In legislating to pay benefits in a single, household-level payment, the government risks harming children’s well-being, reducing gender equality, and increasing vulnerability to financial abuse.

Universal Credit aims to consolidate a range of benefits and tax credits into a single payment in order to create a simpler system. As Welfare Reform minister Lord Freud recently confirmed to Oxfam, the whole amount would be claimed by one individual, or go into a joint account.

Of particular importance are the child and childcare elements of tax credits. These are currently paid to the main carer – usually the mother – and will be rolled into the single Universal Credit payment. This is problematic for a number of reasons.

Mothers usually take the main responsibility for meeting children’s day-to-day needs in low/moderate-income families. Labelling matters too: government research shows that child tax credit is commonly identified as money for children[pdf], and spent accordingly. And a study of Winter Fuel Allowance earlier this week from the IFS found “robust evidence of a behavioural effect of the labelling”.

The choice of benefit recipient within couples takes place in a context of gender inequalities. Where there is evidence, it points to men tending to make benefit claims on behalf of couples; 81 per cent of guarantee pension credit (the other type of pension credit being savings credit) claims in couples are made by men, as are the majority of joint JSA claims. Overall, however, there is a lack of evidence to support the assumption of free choice within households.

Moreover, once money reaches a household, it is often unequally distributed, as ministers acknowledge, and Oxfam research demonstrates. Nor does the government’s preferred outcome – a joint bank account – guarantee equal access to money or equality in financial matters. Women are more likely to have individual accounts, and value them for reasons of independence – a trend that is increasing.

The combination of these factors means that women often lack access to money within the household. Indeed, one in four mothers have absolutely nothing to spend on themselves [pdf], rising to a rate of one in two mothers in households below the poverty line. Benefits labelled for children are sometimes the sole source of independent income for women, helping to reduce their vulnerability to financial abuse.

By ensuring that the child and childcare elements of Universal Credit are paid to the main carer – as proposed in an amendment to the Welfare Reform Bill supported by Oxfam that went down today – parliament can help to ensure that money intended for children is paid to the person most likely to spend it on them. It would also help to give carers (usually women) in low-income households access to income in their own right.

Research so far shows that the poverty and ethnicity are linked: the differences in poverty rates across different ethnic groups is one clear indicator of that: 17% for white British people, 23% for Indian people, 24% for black Caribbean people, 25% for people from Chinese or ‘other’ backgrounds and 52% for Pakistani and Bangladeshi people.

There are also big differences in employment rates, pay, education and caring responsibilities. However, here things become more complicated. The simple story of people from all ethnic minority backgrounds having uniformly worse outcomes than people from white British backgrounds doesn’t hold. Two key areas are work and education; in both of these the evidence so far shows some interesting and complex patterns.

In the workplace, research has demonstrated very clearly that there is discrimination in recruitment against people with names that do not appear to be white British. This tends to be more common in the private sector and smaller employers than in the public sector and larger employers. However, discrimination does not explain all of the differences in employment rates, nor levels of in-work poverty across different ethnic groups. Part-time work and self employment are more common among some ethnic groups, as is working in particular types of sectors – all of which affect pay. Pakistani, Bangladeshi, and black people are also paid less on average than those with similar qualifications from either white British or Indian backgrounds. All of these patterns are affected by the decisions that people make, where they live, and the social networks they have.

In education, when children start school, those from Indian, Chinese and Bangladeshi back grounds tend to be behind those from white British backgrounds. However, this changes over time so that Indian and Chinese pupils end primary school with the highest attainment. In secondary school, young people from Traveller backgrounds have the lowest attainment overall while white British boys from poor backgrounds make the least progress. However, recent analysis has highlighted variations across the country in results for children from the same ethnic and social backgrounds; another reminder of the dangers of making broad statements about ethnicity.

Looking across the available research, a couple of key themes emerge. First, thinking about ethnicity in isolation is pointless. To understand how ethnicity affects people’s choices and opportunities you also need to think about a range of other things including their gender, age, class, health, religion, history and neighbourhood.

