A leading expert in health inequalities has condemned the scale of poverty among families in England.
Michael
Marmot, director of the Institute of Health Equity at University
College London, said that in 2011-12 there were more people in poverty
in households where at least one adult was working than in workless
households. Meanwhile net disposable income per person had not recovered
to its 2008 level.
He said, “Take the Daily Mail
model family—one adult working outside the home for pay, one adult not
working for pay staying home, and two children—51% are in poverty. Got
that? The perfect, ideal family: 51% are below the poverty line.”
He
said that people on low pay were “not skivers or scroungers or feckless
or irresponsible or the worthless poor,” while very few people could be
said to be “living the life of Riley” on welfare benefits. “They’re not
paid enough to have a life that people in Britain think that everyone
in Britain should
