Why are these children not living with their parents?

[catgate]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml...npoverty103.xml

[Watchful]

I don't know, do you? Poverty doesn't sound such a nice place

[andsome]

It would appear that a lot of the children ARE living with parents. The reasons for poverty in the family are many and very complex. Sometimes it is for a genuine reason such as difficulty finding work in a given area. Sometimes it can be ill health. Sometimes sheer laziness, and other times misfortune. There is not one reason and not one solution. It is an extremely complex problem, and unfortunately the government does not have the time to attend to such problems, because they are frequently poking around wasting time and resources in the wrong places.

[rong]

It depends on how you see poverty.

[andsome]

It depends on how you see poverty.

That is very true. One persons idea of poverty is another persone idea of luxury. I find it very annoying when some people pleading poverty on a T.V. programme, are interviewed with a fag in their hand, and the latest wide screen colour TV standing in the corner of the room. They then complain that they cannot afford to feed the kids wll because fresh food it too expensive, and they can only afford fish and chips. However, there are also many genuine cases.

[catgate]

This warrents careful inspection. It is another smoke and mirrors thing.

Of course

a lot of the children ARE living with parents

but it is more eye and headline catching, as well as being more poignant and more OBE-worthy, to omit the parents.

The figures according to the chocolate research lot indicate that there are currently 4M children living in poverty.

(3.8m in 2005/6 + latest increase of 200,000 = 4,0M)

The UK population is in the order of 60M (If you can believe any statistics produced by the current crop of ne'er do wells) so there must be a great number of parents in "poverty" too.

If you have a look at the way "child poverty" is defined (*) you will find that it is virtually impossible for any government to achieve the "target" because of the way that "poverty" is defined resulting in a vicious tail chasing circle,. Further more if the income level for "child poverty" were to be used to measure "pensioner poverty" ......need I say more.

(*) The most commonly used U.K. standard, and the preferred indicator of poverty in the European Union, identifies as poor those households with incomes (adjusted for household size) less than 60 percent of the national median income.

[deuces wild]

The main question is..........why are folks who cannot afford children giving birth to children?

If you are having a hard time supporting yourself, why bring another into the picture? Then, why do you bring more into the picture???? Because government will help support them?

Me thinks so. :(

What a sad state of affairs we live in.