Over 100,000 children are living in poverty in Northern Ireland according to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF).
The charity has released a new report exploring the rates of poverty of Northern Ireland and assesses the impact that poverty is having on the lives of people who live there.
As Northern Ireland entered the pandemic, nearly one-in-five people in Northern Ireland lived in poverty, including over 100,000 children.
The report, entitled ‘Poverty in Northern Ireland 2022’ revealed that poorer children would live for about 15 fewer years in “good health” than children from richer backgrounds. Among the findings, it was also revealed that “overall poverty in Northern Ireland is the lowest of any country within the United Kingdom”.
The report found that, although NI has a higher proportion of people receiving social security, NI didn’t see the same rise in poverty within this group that was seen in the rest of the UK. The charity believes the NI Executive may have successfully “mitigated” elements of Universal Credit such as the five week wait and benefit cap.
However, it warned that “falls in headline poverty rates are not necessarily reflected in significant improvements in standards of living”, with reports of demand here for food banks soaring.
The majority of the figures assessed within the report came from pre-pandemic data and JRC warned the rising cost of living made the future ‘more worrying’.
The charity has called on the Northern Ireland Executive to ‘go further’ in helping the country and stated: “With 1 in 14 households in food insecurity, the recent spike in energy prices, and wider inflation, as well as certain areas of Northern Ireland and groups such as people in workless families, disabled people, carers and people in ethnic minority households having much higher poverty rates, people across Northern Ireland need the next Executive to go further”.
They highlighted particular areas that the Executive should look at including the adequacy of the social security system asking them to ‘more effectively match benefit up-rating to the cost of living’ warning that failing to do so will ‘push 10,000 more families in Northern Ireland into poverty.’
For more information on the report head to jrf.org.uk
