Save the Children child poverty summit Sheffield: 1 in 4 South Yorkshire children in poverty
World-renowned health expert Sir Michael Marmot has said local voices are most powerful in combating health inequalities - as Save the Children revealed one in four children in South Yorkshire live in poverty.
Speaking to The Star at Save the Children’s Child Poverty summit in Sheffield, Sir Marmot said the definition of poverty had changed over recent years.
He said: “In the past, it would have been not having an indoor bathroom or living in a cold, drafty, unheated dwelling.
“It’s changed in that if you ask people ‘what does it mean to be poor today?’, they will say not being able to buy children new clothes or not being able to entertain children’s friends for a birthday party, not being able to buy your child the latest football strip.
“That may not sound like absolute poverty. It was relative poverty.”
Relative poverty, the conventional definition of poverty in the UK Sir Marmot describes, defines households with incomes below 60 per cent of the median income as being in poverty.
“What’s happened in recent years,” he continues, “is that we have gone back to absolute poverty - being in destitution.”
This is when families can no longer provide some or all basic needs, including: housing, heat, light, food, appropriate clothing for the weather and toiletries.
Sir Marmot said: “In 2022, one million children [in the UK] were living in a state of destitution. A 2.5-fold increase in five years.
“We thought we’d gotten to the point of defining poverty as relative poverty, but it has come back.”
The academic said poverty can have a wide range of impacts on children’s health. For example, children growing up in cold homes can have “damaged lungs” contributing to child deaths from asthma linked to air pollution.
“If you damage your lungs in childhood you will grow up to have unhealthy lungs,” Sir Marmot said.
His interview with The Star came during a break in Save the Children’s South Yorkshire Children Poverty summit - being held out of The Victoria and The Mowbray in Neepsend, Sheffield.
The event discussed local solutions to reduce the number of children living in poverty across South Yorkshire.
Roughly one in four children in our region live in poverty. It varies by authority, but only slightly - Sheffield, 24 per cent; Rotherham, 23 per cent; Barnsley, 22 per cent; Doncaster, 25 per cent.
It puts South Yorkshire slightly higher than the national average of 22 per cent and there are concerns the local rate could rise.
Sir Marmot said: “What we know is that the north and midlands all have worse health and worse prospects than London and the south.
“If you grow up in a deprived area of South Yorkshire, the consequences for your health are worse than growing up in a deprived area of London.
“The further north you go, the worse the consequences.”
However, Sir Marmot said there was excellent work being done in South Yorkshire to bring children out of poverty.
“I’m inspired by the amount of activity going on here,” he said. “The sense I got is there’s a lot of activity going on to break the mould between child poverty and life outcomes.
“It’s important to showcase what’s going on. It’s important for South Yorkshire and it’s important for the country to see people can make a difference.
“Homelessness is pretty negative and there’s only so much that local people can do, but the voices of local people matter because they get heard. That’s why local people matter.”