ABSTRACT
The pressures on health visitors to respond more effectively to poverty and its associated health costs have been sharpened since the early
1980s by changes to the material position of families with young children. A feature of the 1980s and early 1990s has been the increasing burden of poverty placed on the shoulders of families with dependent children. The Household Below Average Income statistics indicate that poverty levels have increased sharply among this group (Department of Social Security 1993). Between 1979 and 1991, the number of households with dependent children with incomes of less than 50 per cent of average income rose from 3.4 million (12 per cent of the population) to 7 million (28 per cent of the population). High levels of unemployment and low pay appear to have hit families with dependent children particularly hard so that they now form the largest single group in poverty. In 1991, families with children made up more than half of the poorest 10 per cent of the population, compared to a third three decades ago (Goodman and Webb 1994).