Second, outcomes for individuals come from the interaction of two broad sets of factors:

• Informal processes: individuals’ decisions and assumptions; perceptions of risk and opportunity; how families, communities, employers and others shape attitudes.
• Social and economic structures: labour markets, housing, services, social norms.

Too much of the debate on these issues reflects only one side of this. Some talk as if individual decisions are all that matter and people can simply be persuaded or pressured into making the ‘right’ choices and this will lead them out of poverty. Others challenge this by emphasising the importance of structural disadvantage so strongly that it sounds as if people are simply victims of unfair practices and have no control and no role in addressing their own situation.

The final thing that has struck me very strongly is the importance of location in all these issues. National patterns tend to look very different once you start to break them down by local areas. Interesting variations emerge. Why are just 29% of black African women in Camden in full-time employment as opposed to 40% in Southwark? Why are three times as many Pakistani women in Camden employed as they are in Newcastle? Why is Peterborough one of the places in the country where Asian people are most concentrated in deprived neighbourhoods, and black people the least concentrated in them?

Over the next five years we will be funding in-depth research that aims to significantly advance our understanding of how poverty and ethnicity are linked. We aim to use this to develop more effective strategies for tackling poverty across the UK and among all ethnicities. At the moment this feels very exciting, and also rather daunting.

Want to know more as it happens? Sign up for your email alert here.

Helen Barnard is Programme Manager with the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, where she manages the child poverty, education, and poverty and future labour markets programmes. She is also developing a new programme focusing on poverty and ethnicity.

Encouragingly, the campaign is gaining strength and important international support. Earlier this month, a thousand economists wrote to G20 finance ministers meeting in Washington to show their support for the tax. Gathered from 53 countries, experts such as Professor Jeffrey Sachs (advisor to Ban Ki-Moon) commended the tax as ‘technically feasible’ and ‘morally right’, and urged politicians take action that could raise billions of dollars to help the world’s poor.

Several fantastic events have helped raise awareness of and support for the tax among the public. Half a million people descended on London to ‘March for the Alternative’ on the 26^th of March, with the Robin Hood Tax cited as a strong part of the argument against cuts.  Indignation at the banks’ ability to ‘get away with it’ was the key note at the NEF/ Fink Club event ‘Where did all our money go?’, while a debate at St Paul’s Cathedral ‘Should we bank on the Robin Hood Tax?’, chaired by Evan Davis,  focused on to what extent banks have a responsibility to contribute to the common good and whether, if so, the Robin Hood Tax might be the solution.

It’s easy to get lost in abstractions and debates, but ultimately the Robin Hood Tax is about raising vital funds for real people, both abroad and here in the UK. To understand more about where such revenue might be spent Robin Hood (or at least four of his merry band) took to the road to find out more about the vital services people across the country rely on – services which now face crippling cuts. Bill Nighy joined the visit to a food bank in Wales, Sam West visited a Sure Start centre in Corby, and many other people and services were able to share their stories and fears for the future.

What can you do? Watch, read, find out more and please please spread the word. For more info, and all the latest visit the RHT site – http://robinhoodtax.org/

Despite the fact that the event was by, for, about and from people living in poverty in Scotland, the audience was brought to attention by a welcome to ‘Honourable Lord Provost, Distinguished Guests, ladies and gentlemen’.  Such a hierarchy in offering welcome always annoys me – it reminds me of the order of pews in churches a hundred years ago, with the rich, the landed, the powerful and the connected getting the best seats at the front.  Perhaps today’s parallel is the spectrum of seats and corporate boxes at the football?  Though in this case, I like to think that in using the term ‘Distinguished Guests’ it was the people who were experiencing poverty present at the Poverty Truth Commission whom the announcer had in mind. 

And in a way, it was the very opposite of any implied hierarchy that was the theme of the whole afternoon.  The Poverty Truth Commission talked of the importance of the 30 or so Commissioners (people living in poverty and members of Scotland’s ‘civic society’) all ‘leaving their labels and titles at the door’ during their deliberations.  This was about treating each other as equals, as fellow Scots, as fellow community members, as fellow Commissioners. 

