For a healthier nation, we must solve UK poverty

For a healthier nation, we must solve UK poverty For the first time in two decades our country is experiencing a sustained rise in the number of people struggling to make ends meet. Poverty has a harmful effect on many aspects of people’s lives, especially their physical and mental health.

In the Joseph Rowntree Foundation’s latest state of the nation report, UK Poverty 2017, we found that 14 million people are living in poverty – one in five of the population. Over half of these people are living in a working household, facing impossible choices on a daily basis, despite doing all that they can to achieve a decent and secure life for themselves and their families.

This concerning rise in poverty is driven by stagnating earnings, the rising cost of housing and the freeze on working age benefits which are no longer effectively loosening the grip of poverty on people’s lives.

What’s less well known is the damage this is doing to the health of the nation. The Health Foundation