Choked Up

Children from low-income households are more likely to live in areas of high air pollution

“The centralisation of population in great cities exercises of itself an unfavourable influence,” wrote Friedrich Engels in 1844. “All putrefying vegetable and animal substances give off gases decidedly injurious to health, and if these gases have no free way of escape, they inevitably poison the atmosphere [The poor] are obliged to throw all offal and garbage, all dirty water, often all disgusting drainage and excrement into the streets, being without other means of disposing of them; they are thus compelled to infect the region of their own dwelling.”

Much of Engels's writing seems anachronistic today, but his description of poverty in 19th-century London paints an eerily accurate picture of urban slum life in developing countries at the beginning of the 21^st century. Air pollution is an invisible but dangerous threat to global public health. Toxic emissions can damage children’s growth and leave them with lasting health problems. In 71% of United Kingdom towns and cities, children are breathing unsafe levels of air pollution.

Five London boroughs rank worst for child poverty and worst for dirty air, according to government data, comparing areas with high levels of poverty with air pollution measurements. The analysis showed that the higher the rate of child poverty in a given area, the dirtier the air there was on average, with most of the 50 most polluted areas in the UK also showing the highest rates of child poverty.

Boroughs in Birmingham, Southampton, Portsmouth, Sandwell and Walsall also showed high correlations between child poverty and air pollution. Altogether, about 6.7 million children are living in areas of the UK where air pollution has breached legal limits, of whom about 2 million are also living in poverty, according to the research.

6 Takeaways

1. Child poverty is rising. In March 2020, there were 4.3 million UK children living in poverty, over half a million more than the last five years. Young people with lived experience of poverty know what that really means: the embarrassment of not being able to afford the right school uniform, the assumption that you won’t achieve anything because of where you’re from and the anxiety and uncertainty that impact your mental health.
2. Largest cities are hardest hit. The greatest concentrations of child poverty are in London and Birmingham, the UK’s two largest cities. Across both cities, there are a dozen constituencies where the majority of children live in poverty, once housing costs are taken into account. In London in particular, high housing costs leave many families with very little money left after paying for the roof over their heads.
3. Child poverty is rising significantly in the North East. Across the North East, the child poverty rate has risen by a third over five years. The North East is no longer below the UK average, it has the second highest rate of child poverty of any region, after London.
4. Most children in poverty have working parents. Three out of four children who live in poverty have at least one working adult in their household. Yet, low-paid jobs and a freeze in in-work benefits, mean their wages are no longer enough to keep their families out of poverty. There are other costs. As one young person put it, “parents working full time to stay out of poverty means you personally lose out on interactions and a sense of attachment.”
5. High housing costs and low wages both have an impact on child poverty. These factors combine differently depending on where you live, but they both mean that families have less money available for essentials and are at greater risk of slipping into poverty.
6. The impact of Covid-19 on poverty is not yet fully known. This research covers the period before the pandemic. However, it shows significant and worrying rises in child poverty, even before the impact of the pandemic on jobs and household income.

About the data

These data are population-weighted annual mean concentrations (µg m^-3) for each Local Authority in the United Kingdom. It was compiled by the Department for Environment Food & Rural Affairs (Defra) to estimate the burden of mortality attributable to long-term exposure to particulate air pollution. Defra's air quality modeling produces a number of meteorological simulations, gridded outputs and concentrations maps.

I've used this data to reproduce a graphic from The Guardian, originally published in December of 2021.