Dealing with the effects of poverty costs every person in Britain £1,200 a year, even when benefits spending is excluded, new research shows. The analysis published by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation calculates that overall the taxpayer spends £78 billion a year to tackle the impact of poverty, equivalent to 4 per cent of GDP. The study — the first to assess how much poverty costs the public purse — includes spending on children’s services, subsidised schooling and healthcare related to low income, as well as the cost of dealing with higher crime rates linked to deprivation. Researchers at Heriot-Watt and…

Source: The Times July 31, 2016 23:03 UTC