Benefits support for single mothers
It is important for ordinary working men to realise just how much support is provided to women through the benefits system. This support allows women options in life which men just don't have, and allows them to readily do without, or to get rid of, a husband. Yet these women still achieve many of their life's ambitions of having a family with very little effort.
After the children are grown up, they also benefit from women-returners courses at our univesities, so they can then get jobs. In other words they have it all ways.
These reports, from The Times and The Sunday Times, summarise the situation well.
An interesting analysis
We note that in 2000 about 26% (i.e. 1 in 4) of all children were being raised in a lone-mother 'family'. Ordinary families have about 1.64 children on average, but to make the sums more straighforward let's say 1.5, i.e. 2 parents have 1.5 children to support, or 4 parents have 3 children to support. We will assume that lone-mother 'families' consist of 1 mother and 1 child.
A simple analysis of figures shows, adhering to the 1 in 4 ratio of lone-mother children, that each lone-mother 'family' of 1 mother + 1 child, is being supported by ordinary families of 4 parents + 3 children.
Hence 4 ordinary parents are supporting the 3 children of their own, plus 1 mother and 1 child. I.e. they are supporting 2 more people beyond their own 3 children, which is a burden of 66% extra costs. If we assume each lone-mother 'family' consists of 1 mother + 2 children, the figures change slightly, and the extra burden is 50%.
In simple terms, each normal family must support about 50-66% more people as a result of the prevalence of lone-mother 'families'.
| Acknowledgement : The Times,
Friday September 27, 2002 Single parents head a quarter of all families |
The number of single-parent families in Britain has almost doubled in the last 15 years and they now represent more than a quarter of families with children.
Figures published yesterday estimated that in 2000 there were 1.75 million one-parent families and that almost 2.9 million, or 26 per cent, of children aged under 19 live in a one-parent family.
John Haskey, author of the study, said that the figures reflected huge changes in society over the last 40 years, with increased divorce, separation and births outside marriage.
His report, published by the Office for National Statistics, said that virtually every kind of one-parent family has risen in relative numbers, but that the number of single lone mothers — women who have never married — showed the sharpest rise.
Although the rate of growth of both single mother and single father families had “moderated” in recent years, Mr Haskey said that lone parent units accounted for 26 per cent of all families, compared with just one in seven in 1986.
He said the proportion of lone mother families rose between 1996 and 2000 to 23 per cent of all families, while lone father families increased to 3 per cent. Two-parent families fell over the same period from 79 to 74 per cent of all families.
“The proportions of separated and divorced lone mother families both grew between 1996 and 2000, probably reflecting an increase in the break-up of informal unions, and the further decline in remarriage after divorce,” Mr Haskey said.
Single lone mothers rose from 7 to 11 per cent of families with dependent children. This increase means that one in nine of all families is now headed by a single lone mother.
The report said that single lone mothers now form 41 per cent of all single parent families compared with 34 per cent in 1996. “In relative terms, single lone mothers grew at the expense of all other kinds of lone mothers between 1996-2000,” the report added.
Single lone mothers tended to be young with “about one half” of them aged under 25, Mr Haskey said.
He pointed to two key periods which had led to a change in family structures. “Historically there was the growth of divorce during the 1960s and 1970s which created divorced lone parents with dependent children,” Mr Haskey said.
“More recently, from the mid-1980s onwards, births outside marriage, particularly to single lone mothers, started to overtake and eclipse the number of one-parent families caused by divorce.”
A separate study of co-habiting histories show that almost 60 per cent of single lone mothers aged 16-29 had lived with at least one partner compared with 26 per cent of their single, childless counterparts.
Acknowledgement : The Sunday Times, Sunday September 29, 2002
Part-time staff earn more than full employees
Tens of thousands of low-paid workers are taking advantage of a loophole in the government’s flagship tax scheme which means they can earn more working part-time than colleagues who work a full 40- hour week.
Employers are now demanding sweeping changes to the “ludicrous” system of tax credits launched by Gordon Brown, the chancellor, which they say are causing sharp divisions among full and part-time workers.
