New IFS report reveals impact of austerity on families

4 January 2012

The Impact of Austerity Measures on Households with Children

An Institute for Fiscal Studies report, commissioned by the Family and Parenting Institute, is the first to reveal the prospects for poverty rates and income for different family types up to the year 2015.

The study reveals that families with children will be worst affected by falling incomes.

The latest report builds on the findings of our previous study, Families in the Age of Austerity, which was released January 2011.

The reports are of part our two-year Families in the Age of Austerity research programme, which sees FPI tracking the effects of economic change at the level of national policymaking, local services and families themselves. This audit of the impact of policy changes on family income and child poverty levels will be repeated with the release of another report in January 2013.

News coverage:

IFS media coverage The Impact of Austerity Measures on Households with Children report has received media widespread coverage, including a Daily Express front page headline, on its release on 4th Jan 2012.

FPI on the BBC Six O’Clock News: Tax and benefit changes will 'hit families hardest'

FPI’s Katherine Rake on the BBC News Channel: Families hard hit by tax and benefit changes, FPI says

FPI on the BBC News website: Families with children hit by tax and benefit changes

FPI on the Daily Express (front page): £1,400 raid on family income

FPI in The Telegraph (at the bottom of front page): Families hit by benefits changes

Responses:

Fiona Weir, Chief Executive, Gingerbread:

“Half of children in single parent families are already living in poverty. Horrifyingly, this report shows that some of these will lose up to £2,000 a year by 2014 because of planned changes to the tax and benefits system. This will mean serious hardship for many thousands of children. These families are the most vulnerable; it cannot be right to make them bear the biggest burden.”