Boost for low income families

Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown’s pre-budget
report last week included an increase in the child tax credit. The
Chancellor announced that the child element of the child tax credit
would increase from April 2004 by 180 to £1,625 a year,
equivalent to a weekly increase of £3.50. According to the
treasury, this will benefit 7.2 million children in 3.7 million
families.

The child tax credit, introduced last April is includes a family
element of £545 a year for every family with an annual income
below £50,000, plus, for low income families, a child element
for each child.

Recent studies have indicated that the government is succeeding
in decreasing child poverty. A report by the New Policy Institute
published last week by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation found that
that the number of people living in low income households is on a
steady downward trend and is now lower that at any time in the
1990s.

Out of work benefits to working-age families with dependent
children have risen by around 30 per cent in real terms since 1998,
faster than earnings. This, with the rise in tax credits, is likely
to have had a big impact on the severity of poverty suffered by
some low-income households even when they have not passed the
low-income threshold, says the report.