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CostOfAChild_2015.pdf (1.32 MB)

The cost of a child in 2015

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posted on 2015-10-20, 10:44 authored by Donald Hirsch
CPAG's annual research conducted by Donald Hirsch, Director for the Centre for Research on Social Policy, on the cost of bringing up a child found that parents both in and out of work are struggling to meet the minimum family costs. The Cost of a Child 2015 finds the minimum cost of a child from birth to age 18 remains high at £149,805 (a 1.6% increase on 2014 and a 5% increase since 2012). The report concludes that the outlook appears to be for the high cost of a child to rise less steeply in future years but that state support in covering these costs to deteriorate sharply as a result of government policies, creating a net loss for most low income families. Couple-families where each parent works full-time at the current minimum wage are 16% short of the basic amount needed to provide themselves with what the public regards as a minimum standard of living, the report finds. For a couple with two children, that’s a gap of £75.75 per week. The report shows a wider gap for out-of-work couple families – at 43%. For lone parents, the shortfall is 13% for those in work– 39% for those not working.

Funding

Child Poverty Action Group

History

School

  • Social Sciences

Department

  • Communication, Media, Social and Policy Studies

Citation

HIRSCH, D.B., 2015. The cost of a child in 2015. London: Child Poverty Action Group.

Publisher

© Child Poverty Action Group

Version

  • VoR (Version of Record)

Publisher statement

This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

Publication date

2015

Notes

This report was published by the Child Poverty Action Group at: http://www.cpag.org.uk/costofachild-2015

Language

  • en