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In the UK, child benefit can be claimed as soon as a birth is registered. But what if payments began earlier? Mary Reader has been researching the impact of a previous government grant to pregnant women. She finds that a small sum could lead to significant improvements in babies’ health.

By the time children start school in the UK, those from low-income backgrounds are already an average of four months behind their peers in terms of educational development. The gap only widens from there.

The long list of cuts made to social security benefits in the years after the 2010 election were justified by one purpose: to save money. But one cut in particular was about much more than that.

Inequalities among young children were rising in the UK before COVID-19, and the pandemic has only served to widen the gap further. But policymakers can turn the tide, argue Kitty Stewart and Mary Reader.

Mary Reader and Megan Curran explain how the circumstances of COVID-19 have forced the US government to re-think its approach on child poverty and larger families. They argue it is about time the UK did the same, particularly in relation to the two-child limit policy.

The inadequate free school meals packages demonstrated that school-age children have all too often been considered an afterthought in the UK’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic. But younger children of pre-school age have been forgotten altogether.

On Tuesday, The Marmot Review 10 Years On presented evidence on the rise of school exclusions, as part of a wide-ranging review into progress on key health and education indicators since 2010.

There has been a lot of hot air about the “end of austerity” since the Conservatives’ unexpectedly poor general election result. Chancellor Phillip Hammond has reassured us that “there is light at the end of the tunnel.