Glossary · UK
What is Two-Child Limit?
A restriction limiting the child element of Universal Credit and Child Tax Credit to a maximum of two children per family, for most children born on or after 6 April 2017.
Full Definition
The two-child limit restricts the child element paid within Universal Credit and Child Tax Credit to a maximum of two children in most families, meaning no additional child element is paid for a third or subsequent child born on or after 6 April 2017, regardless of the total number of children in the household. The policy, introduced under the Welfare Reform and Work Act 2016, does not affect Child Benefit, which continues to be paid for every child in the family with no numerical cap, nor does it remove children from the household for the purposes of other elements of a Universal Credit award, such as the housing element, which is still calculated by reference to the actual household size and bedroom need. A range of exceptions protect certain third and subsequent children from the limit, recognising circumstances where a family had no realistic choice over the number of children they are responsible for: children born as part of a multiple birth (where a third or subsequent child is one of twins or triplets), children conceived as a result of non-consensual conception (claimed through the "non-consensual conception exception," which does not require a police report or conviction), adopted children (where the child was already part of a large sibling group being adopted together), and children being cared for under a formal kinship or guardianship arrangement rather than being the claimant's own birth child. A claimant must complete a separate form or declaration to claim most of these exceptions, and back-claims can be complex where the relevant events happened some time before the claim. The two-child limit has been consistently identified by anti-poverty organisations and some parliamentary committees as a significant driver of child poverty in larger families, since a family with three or more children after April 2017 receives materially less support per child than an equivalent family whose children were all born before the cutoff, or a family with only two children. Worked example: a family with three qualifying children where all three were born after April 2017 (and none qualify for an exception) receives the Universal Credit child element for only two of the three children, while an otherwise identical family with all three children born before April 2017 continues to receive the child element for all three, illustrating how the policy creates materially different awards for families of the same size purely based on the children's birth dates.