In some parts of the country the problem is so serious that full-time workers are giving up their jobs to take on part-time positions, confident in the knowledge that their lost earnings will be made up in generous handouts from the state.
Under the working families’ tax credit (WFTC) introduced by the chancellor in 1999, those who work at least 16 hours a week and earn less than �5,000 a year are entitled to receive from the state a weekly lump sum of �62.50, plus �26.45 for each child. Most can claim this on top of other handouts.
The system was introduced by Brown primarily to encourage single mothers back into the workplace but, say employers, it is now causing full-time workers to slash their hours so that they, too, can benefit from the state’s generosity.
According to the accountants Grant Thornton, a single mother with two children earning �5 an hour now takes home about �400 for a 16-hour week once all the available benefits are included. However, a colleague doing the same job for 40 hours a week would earn only �356.
News of the loophole has spread quickly and small business owners now struggle to find anyone who is willing to work more than the minimum two days a week that are required to claim the credit.
“There is a perverse incentive for people to cut their hours,” said David Willetts, the shadow minister for work and pensions. “The credits need to be seriously reformed so as to reward people who work harder.”
More than 1.3m people are claiming the tax credit. The cost of it and other personal tax credits introduced by the chancellor is already more than �3 billion and rising.
The credits have helped to create a growing dependency on the state, with 30% of working-age British households receiving at least half of their income from the Treasury.
Frank Field, the Labour MP and former welfare reform minister, said: “This illustrates the evil of the tax credit system. It pays people not to push themselves up the ladder.”
Helen Nicholls, a 30-year-old shop assistant from Plymouth, is one of the thousands of single mothers benefiting from the scheme. Nicholls, who has children aged three and six, works 16 hours a week in a gift shop. She earns �65.50 a week. but when her tax credits (�120 a week) and housing benefit (�400 a month) are taken into account, her total package for a 16-hour week brings in almost �15,000 a year after tax.
Less than a mile away lives Emma Smith, another single mother who is not yet enjoying the spoils of the system. Smith is employed in a pet shop but works twice as long each week as Nicholls. She is rewarded with a weekly pay package of about �155 plus about �80 from the government — 20% less than her part-time neighbour.
“I think the system is unfair and I will definitely have to cut my working hours,” she said. “The financial incentive is to work only 16 hours so that is what I’ll have to do in future.”
Douglas McQueen runs an off-licence chain in Liverpool and struggles to find people prepared to work more than the minimum 16-hour week. “People can have their wages quadrupled by the government: a ridiculous state of affairs,” he said.
“I have a problem because I cannot keep the full-time workers and shop managers who put in 40 hours but who earn less.”
The Federation of Small Businesses and the British Chamber of Commerce (BCC) are collecting evidence to present to the government. Sally Low, head of policy at the BCC, said: “We have heard that shopworkers want to cut their hours down to the minimum. The tax credits have already cost businesses �262m to administer.”
The working families’ tax credit and children’s tax credit will be streamlined next year, but the new system will leave the loophole intact.
Sian Jenkins works full-time as a ward domestic at Morriston hospital, Swansea, but is growing resentful of the inequality in the system. Jenkins, 47, has grown-up children and is paid about �150 a week after tax. “The benefits system isn’t fair. If I worked fewer hours or not at all, everything would be paid for me,” she said.
“Sometimes it just doesn’t seem worth going out to work.”
The chancellor’s system of tax credits has also been attacked for encouraging single mothers to remain single and for putting existing couples off marrying or even moving in together. This is because the entitlement to benefit is based on total household income, not individual earnings.
Civitas, the right-wing think tank, notes that the incomes of many single mothers would be slashed if they moved in with a modest earner and describes the system as a “lone-parent trap”. It also notes that the number of lone-parent families has doubled over the past 15 years and now accounts for 26% of all families.
Are you an employer or employee who has experienced first-hand the anomalies of Benefits Britain?
Please write, including a daytime telephone number, to: Benefits Britain, The Sunday Times, 1 Pennington Street, London E98 1ST or else send an e-mail to: [email protected]
Comment : when will ordinary men wake up to this rip-off ?