Poverty rates are higher in every area of the UK for single parents and their families.
One income spread over many people is going to go less far than two incomes spread over many people, less far than one income spread over the needs and desires of the one person.
How isn’t it going to be true that, when poverty is set at 60% of median household income, poverty is higher in single parent households?
Presumably this means that if more couples with children stick together and pool their incomes, then the relative poverty rate goes up even further for single parent families
She doesn’t look like she skimped much on food….
Business owner…universal credit? I’m not unsympathetic, but which of us should pay more (or receive less) to improve her position? While Melanie could doubtless increase her cleaning rates, I suspect she would be undercut by migrant labour.
That thought struck me, Julia.
Person discovers life is shit…and?
An what of the father of the child?
How did this Joseph Rowntree get this shoehorned into the business section? Tim’s correct. There’s no shock that 1 income household earn less than 2 income households. I notice a qualifier is mentioned : after housing costs, Would that be a benefit that disproportionately goes on single maters?
@ Hallowed Be
Housing costs are not 66% higher for a couple with a child than a single parent. So the Joseph Rowntree Foundation deducts them to be able to claim a higher proportion of single parents are “in poverty” than if the used the definition of “less than 60% of median income”.
I see that there is now a new definition of poverty which is that you cannot afford the median standard of living – so automatically nearly half the country are in poverty [not quite half because the median family saves a little of its income so any family with more than 97% of median income is excluded – NB the richer households save more so the median won’t be saving as much as the 4.2% quoted as the mean saving rate]
One deliberately ignored issue is Benefits system actively encourages father not to live with mother
Frankfurt School policy
And of course single earner households are effectively taxed at a higher rate by both taxation and loss of benefits than the combined salary households. Made even worse on child benefits being removed triggered on single rather than combined income. Variations on marginal tax rates for single versus combined salaries are huge.