UK seeing 'a big rise in poverty', says IFS [View All]

Falling incomes will mean the biggest drop for middle-income families since the 1970s - and will push 600,000 more children into poverty, says a report from the Institute for Fiscal Studies.

The IFS forecasts two years "dominated by a large decline" in incomes.

By 2013 there will be 3.1 million children in poverty in the UK, according to the IFS projections.

A Department for Work and Pensions spokesman said benefits changes would tackle poverty by "making work pay".

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-15242103

For comparison in the US : Soaring Poverty Casts Spotlight on ‘Lost Decade’

WASHINGTON — Another 2.6 million people slipped into poverty in the United States last year, the Census Bureau reported Tuesday, and the number of Americans living below the official poverty line, 46.2 million people, was the highest number in the 52 years the bureau has been publishing figures on it.

And in new signs of distress among the middle class, median household incomes fell last year to levels last seen in 1996.

Economists pointed to a telling statistic: It was the first time since the Great Depression that median household income, adjusted for inflation, had not risen over such a long period, said Lawrence Katz, an economics professor at Harvard.

“This is truly a lost decade,” Mr. Katz said. “We think of America as a place where every generation is doing better, but we’re looking at a period when the median family is in worse shape than it was in the late 1990s.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/14/us/14census.html?pagewanted=all

Some of our benefits paid out may currently be misplaced and could possibly be put to better use:

THOUSANDS of people are enjoying luxury Mercedes and BMW cars provided free by the taxpayer in a vast scam.

The £1.4 billion-a-year Motability scheme supplying cars for the disabled is being abused by claimants' friends and relatives.

A disabled person can nominate someone to drive them around, and rules state the Motability car must not be used for any other purpose.

But few checks are made, and thousands of nominated drivers use the vehicles for their own benefit.

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/3647318/Free-BMWs-for-pals-of-disabled-in-scam.html

similar article here : http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2047593/Ello-John-got-new-Motability-motor.html?ito=feeds-newsxml

Bearing in mind that's what I still do, car leasing, I'd figured there may well be some sort of scam running but couldn't put my finger on it. I was still under the impression that the scheme was there to help the physically disabled. I started to wonder when Motability secured the last remaining stocks of these :



and then these :