THOUSANDS of parents are not earning enough to provide their children with the minimum standard of living, a children’s charity reported yesterday.

A Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG) study showed that people on minimum-wage full-time work still fall 18 per cent short of the basic amount needed to properly feed and cloth their families.

In 2014, having a child could have a basic cost of almost £200 a week — an 11.4 per cent rise in the last two years. 

With over a quarter of children living in poverty, CPAG chief executive Alison Garnham said that cuts to family support and falling salaries were to blame.

“We need a government prepared to work flat-out to help parents if we are to protect children’s childhoods and life chances,” she said.

For families with unemployed parents shortfalls are even greater.

Cuts to benefits have meant that couples received barely more than half of the income needed to cover basic needs.

Commenting on Twitter, Labour MP Diane Abbott said the figures were “more evidence illustrating the coalition’s cost of living crisis.”

The greatest cost for parents in full-time work is childcare, the price of which has risen by 42 per cent in the last six years — twice as fast as inflation. 

However, a government spokesman insisted that the “long-term economic plan to build a stronger economy and a fairer society is working.

“The effects of the great recession are still being felt and so where possible we’ve acted to help.”