Monitoring poverty and social exclusion in Wales 2009

Key points

• Over the ten years to the mid-2000s, almost all the reduction in the number of children in low-income households (‘low-income children’) in Wales occurred among those in workless families. This leaves as many low-income children in working families as in non-working ones.
• Over the same period, single pensioners accounted for three-quarters of the reduction in the number of low-income pensioners.
• Unemployment is a major risk factor for low income in Wales, that risk rising from 5% for a full-working family to over 60% for a workless one. Even when another adult in the family remains in work, the family’s risk of low income still rises to 25%.
• The latest ‘headline’ low income statistics, for 2007/08, show that even before the recession, the problem of low income was already rising sharply, to the extent that half of the previous improvement in child poverty had already been lost.
• For 2008, the young adult (16–24) unemployment rate was 16%. As a result, around half of the unemployed people in Wales are under 25.
• The six South Wales Valley local authorities, plus Newport and Bridgend, have the highest proportion of Jobseeker’s Allowance claimants. This was not the situation before the recession. In five areas, claimant numbers have doubled over twelve months, including in Pembrokeshire, Monmouthshire and Flintshire.
• Measured by county court possession orders, the number of people experiencing severe mortgage difficulties already compares with the early 1990s.
• Among those seeking help with debt in Wales, many are in circumstances associated with poverty or exclusion, including high levels of reliance on social security benefits, ill-health and material deprivation.

Background

This Findings is the second update of Monitoring poverty and social exclusion in Wales, originally published in 2005, but is the first to be published in a recession. It looks at progress on low income since the mid-1990s, and examines unemployment and problem debt in the current recession.