Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

This paper examines new empirical evidence on the prevalence of income poverty and material deprivation amongst young carers (aged 5-19) and young adult carers (aged 16-24) in Britain using the Family Resources Survey and Households Below Average Income survey. Young carers are defined as young people who provide care for someone who experiences a long-term physical or mental ill-health or disability, or problems relating to old age, on an informal basis (not as part of a formal job).

The Households Below Average Income publication provides information on child income poverty and child material deprivation. However, whilst information on child caring status is included in the Family Resources Survey data set that underlies the HBAI Report, there is no separate identification and reporting of the income poverty and material deprivation risks amongst young carers and young adult carers.

In order to address this data gap, the paper reports on the prevalence of income poverty and material deprivation amongst young carers, applying the definitions set out in the Child Poverty Act (2010) and replicating the methodology applied in the Households Below Average Income report as closely as possible.

There are two main findings (based the FRS/HBAI sample of dependent children aged 5 to 19). First, we find that young carers were more at risk of income poverty than noncarers in 2013/14. Young carers were more likely to experience relative low income than non-carers across four measures: relative low income before housing costs (BHC), relative low income after housing costs (AHC), absolute low income (BHC) and absolute low income AHC in 2011/12-2013/14 (pooled data). These differences were statistically significant for the two AHC measures.

Second, we find that during the period since the crisis and downturn, young carers have been fairing worse in terms of the trends in their income poverty risks than noncarers (over the period 2005/6-2013/14).

Trends in relative low income poverty

• BHC, the proportion of non-carers in relative low income poverty fell from 22% to 17% between 2005/06 and 2013/14, whereas the proportion of young carers in poverty was unchanged (18%).

• AHC, the prevalence of relative low income amongst non-carers fell from 30% to 26% (statistically significant) between 2005/06 and 2013/14, whereas for young carers there was an increase from 24% to 31% (not statistically significant).

Trends in absolute low income poverty

• BHC, the proportion of young carers who experienced absolute low income increased from 16% to 20% (not statistically significant) between 2005/06 and 2013/14. The figure for non-carers fell from 21% to 19% (statistically significant).

• AHC, the proportion of young carers who experienced absolute low income increased from 23% to 36% (statistically significant) between 2005/06 and 2013/14. This figure also increased for non-carers (from 27% to 29%) (statistically significant).

The paper will set out our final empirical findings and will contextualise and evaluate them drawing on two bodies of literature: the first focussing on disadvantage amongst young carers in Britain, and the second focussing on recent trends in income poverty and material deprivation using Child Poverty Act (2010) measures.