Are family changes the cause or consequence of poverty?

1. Are family changes the cause or consequence of poverty? SA 429: Social Exclusion JD Carpentieri 17 Feb 2006

2. Poverty and child development

3. Poverty and family type • Percentage of children in lone mother households: • UK 19% • US 15% • Sweden 15% • Denmark 13% “Variations in rates of lone motherhood are not an important reason for the variations in child poverty across countries.” Bradbury et al, The Dynamics of Child Poverty Across 25 Countries

4. What are the best strategies for fighting child poverty? • What if the labour market were taken away from the parents of the poorest 20% of children, and they were forced to rely solely on transfers? • Relative poverty rates of the UK, Ireland and Oz would all be lower than those in Sweden • What percentage of the bottom quintile’s income comes from the labour market? • The UK scores lowest, with only 1/4 of this group's income coming from work • “In Scandinavia and France… because the state does not feel obliged to draw a firm line between the private sphere of the family and public policy, the problems women face in reconciling paid and unpaid work have been addressed.” (J Lewis)

5. A fly in the policy ointment? • For middle class, each year of delayed birth adds to likely future earnings • For very poor in US (and UK?), middle class mores are inverted • Babies provide human and social capital: many impoverished teens want to have them

6. What matters more, papa or poverty? • Scandinavia and France show that you can have lots of single-parent households without having lots of poverty • But do the US and UK show that if you have lots of poverty, you will inevitably have lots of more problematic single-parent families – ie those headed by the poor, young and skill-less? • Different approaches in US and UK: the marriage factor? • Mayer: money doesn’t matter • Predicts family success • But ignores income from work • Is the most important change not the rise in single-parent families, but the rise in workless and work-poor families?

8. Percentage of lone mums employed: full-time and part-time

9. Unemployment rates by gender

10. Trends in family and work Since 1960s: Sex without marriage Since 1970s: Childbearing with marriage Since 1970s: Childbearing without a household income

11. A labour market for mums? “Children are generally more likely to be poor when living with a lone mother, but we find that variations in rates of lone motherhood are not an important reason for the variations in child poverty across countries.” Bradbury et al, The Dynamics of Child Poverty Across 25 Countries

12. A labour market for mums! Jane Lewis: • “Lone mothers in Scandinavian countries and in France have not been categorised as a social problem” • “In the British case, the poverty of lone mothers has much to do with the poverty of their social wage [e.g. quality childcare] compared to so many of their counterparts in other European countries” • “What has been absent is a commitment to the social inclusion of lone-mother families”

13. A fly in the policy ointment?