[UK] Increasing Numbers of UK Disabled Adults Live in Poverty

From PNN Online

Three out of every ten disabled adults of working age are living in poverty in Britain - a higher proportion than a decade ago and double the rate among non-disabled adults. Disabled adults are now more likely to live in poor households than either pensioners or children, according to the latest progress report on tackling social exclusion for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation.

Monitoring Poverty and Social Exclusion in the UK 2005 by authors from the New Policy Institute shows that many more of the 50 indicators under scrutiny for the past seven years have improved over the latest year than have grown worse. But it highlights particular problems among disabled people, including those who work for low wages as well as those who would like employment, but cannot get a job.

The report finds that:

* One in four people aged 45 to 64 are affected by impairment and long-term sickness, but it is twice as common among the poorest fifth of the population.

* Around 800,000 disabled people between 25 and retirement age are classed as 'economically inactive, but wanting work'. This compares with only 200,000 who are officially counted as 'unemployed'.

* For any given level of educational qualification, a disabled person is around three times as likely to lack but want work as non-disabled people. The rate among disabled graduates (14 per cent) is higher than that for non-disabled adults with no qualifications at all.

* Disability increases the chances of low pay for those people who are in work. This applies at every level of qualification and irrespective of gender or whether jobs are full- or part-time.

Guy Palmer, co-author of the report, said, "Both child poverty and pensioner poverty are decreasing because the Government brought in policies to address them. But poverty among disabled people is high and rising, with little by way of Government policy, thus far, to help. Tackling disabled poverty needs to be made a top priority."

Peter Kenway, co-author of the report, said, "A disabled person is more likely to be either low paid or out of work than a non-disabled person with similar qualifications. The inescapable conclusion is that the labor market discriminates against disabled people. Policies to help disabled people into work will only have limited success unless they focus on changing employer attitudes."

Looking across the 50 indicators, the monitoring report shows that 20 have improved in the past year and 20 have held steady, while four show mixed progress and only two have grown worse. Over a longer, five-year timescale, 18 indicators show improvement, while six have worsened. Other key findings from the 2005 report concern:

Poverty

* The number of people in Britain who live in income poverty has continued to fall to around 12 million on the latest figures. This is nearly two million below the peak reached in the early 1990s and lower than at any time since 1987.

* The proportion of pensioners in poor households has fallen from 27 to 22 per cent, and the proportion of children from 32 to 29 per cent. However, the proportion of working-age adults without children who are poor is, at best, unchanged at 17 per cent.

* The proportion of children who are in workless households in the UK is the highest in Europe. This is mainly due to a relatively high number of workless lone parent families. Half all children living with one parent are in income poverty.

Low Pay

* Despite the importance of employment as a way of reducing poverty, finding a job does not guarantee an income above the poverty line. Half all children in poverty now live in households where someone is in paid work - most of them in two-adult families.

* Low pay is the main reason for so much in-work poverty. Around five million employees aged over 22 were low-paid in 2005 - defined as earning less than £6.50 an hour. This includes half of all part-time workers.

* Taking part-time and full-time jobs together, two-thirds of all low-paid workers are women. Three out of ten low-paid workers aged 25 and over are employed by the public sector.

Education

* Lack of work and low pay are strongly related to educational qualifications. People in their late 20s with no qualifications run an 18 per cent risk of unemployment, compared with a 5 per cent average. The risks of low pay for this group are 50 per cent, compared with an average of 25 per cent (falling to 10 per cent among graduates).

* The proportion of 16-year-olds in England and Wales who obtained fewer than five GCSEs in 2005 (12 per cent) was the same as in 1999. Three-quarters of 16-year-olds from low-income families failed to get five 'good' passes at grades A to C, which was double the rate for other students.

* In English and Welsh primary schools, the proportion of 11-year-olds reaching level 4 in standard tests for English and Maths has improved, although more slowly since 1999. However, 40 per cent of children from low-income families failed to reach this target - double the proportion among other pupils.

Health

* Deep and persistent health inequalities remain. For example, babies born to parents from manual working backgrounds are 25 per cent more likely to have a low birth weight than those born to white-collar parents.

* Infant deaths are 50 per cent more likely among babies in families from manual backgrounds.

* Death rates among 35- to 64-year-olds for heart disease and lung cancer - the biggest causes of premature death - are around twice as high among those from manual backgrounds as among others in the same age group.

Communities

* Burglaries and violence with injury have fallen to half the levels of ten years ago. Even so, unemployed people are three times as likely as average to become victims of violent crime and lone parents are twice as likely as average to be burgled.

* Around 200,000 households were accepted by local authorities as homeless in 2004; marking a 20 per cent increase in the past five years. Most of the rise has been among households without dependent children, who now make up two-thirds of the total