A/HRC/41/39/Add.1 71. Single parents, 90 per cent of whom are women, are more than twice as likely to experience persistent poverty as any other group, and 50 per cent of children in singleparent households are in poverty.90 Benefits changes – including the benefit cap, the twochild limit and the introduction of full job-seeking requirements for single parents of children as young as 3 – have had a stark impact on single parents. And as of August 2018, two thirds of UC recipients who had their benefits capped were single parents. 91 Single parents in the bottom 20 per cent of income will have lost 25 per cent of their 2010 income by 2021–2022 as a result of changes to tax and benefit policies, and the poverty rate for children in single-parent households will jump to a shocking 62 per cent by then. 92 72. While the Government’s gender pay gap reporting initiative is very welcome, it must look at how its own policies are affecting women. It may well appear that women, particularly poor women, have been intentionally targeted. It should shock the conscience that since 2011, life expectancy has stalled for women in the most deprived half of English communities, and actually fallen for women in the poorest 20 per cent of the population. 93 B. Children 73. Many of the recent changes to social support in the United Kingdom have had a disparate impact on children, including the deeply problematic two-child policy (the full impact of which is yet to be felt), the offensively implemented rape exception and the benefits cap. 74. The Social Metrics Commission found in 2018 that almost a third of children in the United Kingdom were in poverty.94 After years of progress, child poverty has been rising since 2011–2012, almost entirely in working families.95 The Equality and Human Rights Commission forecasts that 1.5 million more children will fall into poverty between 2010 and 2021–2022, bringing the child poverty rate to a shocking 41 per cent.96 One in 10 girls in the United Kingdom has been unable to afford menstrual products, and many have missed school because of their period.97 75. Changes to benefits, and sanctions against parents, have unintended consequences on children and are driving the increase in child poverty. The Child Poverty Action Group found that Child Benefit will have lost 23 per cent of its real value between 2010 and 2020, due to sub-inflationary uprating and the current freeze. And low-paid jobs and stagnant wages have a direct effect on children, with families where two adults earn the minimum wage still falling 11 per cent short of the adequate income needed to raise a child.98 C. Persons with disabilities 76. Nearly half of those in poverty – 6.9 million people – are from families in which someone has a disability.99 Persons with disabilities are more likely to be in poverty and are more likely to be unemployed, in insecure employment or economically inactive. 100 They 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 16 Joseph Rowntree Foundation, UK Poverty 2018, p. 4. Department for Work and Pensions, “Benefit cap: data to August 2018”, 1 November 2018, p. 9. Available at https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/753 093/benefit-cap-statistics-august-2018.pdf. Portes and Reed, The Cumulative Impact of Tax and Welfare Reforms, pp. 19, 25, 82, 153 and 165. Bennett and others, Contributions of Diseases and Injuries to Widening Life Expectancy Inequalities in England, p. 590. Social Metrics Commission, A New Measure of Poverty, p. 111. Joseph Rowntree Foundation, UK Poverty 2018, pp. 3 and 12. Portes and Reed, The Cumulative Impact of Tax and Welfare Reforms. Plan International, “Plan International UK’s research on period poverty and stigma”, 20 December 2017. Donald Hirsch, The Cost of a Child in 2018, Child Poverty Action Group, August 2018, p. 16. Social Metrics Commission, A New Measure of Poverty, p. 84. Equality and Human Rights Commission, Is Britain Fairer?, pp. 38, 46 and 52.