A time of need: Exploring the changing poverty risk facing larger families in the UK

Kitty Stewart, Aaron Reeves and Ruth Patrick

Published 28 July 2021

Child poverty in the UK has seen rapid change over the last two decades, broadly falling from the late 1990s until 2012/13 and rising since then. As a result, child poverty rates converged with rates of poverty for working-age non-parents before diverging again. This paper examines these changes through the lens of family size, asking how horizontal inequalities have changed over this period between larger families – those with three or more children – and smaller families with one or two. Focusing on data from before the pandemic, we look at trends in poverty rates for the two groups and explore alternative explanatory factors – including changes in the composition of larger families, differential employment rates, and differences in the impact of social security support.