End Child Poverty -- a 130-group network of children's charities, church groups, unions and think tanks -- suggested in its report that children from poor families are at 10 times the risk of sudden infant death as children from higher-income homes, The Observer said Sunday.

The report said poorer children are two-and-a-half times more likely than others to suffer chronic illness as toddlers and twice as likely to have cerebral palsy, the newspaper reported.

"Poverty is now one of the greatest dangers faced by our children," said Nick Spencer, one of the report's authors and professor of child health at the University of Warwick. "If poverty were an infection, we would be in the midst of a full-scale epidemic."

The British government says progress is being made to narrow the gap between rich and poor.

"We have already lifted hundreds of thousands of children out of poverty with new tax credits, more people in work and better public services, the latest figures show we have not made enough progress," British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said in June.