Report says 22% living in poverty

More than a fifth of people in Northern Ireland, 22 per cent, were living in poverty when the effects of recession were peaking over the last three years, a new report by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation has found.

The New Policy Institute of the foundation, which campaigns for improved conditions for those in poorer communities, reported that poverty for children, adults of working age and pensioners in the North has risen since the middle of the last decade.

The report said the rise in pensioner poverty coincided with a fall in such poverty in Britain. It found half of the 120,000 children in poverty in Northern Ireland live in working households.

“This report shows that while things have not got much better [since 2009], they have not got much worse. Northern Ireland is, like much of Great Britain, in a pause after the very worst of the recession but before the public sector cuts have really begun,” it added. “Children receiving free school meals are much more likely not to attain expected levels of educational qualifications,” it said.