In recent years, stories of schools providing for children’s basic needs have become common. We hear that nearly one-in-five teachers has personally washed a school uniform; one-in-four has provided children with food; and some children are found a place to sleep for a couple of hours, as at home there aren’t enough beds. School staff do these things from a duty of care, and because they know children can’t learn properly if they are hungry, tired or dirty.

This dire situation is the direct and predictable result of severe cuts to social security benefits over the past decade. Among the most significant changes are the two-child limit and the benefit cap. In this blog post I draw on findings from the Larger Families research project, a mixed-methods study which has examined the impact of these two policies, to illustrate the importance of social security to children’s education.

The two-child limit and the benefit cap

While often conflated, the two-child limit and the benefit cap are distinct policies, though families can be affected by both. The two-child limit restricts means-tested support through Universal Credit to two children only, affecting low-income families both in and out of work.^[1] Under this policy – unique among European countries – families on the lowest incomes lose out by nearly £3,500 per year for each affected child.

In contrast, the benefit cap only affects households working few or no hours (with exemptions for those in receipt of disability benefits). The cap imposes a maximum on total financial support, including for housing costs. Two-thirds of affected households are lone parents, half with a child aged under five. While fewer families are affected by the benefit cap than the two-child limit, the impact on family finances can be even more severe: one family of five in our study was living on £65 per week after rent.

‘The benefit cap than the two-child limit stand out among other cuts to social security in very explicitly providing families with less than they are estimated to need.’

These two policies stand out among other cuts to social security in very explicitly providing families with less than they are estimated to need. They deliberately deprioritise children’s needs, focusing instead on changing adult behaviour – discouraging families from having additional children unless financially secure, and incentivising them to increase work hours and/or move to cheaper housing to reduce their need for state support.

Have they met their goals?

Our research project – a collaboration between the London School of Economics, the universities of York and Oxford, and the Child Poverty Action Group – investigated whether the policies were successful in meeting these aims, while also exploring wider effects (Patrick et al., 2023). We combined analysis of large-scale datasets with repeated interviews with 45 affected families over two years. This powerful mix allowed us to both evaluate the impact at population level while also understanding people’s lived experience.

In practice, we found very limited evidence that the policies are changing adult behaviour, largely because they misunderstand the realities of people’s lives. For example, the two-child limit is built on the assumptions that all children are planned, that people make fertility decisions with an eye on available benefits, and that household circumstances are stable and predictable over time. Our data challenged every one of these assumptions. To take one example, Jessica told us it didn’t occur to her to think about benefits when she had a fourth child because:

‘I was in a financially stable place … We wanted the child and we were fairly stable. So, it didn’t really affect us much at that point.’

When Jessica’s relationship broke down and her small business folded during the pandemic, she became a single mum of four affected by the benefit cap and the two-child limit.

Similarly, the benefit cap assumes that people could reduce their housing costs by moving if they wanted to, and that paid work is an option. But our study found that in vast swathes of the country there are no available properties affordable under the cap. The reality is that capped households are already in the cheapest and lowest quality housing. Meanwhile, many of these households face very substantial barriers to work, including absence of suitable childcare and flexible work that can be combined with caring responsibilities.

Instead, the main impact of both policies has been to drive up poverty and hardship. We saw multiple examples of the ways that this in turn affects children’s education, from material to social and emotional. Jessica, quoted above, told us how one of her daughters, with an autism diagnosis, had had to give up her dance classes, ‘the place where she was happy and thrived’.

What should the Labour government do?

The UK is among the richest countries in the world, yet so many children here are growing up with so much beyond their reach. The new Labour government’s commitment to a child poverty strategy is highly welcome news. It is vital that the strategy recognises the key role of social security benefits, starting by abolishing the two-child limit and the benefit cap – essential first steps towards ensuring all children can thrive.

[1] Universal Credit is the main means-tested benefit for working-age people in the UK. It is calculated as a standard rate plus additions for children and housing. Children born since 2017 only receive an addition if there is no more than one other child in the family already, with exemptions for multiple births, looked after children and children conceived as a result of coercion or rape. For more detail see https://www.gov.uk/universal-credit

References

Patrick, R., Andersen, K., Reader, M., Reeves, A., & Stewart, K. (2023). Needs and entitlements: Welfare reform and larger families. https://largerfamilies.study/publications/needs-and-entitlements