Parallel lives? Poverty among ethnic minority groups in Britain

Lucinda Pratt, Child Poverty Action Group, 165 pages, paperback, £10.95

This book details how people from ethnic minority groups are much more likely to be living in poverty than others.

Defining poverty as living on incomes below 60% of the average, one third of Indians and Caribbeans, half of black Africans and two thirds of Pakistanis and Bangladeshis are living in poverty compared with less than a quarter of the population as a whole.

Employment rates among working-age Bangladeshis are 35% compared with 75% in the population as a whole. And black Africans have high levels of educational achievement but unemployment rates are three times those experienced by white groups.

This report argues that racial discrimination continues to be a problem, particularly among employers in the private sector.