The Joseph Rowntree Foundation has published the 2009 edition of indicators of poverty and social exclusion in Wales, providing a comprehensive analysis of trends.

The study:

• looks at progress on low income since the mid-1990s;
• examines unemployment and problem debt in the current recession;
• considers what action government could take to lessen the recession's impact on people in poverty.

Key points include:

• Over the ten years to the mid-2000s, almost all the reduction in the number of children in low-income households (‘low-income children’) in Wales occurred among those in workless families. This leaves as many low-income children in working families as in non-working ones.
• The latest ‘headline’ low income statistics, for 2007/08, show that even before the recession, the problem of low income was already rising sharply, to the extent that half of the previous improvement in child poverty had already been lost.

·         For 2008, the young adult (16–24) unemployment rate was 16%. As a result, around half of the unemployed people in Wales are under 25.

Further information is available on the Joseph Rowntree Foundation website.