Amidst all the highs of the British economy, its very hard to believe that 90,000 Scottish children live in dire poverty. But this is the reality. It is a matter of shame for the United Kingdom, one of the developed nations in the world, that one in every ten children in Scotland live in poverty. Poverty is a problem for the UK as a whole but the situation across Scotland needs to be addressed as famous Scottish cities such as Glasgow and Aberdeen have large number of children living below the breadline.
In a recent poverty related survey it is revealed that 60% of children living in Glasgow’s Keppochhill, Bridgeton and Queenslie areas are deprived of basic needs. Unemployment and rising taxes have certainly been blamed for the decline of the standard of living for Scottish and more precisely British families. Although progress has been made under the Labour government but economic experts say that more needs to be done to put unemployed parents back to work particularly in Scotland where the problem of poverty is a bit more compared to England and Wales. To improve the conditions of children, more Scotland-specific initiatives need to be taken.
Some of the governmental approaches need to be looked at great lengths. According to many experts, the government’s anti-poverty strategy is not covering all sections of the people. Work is considered by the British government as the sole route towards eradication of poverty, but the problem is there are not enough jobs to support a family and there is a negative effect on children of an unemployed family. Alternatives should be found for those members of a family for whom work is not an option due to disability, health problems or child care difficulties.
Child poverty is morally unjust. According to the UN, every child should have the right to proper standard of living for the adequate development of moral and social well-being. Increase of child poverty is causing genuine social problems for the UK with more youngsters are getting attracted to alcohol, drugs and other anti-social activities. Research has shown that most of young people remain in the same icome distribution pattern as their parents and households of such people with children have expenditure levels higher than their weekly income levels which cause a degradation of the standard of living.
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