Breaking the cycle of poverty - It’s getting far harder to get ahead

A series of reports, and Wednesday’s budget in Britain, confirm that being average describes an increasingly unattractive place in this world. “Average” now describes something far less secure than it did a decade ago. Social advances realised over generations are being rolled back, inch by inch, expectation by expectation, opportunity by opportunity.

Being an average poor person is an almost impossible challenge, so many of life’s basic expectations are simply unattainable without a seismic shift in circumstances. Only a tiny minority of poor people have the energy, self-belief, education or opportunity — luck — to break out of trans- generational poverty.

Once predestination was a matter for the soul, eternal life and how many bankers could dance on the head of a pin but now, more than ever, it seems a social sentence. If you are born poor you will probably live and die poor and your children will share your miserable fate as well.