The proportion of families with disabled children living in poverty has increased by nearly a third in the two years since before the cost of living crisis, according to a new poverty indicator being developed by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP).
The measure, which aims to provide a more accurate way of calculating poverty, shows that by 2021-22, almost half of families in England with at least one disabled child and one disabled adult will be in poverty, according to a DWP report published quietly last Thursday.
The new measure to calculate “low-resource individuals” found that the proportion of families with children with disabilities living in poverty increased from 33% in 2019-20 to 43% in 2021-22.
The new DWP progress report and consultation finds that the increase in poverty for families with a disabled child but no disabled adult is even greater, rising from 25% in 2019-20 to 38% in 2021-22 – an increase of more than half in just two years.
According to the new indicators, the proportion of people living in poverty in households with at least one child and one adult with a disability rose from 39% in 2019-20 to 46% in 2021-22.
These figures compare with the proportion of individuals living in poverty in households without a disabled person, which was 17% in both 2019-20 and 2021-22.
This means that in 2021-22, people living in households with a child with a disability are more than twice as likely to be in poverty than people living in households without a disability, and people living in households with both a child and an adult with a disability are more than 2.5 times more likely to be in poverty.
Figures for 2022-23 are not yet available, so they do not take into account the impact of the cost-of-living crisis after that.
The number of individuals with low resources (formally known as the ‘Below Average Resources’ (BAR) indicator) has been developed by the DWP and is based on the work of the Social Indicators Committee.
The commission’s report (PDF), published just days before Christmas, calculates that the new measures will result in 14.9 million people living in poverty in the UK in 2021-22, of which 8.6 million will live in households with a disabled adult or child, and 6.3 million will live in households without a disabled adult or child.
The study also found that of the 14.9 million people living in poverty, 4.7 million were disabled, of which 3.2 million were working-age adults with disabilities, 600,000 were children with disabilities and 800,000 were pension-age adults with disabilities.
The aim of producing the new BAR figures is to provide a more accurate measure of poverty than the existing Households Below Median Income (HBAI) figures.
One reason the BAR figures are thought to be a more accurate representation of the number of disabled people living in poverty is that they take into account what are called “unavoidable disability-related costs” (IDCs), which the HBAI ignores.
This means that for the first time the new figures take into account the extra disability-related costs faced by disabled people, although DWP is continuing to develop the IDC figures to make them more accurate.
Among other improvements to the HBAI, for the first time the BAR figures also take into account overcrowded households and the costs of childcare.
This means that the more accurate BAR index “tends to produce even higher poverty rates for the most disadvantaged compared to the HBAI,” such as families with children or those with a disability.
Ellen Clifford, member of the National Steering Group for Campaign Against Disability Cuts and author of The War on Disability, said: “It’s great that we finally have a poverty measure that takes into account disability-related costs and gives a more accurate picture of the scale of disadvantage faced by disabled people.”
“This validates what we know empirically and lends further weight to our calls for fundamental reform of the Social Security system.”
She added: “The findings are in line with predictions published in 2018 by the Equality and Human Rights Commission, which warned that families with disabled children and families with disabled adults and disabled children will be hardest hit by changes to tax and welfare reform until 2021-22.”
But she said the figures showing the scale of disadvantage now were “still shocking”, with the Social Indicators Commission report showing more than 57% of poverty in 2021-22 was disability-related.
Mr Clifford said: “This is a damning indictment of a rich country like the UK, where the number of billionaires has increased by 20 per cent in the same two years in which the new measures show a sharp increase in disability poverty.”
Ken Butler, welfare rights and policy adviser at Disability Rights UK, said: “The DWP’s attempt to measure more accurately how many disabled people are living in poverty is welcome but decades overdue.”
“It is truly shocking that the draft measurements taken before the cost of living crisis showed that 4.7 million disabled people could have been living in poverty.
“Those poverty levels must now be even worse.”
He said it was “great irony” that the Government was not using the new figures to call for an increase in disability benefits to alleviate this “extreme poverty”.
Mr Butler said: “Instead the Government will abolish the Work Capability Assessment (WCA), which will put around 632,000 disabled people at a disadvantage and mean those in receipt of Universal Credit support will lose around £4,700 a year.”
“What’s needed instead is an ‘essentials guarantee’ of benefits that accurately reflect ‘unavoidable disability-related expenses.'”
DWP’s ongoing consultation on the BAR work runs until 11 April.
The report was written and published by the DWP, but a department spokesman declined to comment on whether ministers were concerned about the rise in disability poverty outlined in the report, or to explain what steps they would take to address the issue.
He also refused to say whether ministers accepted that the figures show making it even harder to claim disability benefits through WCA reforms would be reckless and dangerous.
In his statement, rather than comment on the new BAR statistics, he referred to the HBAI figures and overall poverty levels, but did not say how many people live in disability-related poverty.
“Although there are 1.7 million fewer people living in absolute poverty since 2010, we know the challenges faced by people with disabilities and their families,” he said.
“That’s why we’re investing billions to break down barriers to work, cut tax and keep inflation in check to make everyone’s money work better, while our £104 billion package also includes a 6.7% increase in disability pay from April.”
“The development of this measure will work alongside DWP’s existing poverty statistics to give us a better understanding of people who are in need.”
“Statistics for households earning below the median income will continue to be the source of official poverty estimates and will be published as usual in March this year.”
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