Tom MacInnes
New Policy Institute produced its first Monitoring Poverty and Social Exclusion report for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation in 1998. Entitled “Labour’s Inheritance”, it was the first independent attempt to bring together indicators on low income, unemployment and low pay as well other aspects of social exclusion, such as low educational attainment and poor health. This year we published our twelfth annual report – the first to be written during an economic downturn.
And whilst the recession forms a large part of the discussion in the report, the key findings focus on what was happening before the recession began. What is clear is that problems of rising poverty, debt and unemployment did not begin with the sub prime crisis, and had certainly began before the economy started to shrink. In fact, 2004 looks like the turning point, where trends that were previously positive either stagnated or turned for the worse.
