A new report identifying a range of policy levers available to the Scottish Government to tackle child poverty has been published by the Fraser of Allander Institute.
The Scottish Government is due to set out its new plan for tackling child poverty in March. Around one in four children in Scotland are currently living in poverty in Scotland, whereas the Child Poverty (Scotland) Act 2017 sets a target to reduce relative child poverty to one in ten by 2030/31.
The report by the University of Strathclyde-based Institute, produced in partnership with the Policy Evaluation Research Unit at Manchester Metropolitan University and the Poverty Alliance, looks at measures such as: providing 50 hours of childcare per week, a significant expansion of child benefit and employability programmes and further increases to the Scottish Child Payment.
The authors do not provide recommendations and stress that the social security policies modelled are at a level that is not envisaged as realistic, or desirable. The analysis does, however, set out the scale of the…
