UK Faces 'Victorian Era' Poverty Gap Post-Pandemic, Warns CSJ

Report reveals 13.4 million people affected by family fragility, stagnant wages, poor housing, chronic ill-health, and crime, with mental health issues rising sharply during the pandemic.

• The Centre for Social Justice (CSJ) think tank warns that post pandemic, the UK is in danger of sliding back into the Victorian era marked by a widening gulf between mainstream society and a depressed and poverty-stricken underclass.
• The report, Two Nations: The State of Poverty in the UK, found that some 13.4 million people lead lives marred by family fragility, stagnant wages, poor housing, chronic ill-health, and crime.
• During the pandemic, mental ill health in young people went from one in nine to one in six and nearly a quarter among the oldest children.
• The report found that 40 per cent of the most disadvantaged report having a mental health condition compared with just 13 per cent of the general population.
• The most disadvantaged worry twice as much as the mainstream about the quality of their housing and communities being “torn apart” by addiction.

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