Arjan Singh (Postgraduate Researcher at the University of Glasgow)
Overview of child food poverty in the UK
Child food poverty is defined as “the inability to acquire safe food in socially acceptable ways” and is currently the highest it has been since records began. As of June 2024, 18% of households with children experienced food insecurity. Given there are roughly 12 million children in the UK, this equates to roughly 2 million children in food poverty. That is the equivalent of over 7,000 primary schools based on the 281 average number of pupils per school. The charity Barnardo’s considers this a conservative assessment after finding 25% of parents have struggled to provide sufficient food for their child in the last 12 months, increasing estimates to 3.4 million children. Factoring in rising housing prices, the Centre for Research in Social Policy found “4.5 million children (31% of all children)” experience food poverty.
So if those countries with limited resources like Burkina Faso can halve child food poverty, the fact that the UK rate remains higher than the global average (27%) is not just a cause for concern, it is reason to question the efficacy of current measures.
Socio-economic implications
The consequences of food poverty for children are in public health. The UK suffers higher infant mortality rates compared to other developed countries with a 70% discrepancy between the least and most deprived areas. When coupling this with the medical conclusions that associate the risk of infant death with the level of deprivation they experience, it is highly likely that food poverty is a contributing factor. This is especially poignant when recognising that children living in poverty are 72% more likely to be diagnosed with long-term illness. This is of particular concern when considering the malnutrition disease rickets recently recorded 478 hospital admissions per year. A rate that had not been exceeded, since before the first world war.
There is also economic impact. Children with health conditions are 30% more likely to be unready for school, and poorer pupils are typically 19 months behind wealthier peers academically, directly because of poverty. If educational progression is hampered in this way, then employment outcomes could stagnate. So given child food poverty directly influences the labour market, this implicates future economic wellbeing. The ramifications of this may threaten market stability more broadly.
Current policy efforts and their failings
A contributing factor is the harsh eligibility criteria for free school meals (FSM). In light of rising living costs and stagnant wages a rigid FSM threshold becomes increasingly exclusive over time.
Currently there are 2.2 million pupils eligible. This is the highest eligibility rate since records began with 25.7% of state funded pupils in receipt.. Despite this, The Child Poverty Action Group estimates there are a remaining 900,000 children in poverty because they do not meet qualifying thresholds. Given you need a maximum annual income of £7,400 to qualify, this is unsurprising.
The most recent attempts to mitigate this have been the emancipation of the two child cap in April 2026, which previously limited welfare benefits to two children per family, ostracising roughly 450,000 children. Though there was “strong positive correlation between child poverty and the two-child limit,”current fiscal outlooks show this is unaffordable, as more is spent on welfare (333 billion) than received in income tax (331 billion). If this 315 billion surge in spending is treated as structural deficit rather than temporary fiscal stimulus, it will inflame poverty, not prevent it. Given expenditure is expected to spike to 404 billion by 2031, the permanence of this budget overrun indicates that straining fiscal sustainability is not a short term strategy. The planned 77 billion deficit this creates can only be filled with excess borrowing or taxation without reintroducing the benefit cap again, hinting at a potential sunk cost fallacy. Therefore, whatever decreases in child food poverty we may see in the short term, could reach new heights in the long term because spending more than you earn is unsustainable.
This is why it is important to highlight an alternative.
Universal Free School Meals
Universal Free School Meals are equipped to reduce child food poverty because they would ensure every child has access to one nutritious meal a day, elevating all children above global classifications for food poverty. The reason this has been widely denounced is because of its expected cost. Feeding 12 million children daily is understandably perceived as impractical. However, Urban Health charity has undertaken “the most ambitious” cost benefit analysis to date, challenging this assumption. By confirming that investment into alleviating this issue would generate a gross value to the economy of £99.5 billion, their findings contradict these previous conjectures. Based on a child’s improved education, employment outcomes, local expenditure savings, and alleviated strain on the NHS from a healthier childhood, £1.71 is returned to the economy for every £1 spent.
Thus, by instituting free school meals you neither forfeit stability nor initiate risk because you create an indirect income stream. So although this crisis may demand economic sacrifice it can be solved with profit margins and revenue incentives in mind.
Proposed Policies for A Universal Free School Meals System
- If we are to extend FSM to all children whose families claim Universal Credit (UC), this would cost 425 million granting a return of 726 million.
- Considering there are 50,000 new UC claims per week, we could universalise FSM for all primary state school pupils, costing 1 billion a year, to receive 1.71 billion long-term.
- However, if we are to acknowledge that 1 in 3 are just £20 away from crisis, forecasting an expansion to under 16s would grant the exchequer 4.28 billion from just a 2.5 billion investment.
A final remark
As with any policy there are logistical barriers to overcome, particularly given the modelling assumptions this is based on. But considering the HS2 budget was 7.1 billion, and the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office donated 1.98 billion to reduce food poverty internationally, there can be no reasonable justification why the same care cannot be expressed here. Child food poverty remains a controllable and preventable issue, demanding reassessments of current procedures.
Biography: Arjan Singh is a Postgraduate Researcher in Law at the University of Glasgow. His work at the Citizens Advice Bureau informs his interests in UK welfare reform.