Welfare = Failure

The welfare state fails.





One in five Britons grow up in households where no-one goes to work


By Steve Doughty
20th January 2010
Daily Mail



One in five young children is being raised in a home that relies on jobless benefits, an official count revealed yesterday.

Nearly 2.4million children and teenagers live with parents who depend on means-tested state handouts - a third more than previous estimates.

Among them are 722,800 babies and toddlers aged four and under, a fifth of all youngsters, according to the figures produced by the ministry that pays out jobless benefits.

The analysis by the Department for Work and Pensions shows that in May 2008, 2,397,410 children 18 and under lived in homes where a parent or guardian was claiming a meanstested out-of-work benefit.


A Whitehall estimate last year put the figure at 1.8million.

The figures have angered critics of the Government's welfare policies.

Jill Kirby, of the centre-Right think tank Centre for Policy Studies, said: 'The Government is failing on the one measure which back in 1997 it said would be the most important in judging its record.

'Tony Blair and Gordon Brown said workless households were the key problem they were going to overcome. It has clearly gone wrong. Things are going in the wrong direction.

'The benefits system is creating and increasing dependency, so more children are growing up without any experience of what it is like for someone to have a job.'

Researcher and author on the family Patricia Morgan said: 'This is a very high number.

'From the estimates that I have seen in the past, it is clear that there has been little or no improvement over the last ten years, despite the way people have been deluged with in-work benefits like tax credits.

'This is a dreadful comment on the past decade of welfarism.'

Children who grow up in homes where no one works are less likely than others to do well at school, enjoy good health, get work as adults, and avoid the traps of drugs, crime and single parenthood.

A spokesman for the Department for Work and Pensions said: 'Our Child Poverty Bill will commit this and successive governments to eradicating child poverty by 2020.'










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