It’s immoral to push children into poverty, but that’s what the benefits cap does | Torsten Bell

Claimants were supposed to be deterred from having more children, but the policy has made families poorer, not smaller

There’s much talk of “fiscal pinch points” driving economic policy decisions. But there are moral pinch points, too. Not least when it comes to our children: for many in larger families, we have now come close to creating a poverty guarantee.

Since 2017, the two-child limit has prevented families from receiving child-related benefits for a third or subsequent child, worth about £3,200 per extra child. The result? Half of children in families with three or more children are now in poverty vs a third in 2011/12. And that’s before the policy’s full bite has been felt (by 2035, 750,000 families will be affected, vs 420,000 last year). These statistics risk sounding abstract, but the reality they reflect isn’t. While one in three smaller families are materially deprived, that proportion rises to three-quarters of larger families.

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