MORNING SERIAL
POVERTY
WE OPENED this chapter talking about Perthcelyn Primary in Penrhiwceiber.
Every other child you see there is living in poverty.
At 49 per cent, nowhere in Wales has more children living in households whose income is less than 60 per cent of median income.
As of April 2018, median gross weekly earnings for adults in full-time work in Wales were £509.
The reason I wanted to describe the place before giving you the statistic is because the second we start talking about child poverty and stats, it is easy to disconnect the numbers from the human beings suffering behind them.
When you speak to the kids at Perthcelyn Primary (ironically built with EU funding), they are lively, engaged and curious.
When you speak to parents, it is clear that life is a daily struggle to feed and clothe their children.
But what is also abundantly clear is that it is only the support of the community that enables the people to survive.
I have heard heartbreaking stories which I have attempted to cover extensively through my journalism.
But these are not isolated stories, and they are not new.
Wales has higher levels of poverty than any other part of the UK, and it has never been rich throughout its history.
Even during the industrial revolution, when Welsh coal was powering the world, the wealth did not stay.
It flowed down canals (later to become train tracks) and out through Cardiff and Newport, with the money from the sale also leaving.
This is not to say that independence is the answer to Wales’s poverty problem, though the brutal cuts of the past decade have absolutely crippled many communities.
But poverty, particularly for children, is one of the greatest problems facing Wales.
It has never improved, and there is no sign of this being remedied any time soon within the current system.
CONTINUES TOMORROW