One in five below poverty line in NI: study

AROUND one in five people in Northern Ireland live in poverty, a new report has shown.

According to the report from the independent Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF), little progress has been made on reducing poverty here.

It comes as the figures reveal that almost one in three adults in Northern Ireland are out of work.

Northern Ireland’s employment rate is lagging behind the rest of the UK with too many people locked out of the opportunity to secure a decent standard of living.

The warning comes as JRF launches its monitoring report, Poverty in Northern Ireland 2018, setting out local poverty rates in and the challenges facing low income families.

Overall, 370,000 people live in poverty, around one in five of the population — made up of 110,000 children, 220,000 working-age adults and 40,000 pensioners.

The main poverty indicator is when someone lives in a household whose income, after housing costs, is less than 60% of median income, adjusted for their household size and type.

Poverty among pensioners has fallen considerably over the last decade while families with children have seen steady or falling poverty rates, but working-age adults without children are now at higher risk of poverty than 10 years ago. Warning: Campbell Robb of JRF

The report found that Northern Ireland has higher worklessness and lower employment than elsewhere and the proportion of people in poverty in workless households has increased slightly over time, in contrast to the UK as a whole.

It also discovered that over the last 20 years, employment rates in Northern Ireland have been consistently below the rest of the UK.

Scotland and Wales have closed the gap on England considerably, but Northern Ireland has continued to fall behind both countries — suggesting that the employment rate continues to be a major factor affecting poverty rates here, and that raising the employment rate could lead to poverty falling to a lower level than in the rest of the UK.

Campbell Robb, chief executive of JRF, said: “Northern Ireland has not seen the same benefits from rising employment as the rest of GB, meaning more families are locked out of opportunities to build a decent, secure life.

“We know that action can be taken to create a prosperous, poverty-free Northern Ireland, built on the foundation of more and better jobs with decent wages.

“This means using the industrial strategy to create these opportunities and drive up skills, alongside an education system that ensures people enter the workforce with the skills they need.”