To me, this was one of the most crucial lessons that emerged from the Commission’s work.  That we are a rich country (where, as the Poverty Truth Commission reminds us, people still go hungry) which implicitly and explicitly tolerates great extremes of wealth is surely due, at least to some degree, to a lack of empathy; namely those holding power and wealth lacking empathy with those experiencing poverty and vulnerability. Distance between these groups perpetuates ‘othering’ and assumptions of difference, which deepen gulfs of recognition and understanding.  Ultimately, a lack of connection undermines solidarity and concern for one another.

What the process of a Poverty Truth Commission sought to do was break down this distance.  This ethos, of participation, involvement and going beyond simplistic consultation is mirrored in the Poverty Alliance’s EPIC (evidence, participation, change) project.

But it seems we need a scaling up of such projects so that they are not necessary.  We will know we’re there when the principles of projects like the Poverty Truth Commission and EPIC are reflected in the very doing of politics and where political decisions and our economic and social and institutional structures are based on deep empathy, rather than on exclusion, elitism, vested interests and stigma.

One of the calls made by the Poverty Truth Commission was for the ‘people of Scotland to share our growing outrage at the huge and growing levels of disparity which exist between rich and poor’.  Reversing these disparities would, of course, be the real reconciliation. 

And such reconciliation is more important than any VIP could imagine: current inequalities are tearing up the fabric of concern and empathy that are necessary to support our vital institutions of social support, welfare, common good and shared interests.  Without these institutions, we are essentially two countries and two societies, with two, very different, futures.

We spent all yesterday on a course, and in the evening we had our mentor from our volunteer program (JVC) over for dinner and she had brought art materials with her. We spent a pleasant evening chatting and being creative together.

In the evening I reflected on all the other ways we are nourished apart from food. We need company and outlets for our creativity, education and the chance to practice our faith if we have one. These are just some of the things that refused asylum seekers are often denied.

Yes, food parcels are a lifeline to many refused asylum seekers. No, giving someone a food parcel doesn’t fulfil their needs. I want to reiterate Amnesty International’s slogan; refused asylum seekers are: ‘Still Human, Still Here’ we need to treat them with some human compassion.

Today I had to walk 5.5 miles to my placement (and 5.5 miles back!). As we work in Manchester and Salford people often walk long distance to access the project. However, I was rewarded with a delicious lunch cooked from ingredients given to us by FareShare, a charity which distributes surplus food to charities. Our cook also gave me leftovers for dinner, so today’s food hasn’t been tasteless like yesterday’s, and I also got some vegetables! This highlights the need for community centres to provide hot, nutritious meals to people living in poverty. Sadly many such centres are struggling for funding at the moment.

As an issue this question appeared in all four seminars. In one, for example, participants were asked to examine the ‘Glasgow effect’ – the excess mortality in Glasgow compared to similar post-industrial areas that cannot be explained by socio-economic circumstances. We looked to the way that the poorest in Glasgow are treated, the dominance of a narrow type of inclusion (around consumerism and materialism) and how inequalities are deepening, with the rich pulling further away from the rest of us in terms of earnings, lifestyles and life chances.

Once we began to look at wealth and the richest, the question deepened, and it became clear that it is unsatisfactory to simply talk of ‘deprived’ communities without examining who deprived them, without asking who is advantaged by their deprivation and without seeking to identify who are the beneficiaries of another’s impoverishment.

In ‘The No-Nonsense Guide to World Poverty’, Jeremy Seabrook does this on a global scale; the Whose Economy? project has begun to do this for Scotland.  In doing so discussions have encompassed Living Wages, the nature and need for good jobs and the structural changes in the Scottish economy… While a disconcertingly high number of civil servants, media and politicians seem to be signed up to the mantra that ‘there ain’t no money left’, the debates over the course of the seminar series highlight that this is hardly the case.

What is happening is that policy makers are looking in the wrong place to find the cash to pay back the debt – and all too often they are targeting the most vulnerable, not those more able, if less willing, to chip in.

