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  Ministers accused of downplaying income in measure of child poverty.Money is central factor......Duncan Smith argues
  
  otherwise.
  
  The government's desire to alter the official definition of child poverty risks deliberately downplaying the importance of money just as a series of government policies will reduce the incomes of poor families, a group of senior academics warn.
  
  A consultation on how to measure child poverty more accurately that was launched last November, seeking input from charities and experts into "better measures of child poverty", comes to an end on Friday. The government believes that a wider definition of what constitutes poverty will give a better picture of what it means to "grow up experiencing deep disadvantage".
  
  The letter, signed by some of the country's leading academics in this field, agrees that in addition to the current measures used to count the number of children living in poverty, it would be "helpful to track what is happening to the factors that lead to poverty and the barriers to children's life chances".
  
  But they warn: "It does not make sense to combine all of these into a single measure. To do so would open up the government to the accusation that it aims to dilute the importance of income in monitoring the extent of 'poverty' at precisely the time that many of its policies will be reducing the real incomes of poor families."
  
  Professor Jonathan Bradshaw, the lead consultant on the UK's contribution to Unicef's Child Well-Being report, said he believed that the government was "trying to move the goalposts" at a time when child poverty was increasing rapidly.

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