Britain's War on Poverty.
| Author | McClymont, Gregg |
Jane Waldfogel
RUSSELL SAGE FOUNDATION, 2010
Britain's War on Poverty is an authoritative chronicle of Labour's achievements in attempting to end child poverty by 2020. The book is a salutary reminder of the depth of commitment shown by the previous government to an enormously ambitious goal. Reading Waldfogel now, after the financial crisis and the emergence of the Coalition government, presents us with an opportunity to draw lessons from Labour's record.
The author, an American academic, has a clear perspective on the issues, at once disinterested and engaged. Her focus lies with policy rather than politics. She wants to demonstrate to an American audience that sustained, well-resourced and nationally coordinated drives to reduce poverty are still possible in Anglo-Saxon democracies. She offers a concise and exhaustively referenced account of Labour's welfare, taxation and child services agenda. This is complemented by invaluable summaries of current evidence on the impact of government policies, which succeeded both in reducing aggregate levels of child poverty and improving child outcomes on a range of qualitative measures.
Labour's strategy was fourfold: make work pay through the minimum wage and working tax credits; introduce new cash benefits aimed specifically at children; invest in early years through Sure Start and free child care; and invest in schools.
Contrary to received wisdom, Labour's approach was very different to that of the Clinton administration. Like the American Democrats in the 1990s, Labour placed parental employment at the heart of their strategy. Government ministers modelled the Working Tax Credit on the American Earned Income Tax Credit. But Labour rejected the coercive provisions of Clinton's Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (1996), which reduced each individual's entitlement to benefits to no more than five years over their lifetime.
The Child Tax Credit was another important British innovation. Politically, it made sense, since young children were more difficult for the right to stereotype than the long-term unemployed. But it was also sound public policy. Evidence from cohort studies had conclusively demonstrated the lifelong impact of child poverty and its deleterious effects on social mobility. A near-universal cash benefit, delivered regardless of the parents' work status, amounted to a powerful weapon in the war on child poverty. In America, the Earned Income Tax Credit...
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