Ed Miliband: Child benefit cuts will hit poorer than average families
Child benefit cuts will hit families whose standard of living is below average, according to new research unveiled by Ed Miliband.
"Rising costs of living are a huge issue for families, including some of those on incomes of more than £40,000 a year," he writes. Researchers at the Institute for Fiscal Studies found that a couple with two children now need to earn £45,700 to maintain a middle-of-the-road standard of living.
The same family will lose £1,750 a year in child benefit from 2013, following the decision to strip the weekly payments from all families where one person earns more than the £44,000 threshold for higher rate income tax.
Mr Miliband said the IFS research destroyed Mr Cameron's argument that the cut would only hit the better off.
"It shows that whilst an income of £44,000 a year is very good for an individual who lives on their own or in a couple, the same income if stretched to meet the costs of living for a whole family doesn't offer that family anything like the same standard of living," he writes.
"In fact, far from being well off, a single earner family dependent on an annual income of £44,000 is finding life tough. Not in the top 20 per cent, not even in the top third - but around the middle in terms of standard of living."
The IFS research is an attempt to find out which levels of earnings are needed to give different family types an identical standard of living.
It found that a salary of £30,900 would give a couple with no children the median standard of living, in terms of what they could afford to spend on essentials and luxuries. Families with children needed markedly higher incomes to enjoy the same choices. If the couple had one young child, they would need £35,000 to keep pace.
A couple with two under-13s needs to earn £41,200, or £45,700 if one child is 14 or over. A single earner couple with two over-14s needs to earn £50,700 to match the same living standard.
