SET against the dire poverty of families in the Third World, the privation in which four million children in Britain are living, according to new research, is, of course, relative. But, considering that so many were found to be living in households whose income is less than half the national average, it is plain that by this yardstick the lot of these children - a third of all those under 18 - is harsh and damaging.

It is also shameful that such a situation exists and is so widespread in a country which is one of the richest on earth and more so that the findings of the London School of Economics reveal that the number of children living at this level of poverty has trebled since the 1970s.

And for the government, which has set a target of eradicating Britain's child poverty within 20 years, this amounts not only to a daunting challenge, but also one that demands urgent attention.

There are, of course, many complex factors contributing to this problem.

Among the major ones are the collapse of the traditional family so that far more children are now brought up in single-parent homes, where the likelihood of a wage coming in is just 40 per cent, and the concomitant decline of "breadwinner" jobs amid an increasing dependency on lower-paid, part-time work. Even with its introduction of a minimum wage, the government can do little in the face of the competitive pressures of global markets to create millions of well-paid "proper" jobs to alleviate the poverty of the country's "new poor."

But it can, through the tax and welfare system, encourage or at least stem the decline of the family unit which has gone hand-in-hand with the rise of child poverty.

And since it is pledged to welfare reform, it can and should begin to adjust the child benefit system, scrapping its universality and ensuring that payments go only to those households in the grim category of being so far below the average national income level.

For what a cruel absurdity it is to give benefits for the children of the prosperous when the country has an increasing number - more than four million - in real need.

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