Until 2007, the Government published an annual report, Opportunity for All, that charted progress on a range of indicators that affect young people's life chances. These included many of the risk factors that are known to be associated with childhood deprivation:

• low income;
• living in a jobless household;
• teenage pregnancy;
• low educational attainment and erratic school attendance;
• school-leavers not in education, employment or training (so-called 'NEETs');
• living in sub-standard housing or temporary accommodation;
• infant mortality rates, serious childhood injuries and registration on the Child Protection Register;
• teenage smoking and obesity.

In 2007, however, the Department for Work and Pensions stopped collating, updating and publishing these indicators, and none except the first of them are included as targets in the new Child Poverty Bill. Rather, the requirement on future governments to eradicate child poverty by 2020 will be judged purely on parental income levels. Instead of addressing well-recognised root causes, the Government has chosen to draw an arbitrary poverty line and interfere with income distribution around it. A new report, published by Policy Exchange while I was on holiday last week, rightly calls for a new approach to tackling child poverty. Poverty of Ambition observes:

'The preoccupation with income distribution reflects the way the Government thinks about poverty. Most people think of poverty as lacking the basic necessities of life. The Government, however, defines poverty in relative terms. It says you are poor if you cannot afford to buy the things that most other people can afford. This approach confuses poverty with inequality. Having less than other people does not make an individual poor - it simply means resources are unequally distributed.'

By the very definition of relative poverty, there will always be poverty. The more significant question is not whether everyone has equal wealth, but whether everyone enjoys equality of opportunity. Sadly, reducing well-being to a single economic indicator is a serious backward step. This exclusive focus on income inequality between households, to the neglect of other measures of child well-being, will do little for - and is quite likely to have a detrimental impact on - actual child well-being.

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