Meeting even the least ambitious child poverty reduction target could make a ‘marked difference’ in children’s health across the UK and reducing health inequalities, according to Glasgow-led research.

One of the authors from the University of Glasgow’s the first-of-its-kind study exploring the health impacts of meeting future child poverty targets, says potential savings to the NHS should be factored in when the UK government says it cannot afford the cost of abolishing the two-child benefit cap.

The research was funded by Medical Research Council and the Scottish government’s Chief Scientist Office and concludes that reducing child poverty would ‘substantially improve’ child health.

The Glasgow team modelled the outcomes of three hypothetical future poverty reduction targets between 2024 and 2033 using data from England.

The targets were set as low-ambition (15% reduction), medium-ambition (25% reduction) and high-ambition (35% reduction) and compared with a baseline child poverty scenario predicted as a 15% increase.

This comes after the decision by the UK government to uphold the two-child benefit policy which limits the child tax credits and universal credit a family can receive to only two children.

Leading charity, Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG) has called for this restriction to be removed, stating that scrapping the two-child limit is the most cost-effective way to reduce child poverty.

Using local authority data, the researchers showed that meeting any reduction target would improve child health, particularly for those in the most deprived groups.

Professor Vittal Katikireddi, Professor of Public Health & Health Inequalities and lead author on the study, said it demonstrates that addressing child poverty can have “large and immediate health benefits”, adding:

“The costs of policies to reduce child poverty, such as abolishing the two-child benefit cap, should be considered alongside the potential savings that can be realised by the NHS and local authorities.”

Meeting the high-ambition reduction target would positively impact a number of key child health markers, including infant mortality, according to the research.

Overall, achieving a reduction of 35% on 2023 child poverty levels by 2033, would see a total of 293 fewer infant deaths in England alone.

This high-ambition target would also avoid 4696 children entering care, 458 childhood admissions with nutritional anaemias and 32,650 childhood emergency admissions.

The researchers say these reductions in child health statistics would likely translate into significant savings for and relieve pressure on, local authorities and health services.

Co-author on the study Dr Ronan McCabe from the University of Glasgow’s Social and Public Health Sciences Unit told healthandcare.scot:

“While our study focusses on England, it is likely that actions taken to reduce child poverty at the UK level would have proportionately similar effects across all regions and add to any reductions that may have been achieved at the devolved level.

“As such, in absolute terms, the benefits would likely be greater when considering the whole UK.”

The Scottish government has committed to reducing levels to less than 10% by 2030 aligning with this research’s ‘low-ambition’ target range.

Its own analysis published in February revealed that 240,000 children (24%) remained in poverty from 2020-23, estimating that Scotland will keep 100,000 children out of poverty this year.

Yet, Scotland’s child poverty rates are still set to be high for 2024-25.

Last week, Scotland’s Cabinet Secretary for Social Justice encouraged families to apply for devolved benefits like the Scottish Child Payment and said eradicating child poverty remains the “most important priority for our government”.

Dr Anna Pearce, co-author on this study from Glasgow’s Social and Public Health Sciences Unit, told healthandcare.scot:

“The Scottish government’s decision to not limit devolved benefits, such as the Scottish Child Payment, on the basis of family size not only makes a big difference to larger families.

“It helps to address health inequalities and will bring savings to the economy and health services in the long-run.”

However, CPAG Scotland’s Director said the 2024-25 budget does “little if anything” to advance the policy package that has only stopped poverty child poverty rising:

“We can’t forget that behind these statistics are tens of thousands of children still locked in poverty.

“Their education, health and wellbeing continues to be damaged because their families just don’t have the incomes they need to give them a decent start in life. There can be no room for complacency.”

A Scottish government spokesperson said £6.3bn is committed to benefits expenditure for 2024-25, to support disabled people, older people and low-income families with living costs, adding:

“Eradicating child poverty in Scotland is a national mission for this government. Since 2022-23, we have allocated around £3bn a year to policies which tackle poverty.

“We remain absolutely committed to meeting our statutory child poverty targets and will continue to do everything in our powers and limited budget to deliver the change needed.”

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