Why we won’t turn the tide on child poverty with employment alone

Kitty Stewart, Ruth Patrick and Aaron Reeves

Published 12 November 2025

Child poverty in the UK is high and rising, at huge cost both to individual lives and to society. Without action, the number of children living in poverty could rise from 4.5 to 4.7 million by the end of this parliament. In this briefing, we draw together new and previous analyses to examine the potential role of parental employment in reducing child poverty. The evidence tells the same consistent story: increases in parental employment, whilst important for wider objectives, will never deliver reductions in child poverty on the scale we need to see. The briefing sets out the reasons for this (perhaps surprising) conclusion, and explains why investment in the social security system needs to be at the heart of the government’s child poverty strategy.