Britain has fallen short of Prime Minister Tony Blair's much-heralded target for lifting children out poverty, figures released on Thursday show.
With 4.2 million poor children when Blair took power in 1997, Britain had the worst child poverty rate in Europe after nearly three decades of worsening income inequality.
Blair promised to reduce the number by a quarter by this year, by half by 2010 and eliminate child poverty altogether by 2020, mainly through tax credits and child care programmes designed to encourage single mothers to work. But Thursday's Department for Work and Pensions statistics showed that 3.4 million children live in families that are poor after housing costs, a fall of just 17 percent, and way short of the 25 percent target.
The government said the figures still showed thousands of people were being lifted out of poverty.
"The level of child poverty in Britain was the worst in Europe. Now child poverty is falling faster than in any other European country," said Work and Pensions Secretary John Hutton in a statement.
"The changes this government has made ... have helped lift 2.4 million people out of poverty since 1997 - including 800,000 children and a million pensioners."
Britain defines poverty as earning less than 60 percent of the median income, which for a couple with no children was 180 pounds ($312) per week last year after housing costs.
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