By next spring, the Government will have reduced child poverty by a quarter, new research conducted by the University of Cambridge and the London School of Economics suggests.

However, Gordon Brown's longer-term goal of halving child poverty by 2010 and eradicating it 'within a generation' will be much more difficult to achieve.

In a report for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, researchers announced that relative poverty - measured as households with less than 60 per cent of the national mid-point income - fell by around one million between 1996/7 and 2000/1, including 500,000 children.

This was attributed to rising employment and an above-inflation increase in benefits, especially for families with children.

Modelling based on these results shows how current government policy will remove a total of 1.3 million children from poverty by April 2004, other things being equal. Given that the overall national increase in income since 1997 has raised the poverty threshold, the real reduction in child poverty is likely to be closer to one million.

Holly Sutherland, Director of the Microsimulation Unit at the University of Cambridge and co-author of the report, said:

"Rising employment has made a real contribution to reducing poverty in the past six years, but there are limits to how much further employment measures can be expected to reduce poverty. Substantially more help will need to be directed to poorer households if the Government is to reach its longer-term targets."

A summary of findings and the full report are available in pdf format, free of charge, at www.jrf.org.uk

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