Government strategy is committed to halving child poverty in the United Kingdom
(UK) by 2010 and eradicating it by 2020. A range of policy initiatives have made
encouraging progress, with 600,000 children lifted out of poverty in the last ten
years. Yet, the total number of poor children living in working households has
stayed the same at 1.4 million (nearly half of all poor children). If the ambitious
targets are to be met, it will be important that the next phase of the strategy for
tackling child poverty prioritises these families.
The systematic review detailed in this report was commissioned by the Department
for Work and Pensions (DWP). Systematic reviewing is a specialist technique which
employs standardised and explicit methods to minimise the risk of drawing the
wrong or misleading conclusions from a body of evidence. Explicit reporting of
how the review was conducted allows others to assess the validity of its findings
