Keeping 100,000 Scottish children out of poverty. First Minister Humzah Yousaf has welcomed analysis which estimates 100,000 children will be kept out of relative poverty in 2024-25 as a result of Scottish Government policies.
by bottish
Keeping 100,000 Scottish children out of poverty. First Minister Humzah Yousaf has welcomed analysis which estimates 100,000 children will be kept out of relative poverty in 2024-25 as a result of Scottish Government policies.
by bottish
14 comments
Analysis by themselves of their own policies.
I blame the SNP!
I’m sure they will be in poverty again soon enough as their parents start to pay more income tax, pay more for booze under minimum pricing, pay more for their lunch at work with meal deals being scrapped…
Wheres that gif of Obama giving himself the medal
In other news, local baker declares that his bread is the best bread!
Posted this over on UKPol
No surprise, was downvoted in seconds.
I take some issue with the usage of estimates such as these, especially when it gets reported in the headline as a Very Big Number.
If you have a look at [the source material ](https://www.gov.scot/binaries/content/documents/govscot/publications/research-and-analysis/2024/02/child-poverty-cumulative-impact-assessment-update/documents/child-poverty-cumulative-impact-assessment-update/child-poverty-cumulative-impact-assessment-update/govscot%3Adocument/child-poverty-cumulative-impact-assessment-update.pdf) for this, what it means by 100k kept out of poverty is the difference between their current models figure for child poverty (not the official survey data but a separate model they’ve developed) and a counterfactual scenario where no policy measures are implemented.
The respective figures for those in 2021/22 were 23% in the policy scenario and 26% in the counterfactual. By 2026/27, the difference between these two predicted figures is 10%, 17% Vs 27%. 10% corresponds to 100k children. Lovely.
The problem is that when you look at what has actually happened so far, 2021/22’s figure of 23% is a 3% improvement on the baseline year they use of 2019/2020.
Why is that a problem? Because child poverty across the UK fell by 2/3% over the same time period, meaning if the policy had been “do exactly the same as England” you could fairly expect to see the same results as have been achieved IRL.
Surely that is the counterfactual scenario for assessing the Scottish Government’s performance, not a counterfactual they have estimated, which implies a significantly different performance from our closest comparable country?
But no, all we get in this is one very big number, specifically used to anchor minds to that being the impact of Holyrood’s policies alone.
We are supposed to then accept that this path will then open up a further 7% point better performance, when so far the evidence suggests there is no discernible difference in outcome on their chosen measures of absolute and relative child poverty.
ETA:
This was a speech at a BookBug session. Genuinely, BookBug is one of the most amazing things I’ve done with my kids, it’s completely free and I’d love to do more of it. If you haven’t tried it, give it a go, we accidentally walked in on a session at Kirkcaldy library and it was wonderful.
Why Humza is giving speeches to 0-4 year olds is anyone’s guess though.
Oh are we finally focusing on Scotland now?
If I lift 1000 children out of ‘relative poverty’ I condemn 1000 other children to ‘relative poverty’. It’s a bit like digging a hole near the sea, the more you dig the more caves in. It’s all relative
I try t be generous, but keeping kids out of “relative poverty” I straight out of the Tory/Briefcase Labour playbook. Who do u think invented that terminology lol.
Good job Yousaf, now provide figures that show how much ‘better’ these policies are than what’s happening across the rest of the UK.
Oh right, the rest of the UK is also seeing a similar reduction in child poverty over the same period. So these Scottish policies are no more or less effective than those put forward by Westminster.
Anyone who thinks the SNP isn’t just like the other parties at this point is so ideologically challenged they will never be able to have an informed opinion.
Did he get Colin Beattie or Emma Harper to work this one out?
And on purpose too!
Do you know what would keep kids out of poverty? Decent jobs and not being taxed to fk.