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Study finds one in five people in Britain live in poverty

Xinhua, December 8, 2016 Adjust font size:

Almost 7.5 million people, including 2.6 million children, live in poverty in Britain despite being in working household, a report revealed Wednesday.

A study by the Rowntree Foundation said one in every eight workers in Britain are living in poverty. The charity said it means a record high of 55 percent people in poverty are in working households.

The stark statistics have emerged in the report, Monitoring Poverty and Social Exclusion 2016, an annual state of the nation report written for the independent Joseph Rowntree Foundation by the New Policy Institute. It has found that 13.5 million people, 21 percent of Britain's population, are now living in poverty.

Rowntree's Helen Barnard said Wednesday: "The economy has been growing since 2010 but during this time high rents, low wages and cuts to working-age benefits mean that many families, including working households, have actually seen their risk of poverty grow."

"This report shows that people on low-incomes cannot rely on economic growth and rising employment alone to improve their financial prospects. Families who are just about managing urgently need action to drive up real-term wages, provide more genuinely affordable homes and fill the gap caused by cuts to Universal Credit (welfare reforms) which will cost a working family of four almost 1,000 pounds (1,260 U.S. dollars) a year," she added.

Dr Peter Kenway, director of the New Policy Institute, said: "An adult in poverty today is much more likely to be young, working and a tenant living the private rented sector than 15 years ago."

The report found there is growing insecurity underneath positive economic headlines, adding that since 2010-2011, when the economic recovery began, in-work poverty has increased by 1.1 million people.

The number of people living in poverty in privately rented homes has doubled in a decade, from 2.2 million households to 4.5 million households, the study showed.

More than half of people in poverty live in London and southern England, it added. Endit