority groups
Equalities approach
It is important that we acknowledge that poverty affects people in an unequal way and we think about actions to reduce the inequalities. This might mean looking at the way services are delivered and carefully targeting specific actions towards sections of our community.
This strategy has strong links with the council’s Corporate Equality and Diversity Strategy 2018-2022 which requires all proposed service developments and changes to be assessed for their impact on groups of people with “protected characteristics”. (These characteristics are defined in the Equality Act: age, age, disability, race, sex, gender reassignment, religion or belief, sexual orientation, pregnancy or maternity, and marital or civil partnership status.) Council equality impact assessments recommend actions to be taken to mitigate the risks to these groups.
The equality strategy sets out the council’s commitment to promoting equality in its roles as a service provider, an employer and as a community leader. It recognises the level of deprivation in the city along with the impact of welfare reforms that have reduced the incomes of many households.
Children
CPAG also sets out the impact that poverty has on children. Living on a low income increases parents’ stress levels and children frequently report worrying about their parents and feeling excluded and embarrassed. Poverty impacts on children’s ability to enjoy their childhoods and achieve their aspirations.
CPAG explored how poverty feels to children. These short animations depict the experience of children living in poverty.
Children who have lived in persistent poverty during their first seven years have cognitive development scores on average 20% below those of children who have never experienced poverty.
In 2015, 33% of children receiving free school meals obtained five or more good GCSEs, compared with 61% of other children.
Health and disabilities
Leicester’s Health and Wellbeing Survey carried out in 2018 showed that social renters, home carers, the long-term sick or disabled and those with poor mental health are particularly vulnerable to “running out of money” and therefore poverty. Of these groups, the issue is particularly severe for people who are long-term sick or disabled and unable to work.
LGBT communities
Although there is a lack of data on poverty and deprivation levels in the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) communities, the research that exists suggests that these groups are more likely to be worse off financially. Analysis of the UK Household Longitudinal Study found that gay and bisexual men experience greater material disadvantage compared to heterosexual men, while bisexual women experience greater material disadvantage compared to heterosexual women.
The National LGBT Survey 2018 found that employment rates are considerably lower for trans and non-binary people, which will have an impact on their experience of poverty.
An LGBT foundation report from 2020 also stated that LGBT people are disproportionately more likely to be homeless, with 24% of homeless young people (aged 16 to 25) being LGBT. 77% of homeless young LGBT people stated that being LGBT was a causal factor in rejection from home.
Women
The Women Talking, City Listening project gathered information from women across Leicester between 2019 and 2020. This information was collated into a report that has been presented to government. Many recommendations have been made across ten key themes. Some of the areas studied have a direct impact upon women’s experience of poverty, including careers and motherhood, support for carers, finance, and workplace policies and practice.
Ethnicity
The council’s work to tackle race inequality and disadvantage, and to promote inclusion, is being pulled together across a range of themes, responding to the global Black Lives Matter movement. Some of the themes have links to the anti-poverty work: jobs and skills, and financial and welfare support.
Carers
Carers are counted as being associated with someone who is protected by the law because of their age or disability and resultingly protected by equalities legislation. The Joseph Rowntree foundation has done research into poverty and caring responsibilities. They found:
The poverty rate among carers continues to be above those who are not carers. The proportion of adults who are informal carers has remained relatively stable at around 8-10% over the last 15 years. The amount of time spent caring also impacts ability to work. Six in 10 of those who are caring for 35 hours or more a week are workless, three times the rate of those caring for less than 20 hours a week. Of those carers who are working, those with higher caring responsibilities (35+ hours or 20–34 hours) are more likely to work part-time than those providing lower levels of care (less than 20 hours).
Older People
Leicester is the 10th most deprived local authority in England for “income deprivation affecting older people”. Using this measure, 50% of Leicester’s 60+ population live in the most deprived 20% of areas nationally.
The map shows where the most deprived older people are living. The pattern of this deprivation does not mirror the general IMD trends in the city.
Welfare reforms
Research has clearly shown that a range of people who share certain protected characteristics will be significantly adversely impacted by welfare reforms. In particular, ethnic minority households will be more adversely impacted than white households, with average losses for black households about 5% of net income, more than double that for white households.
In addition, households with one or more disabled members will be significantly more adversely impacted than those with no disabled members. On average, tax and benefit changes on families with a disabled adult will reduce their income by about £2,500 per year. If the family also includes a disabled child, the impact will be over £5,500 per year. This compares to a reduction of about £1,000 on non-disabled families.
Women lose more than men from reforms at every income level. Overall, women lose around £940 per year on average; more than double the losses of around £460 for men.
The biggest average losses by age group, across men and women, are experienced by the 65-74 age group (average losses of around £1,450 per year) and the 35-44 age group (average losses of around £1,250 per year).
The introduction of Universal Credit (UC) is one of the biggest changes to the benefits system for working age people in the last 30 years. This benefit began rolling out in Leicester in 2018 and is still in progress, as many people move from the legacy benefits when their circumstances change. The change to the system brings together the main six working age benefits (job seekers’ allowance, income support, employment support allowance, working and child tax credits, and housing benefit) under one combined universal credit and will affect approximately 20,000 Leicester residents. One of the main challenges which UC poses (in addition to the possible financial pressures on claimants) is the requirement for claimants to fill out their application online.
Before and since the introduction of UC in Leicester, the council has worked hard with local partners to try to reduce any negative impacts, such as increasing the digital skills of residents in the city and ensuring that people are signposted to the information and support they need.