1. Growing up in 2014: the impact of austerity on children's well-being
Jonathan Bradshaw
The 44th Gerald Walters Memorial Lecture
University of Bath
20 May 2014

2. MOTIVE
“The true measure of a nation’s standing is how well it attends its children – their health and safety, their material security, their education and socialization, and their sense of being loved, valued, and included in the families and societies to which they were born” (UNICEF Innocenti Report Card )

3. Outline At the end of the 1990s children in the UK not doing well
Things improved in the 2000s
National and
Comparative evidence
Now the burdens of AUSTERITY have fallen heavily on children
Evidence on outcomes not good (preliminary) but worrying signs

4. Conceptual approach Focus on the outcomes of policy
Social indicators movement (International Society for Child Indicators (ISCI) + Child Indicators Research)
Stiglitz et al more than GDP – well-being and happiness. Cameron and ONS.
UN Convention on the Rights of the Child – what children think and feel is important.
New sociology of childhood – well-being now just as/more important than well-becoming.
Child the “unit of analysis” – child surveys
Well-being is multi-dimensional

5. Evidence base National:
Administrative data
British Household Panel Survey – since 1994
Birth cohorts
Children’s Society Good Childhood Surveys since 2008
Comparative (needed to know how well we do/could do):
Health Behaviour of School Aged Children every four years
PISA every three years
EU SILC
UNICEF State of the Worlds Children and Innocenti Report Cards

6. Child poverty rate (<60% median)

7. UNICEF Report on Child Well Being 2007 (most data pre 2000)

8. Why? Thatcher project to roll back the state
Labour market changes – unemployment
Demography
Fiscal policy grossly regressive
Social security uprating
Private affluence v public squalor
Children a private responsibility
(Neo) liberal cultural attitudes to children
Parental work pressures
Commercialisation of childhood

9. Social Policy 2000-2010 – more pro child
Child poverty strategy – Child Poverty Act
Record employment levels
Minimum wage, child benefits, child tax credits
Real improvements in social protection
Increased spending on health, education, childcare, housing quality, neighbourhoods
Institutional transformation – DCFS, Child Commissioners, Children’s Services.
Kinder climate – bullying down.

10. Public spending on family benefits in cash, services and tax measures Percentage of GDP, in 2007.

11. Outcomes: Child poverty fell (<60% median)

12. The well-being of children in the UK (Bradshaw J
The well-being of children in the UK (Bradshaw J. (ed) Third Edition: Policy Press 2011)
48 child indicators
Covering Material, health, subjective and mental health, education, housing, child maltreatment, children in care, childcare, crime and drugs)
36 improving
8 no clear trend
4 deteriorating ( immunisations, diabetes, obesity, STIs)

13. Happiness has increased
Mean happiness of year olds (BHPS ). With 95% confidence intervals)

14. BHPS: Trends, 1994 to 2008

15. UNICEF Innocenti Report Card 11 (2013) – mainly data late 2000s

16. Things we still do comparatively badly on
Child poverty
Children in workless families
Teenage pregnancy
Education participation
NEET
Behaviours
Immunisation
Low birth weight
Self reported health
But we are very good on accidental deaths

17. Variations in child subjective well-being (HBSC analysis)

18. Correlations with subjective well-being

19. Objective and subjective child well-being: UNICEF 2013

20. AUSTERITY 2010 Coalition announced £81 billion deficit reduction
Almost all of it to come from cuts in benefits and services (85%)
Main target for cuts families with children
Pensioners benefits protected by triple lock
Between and the median incomes of working age households have fallen by 6.4%; in contrast the median incomes of retired households have increased by 5.1%.(ONS)
Only half way there! Up to 2015/16 expenditure as a % of GDP is planned to fall by 4.7% points and by the end of the next review period in /19 it is expected to have declined by 8.2% points(Office of Budget Responsibility 2014)

21. Distributional consequences already unfair – between generations and incomes

22. Cuts in spending per capita by child poverty rate
Cuts in spending per capita by child poverty rate. Local authorities in England

23. Ratio of average income of retired household to households with children

24. Anchored child poverty rate rising

25. Proportion of children under 16 in households with severe deprivation in the EU. Ranked by increase

26. Happiness with life as a whole 11-15. Falling

27. Subjective well-being of children by impact of the crisis on families (Children’s Society)

28. Youth suicides have stopped falling

29. Child homelessness up

30. Conclusions Children not being given sufficient priority in UK
Children’s Commissioner for England (2013) “Overall, the evidence in this report suggests that the best interests of children are not being treated as a primary consideration (Article 3) in the design of fiscal measures relating to welfare benefits, tax credits and taxes.’ (p.6) …‘the cumulative impact of the measures included in the analysis, place the Government at risk of not meeting its obligations to children and young people.’ (p.7).
Austerity unfair – distributionally, spatially and generationally
We do not need to be doing this

31. We do not need to be doing this Coalition aspirations for public expenditure as % GDP (IMF WEO database March 2014)

32. Conclusions Children not being given sufficient priority in UK
Children’s Commissioner for England (2013) “Overall, the evidence in this report suggests that the best interests of children are not being treated as a primary consideration (Article 3) in the design of fiscal measures relating to welfare benefits, tax credits and taxes.’ (p.6) …‘the cumulative impact of the measures included in the analysis, place the Government at risk of not meeting its obligations to children and young people.’ (p.7).
Austerity unfair – distributionally, spatially and generationally
Rhetoric simply dire
We do not need to be doing this
Too far too fast
Take more from taxation
Priority to poor children not rich pensioners - like me!

33. Thanks! jonathan.bradshaw@york.ac.uk 
Some reading:
Bradshaw, J. (ed) (2011) The well-being of children in the United Kingdom, Third Edition, Bristol: Policy Press.
The Children’s Society (2013) The Good Childhood Report
Bradshaw, J. R. (2013) Child poverty and child well-being in comparative perspective, in Kennett, P. (ed.).A handbook of comparative social policy. Second edition ed. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, Chapter 15: p
Bradshaw, J. (2014) Overview: social policies and child well-being in Ben-Arieh, Asher, Casas, Ferran, Frones, Ivar. and Korbin, Jill E. (Eds.) Handbook of Child Well-Being. Theories, Methods and Policies in Global Perspective. Dordrecht: Springer. Volume 5, Chapter 103, pages
Klocke, A., Clair, A. and Bradshaw, J. (2014) 'International Variation in Child Subjective Well- Being', Child Indicators Research. 7, 1, 1-20.