The wealth is certainly there.  Often it is in the hands of those were most responsible for our debt-fuelled hyper-consumerism lives that instigated the financial crisis. We just need to lift our gaze and explore other sources of funding much needed public services than simply cutting them from people who need them the most.

The article below taken from The Morning Star, www.morningstaronline.co.uk. Thanks to John Millington for giving permission to re-print it here.

The Con-Dems are going on a “patriarchal offensive” against women at every level of society, a leading economist warned today.

Addressing a Fawcett Society briefing on the effects of the cuts on women, Professor Victoria Chick questioned government claims that drastically cutting the deficit would lead to an economic recovery.

“We should be talking about expanding the economy rather than just the narrow view of reducing public expenditure. I agree that these cuts represent a patriarchal offensive against women.” She said the austerity drive should be opposed “by education and grassroots campaigning.”

Chaired by Channel 4 news presenter Samira Ahmed, the “Macho Economics” event sought to bring economists and women’s campaigners together to look into the economic, social and long-term effects of the current phase of the austerity drive on women across the country. Fawcett Society acting CEO Anna Bird criticised the government’s tax incentives for married couples, arguing that they “favoured one form of relationship over another.”

Ms Bird went onto highlight the critical role of “gender impact assessments” on determining how women are affected by economic policy.

“Women in the labour market are condensed in low-paid, low-grade work with the pay gap between men and women currently standing at 16 per cent.”

Women’s Budget Group spokeswoman professor Susan Himmelweit said that, as a result of the Comprehensive Spending Review, some people were losing vital services equivalent to a fifth of their income. “Single pensioners and mothers are the worst hit,” she warned.

Single Parent Action Network activist Julie King gave a very personal account of the difficulty of being a single mother trying to find work.

“All the jobs on offer are all low paid and insecure. The so-called ‘better off in work calculation’ doesn’t take into account my kids who receive free schools meals.”

And publisher Penny Liechti said things weren’t much better for professional mothers with a male partner who worked.

“65 per cent of the funding for play services for children are being cut,” she said. “Its really hard to find full-time places for mothers who work full time.”

In planning the most rapid fiscal retrenchment in peacetime, and in aiming to do 80% of the work through spending cuts and only a fifth with tax rises (much of it from the deeply regressive rise in VAT to its highest ever level), this government has made its own judgement pretty clear. The question for those of us who care about the suffering these cuts will cause – especially to the poorest and most vulnerable – and about the lasting damage they will cause society is what’s the alternative?

The aforementioned economists – with, no doubt, two opinions for every expert – will continue to argue about how to close the gap between government spending and government revenue that began to yawn when the financial crisis hit. How and when that can be done fairly remains an enormous issue, however much the language of fairness itself has been debased.

But this article from last week raises the intriguing proposition of changing the frame of reference of the entire debate. At the moment, public spending is problematised, and the question of the day is seen to be how to get these burdensome outgoings off the balance sheet – with nods of varying sincerity to doing it in as fair a way as possible. Yet the public spending and public services that have built up over the years form the vital fabric of social protection – which matters to us precisely because we’re ‘all in it together’. From spreading the risks of getting ill across society through the NHS, to the social security provided by out-of-work benefits that recognise we can’t control whether the economic tides will sweep away our local car plant (or Woolworths), or when sickness or disability will force us out of work, these institutions are what make us civilised.

Alice Donald argues that this expresses a social solidarity that is itself an expression of our human rights – the social and economic rights which are indivisible from the civil and political rights that are enshrined in our law through the Human Rights Act. We’re all in this together because we have a right to be free of fear and want; because we have the right to live lives of security and dignity; and, more prosaically, because we as a society recognised this when we ratified the international covenant protecting economic and social rights.

If we can start to see public services as a means of realising our fundamental rights as human beings, and not as a wasteful luxury we can no longer afford, then hopefully we can at last start to have a meaningful and human debate on how we deal with the budget deficit.

See here for Duncan Green’s excellent recent blog on the links between inequality and financial crises.