Lone Parents Employment And Social Policy Crossnational Comparisons Jane Millar Editor Karen Rowlingson Editor

Lone Parents Employment And Social Policy
Crossnational Comparisons Jane Millar Editor
Karen Rowlingson Editor download
https://ebookbell.com/product/lone-parents-employment-and-social-
policy-crossnational-comparisons-jane-millar-editor-karen-
rowlingson-editor-51809862
Explore and download more ebooks at ebookbell.com

Here are some recommended products that we believe you will be
interested in. You can click the link to download.
Hacking Leadership 10 Ways Great Leaders Inspire Learning That
Teachers Students And Parents Love Joe Sanfelippo And Tony Sinanis
https://ebookbell.com/product/hacking-leadership-10-ways-great-
leaders-inspire-learning-that-teachers-students-and-parents-love-joe-
sanfelippo-and-tony-sinanis-46295078
The Love Dare For Parents Kendrick Stephenkimbrough Lawrencekendrick
https://ebookbell.com/product/the-love-dare-for-parents-kendrick-
stephenkimbrough-lawrencekendrick-11871740
Sharing Love Abundantly In Special Needs Families The 5 Love Languages
For Parents Raising Children With Disabilities Gary Chapman
https://ebookbell.com/product/sharing-love-abundantly-in-special-
needs-families-the-5-love-languages-for-parents-raising-children-with-
disabilities-gary-chapman-11156284
The Daddy Of All Mysteries The True Story Of My Parents Secret Love
And The Search For A Father Who I Never Knew Jess Welsby
https://ebookbell.com/product/the-daddy-of-all-mysteries-the-true-
story-of-my-parents-secret-love-and-the-search-for-a-father-who-i-
never-knew-jess-welsby-48817004

Love And Respect In The Family The Respect Parents Desire The Love
Children Need Emerson Eggerichs
https://ebookbell.com/product/love-and-respect-in-the-family-the-
respect-parents-desire-the-love-children-need-emerson-
eggerichs-48815278
Love And Respect In The Family The Respect Parents Desire The Love
Children Need Illustrated Dr Emerson Eggerichs
https://ebookbell.com/product/love-and-respect-in-the-family-the-
respect-parents-desire-the-love-children-need-illustrated-dr-emerson-
eggerichs-33508094
Parents Rising 8 Strategies For Raising Kids Who Love God Respect
Authority And Value Whats Right Arlene Pellicane
https://ebookbell.com/product/parents-rising-8-strategies-for-raising-
kids-who-love-god-respect-authority-and-value-whats-right-arlene-
pellicane-46411138
Parenting Our Parents Transforming The Challenge Into A Journey Of
Love Jane Wolf Frances
https://ebookbell.com/product/parenting-our-parents-transforming-the-
challenge-into-a-journey-of-love-jane-wolf-frances-46867854
When An Adult You Love Has Adhd Professional Advice For Parents
Partners And Siblings Russell A Barkley
https://ebookbell.com/product/when-an-adult-you-love-has-adhd-
professional-advice-for-parents-partners-and-siblings-russell-a-
barkley-51228312

Edited by Jane Millar and Karen Rowlingson
Lone parents,
empLoyment and
sociaL poLicy
Cross-national comparisons

Lone parents,
employment and
social policy
Cross-national comparisons
Edited by Jane Millar and Karen Rowlingson

First published in Great Britain in November 2001 by
The Policy Press
University of Bristol
Fourth Floor
Beacon House
Queen’s Road
Bristol BS8 1QU
UK
Tel +44 (0)117 331 4054
Fax +44 (0)117 331 4093
e-mail tpp-info@bristol.ac.uk
www.policypress.co.uk
North American office:
The Policy Press
c/o The University of Chicago Press
1427 East 60th Street
Chicago, IL 60637, USA
t: +1 773 702 7700
f: +1 773-702-9756
e:sales@press.uchicago.edu
www.press.uchicago.edu
Text © Jane Millar and Karen Rowlingson
Transferred to Digital Print 2012
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record for this book has been requested.
ISBN 978 1 86134 320 8 paperback
Jane Millar is Professor of Social Policy and Karen Rowlingson is Lecturer in Social
Research, both at the University of Bath, UK.
Cover design by Qube Design Associates, Bristol.
Front cover: photographs supplied by kind permission of Format Photographers, London.
The right of Jane Millar and Karen Rowlingson to be identified as editors of this work has
been asserted by them in accordance with the 1988 Copyright, Designs and Patents Act.
All rights reserved:no part of this publication may be reproduced,stored in a retrieval system,
or transmitted in any form or by any means,electronic,mechanical,photocopying,recording,
or otherwise without the prior permission of The Policy Press.
The statements and opinions contained within this publication are solely those of the editor
and contributors and not of The University of Bristol or The Policy Press. The University
of Bristol and The Policy Press disclaim responsibility for any injury to persons or property
resulting from any material published in this publication.
The Policy Press works to counter discrimination on grounds of gender, race, disability, age
and sexuality.
Printed and bound in Great Britain by Marston Book Services, Oxford

iii
Contents
List of tables and figures v
Acknowledgements ix
Notes on contributors xi
Foreword: Lone parents: the UK policy context xv
Ruth Lister
one Comparing employment policies for lone parents 1
cross-nationally: an introduction
Jane Millar and Karen Rowlingson
Part 1: Policies within specific countries
two Helping British lone parents get and keep paid work 11
Alan Marsh
three Welfare reform and lone mothers’ employment in the US 37
Jane Waldfogel, Sandra K. Danziger, Sheldon Danziger and
Kristin S. Seefeldt
four Lone parents and employment in Australia 61
Peter Whiteford
five Lone parents and employment in Norway 87
Anne Skevik
six Does it work? Employment policies for lone parents in the 107
Netherlands
Trudie Knijn and Frits van Wel
seven Lone parents, employment and social policy in France: 129
lessons from a family-friendly policy
Christine Chambaz and Claude Martin
Part 2: Cross-cutting themes
eight Orientations to work and the issue of care 153
Jane Lewis
nine The social, economic and demographic profile of lone parents 169
Karen Rowlingson
ten Work-related activity requirements and labour market 189
programmes for lone parents
Jane Millar

iv
Lone parents, employment and social policy
eleven Making work pay policies for lone parents 211
Majella Kilkey and Jonathan Bradshaw
twelve Lone mothers, employment and childcare 233
Hilary Land
Conclusions
thirteen Supporting employment: emerging policy and practice 255
Karen Rowlingson and Jane Millar
References 265
Index 289

v
List of tables and figures
Tables
2.1 Characteristics of lone-parent families (excluding the 17-18
bereaved)
2.2 Lone parents’ economic activity status in 1999 (%) 19
2.3 Work and benefit status in 1999 (%) 21
2.4 Core profile of lone parents’ position in the labour market (%) 22
2.5 Lone parents’ hardship by work and benefit status in 1999 (%) 24
2.6 Lone parents looking for work in 1999 (%) 25
2.7 Lone parents’ reasons for not working 16+ hours per week 27
in 1999 (multiple response percentages)
3.1 Living arrangements of children under the age of 18 (1960-98) 38
3.2 Living arrangements of children by ‘racial’/ethnic group (1980-98) 38
3.3 Childcare spending and numbers of children served in Illinois 55
(1995-2001)
4.1 Selected family trends, Australia (1966-99) 62
4.2 Characteristics of lone-parent families with dependent children,
Australia (June 1999) 64
4.3 Labour force status and hours of work, employed parents,Australia
(June 1999) (%) 69
4.4 Labour force status of lone mothers and partnered mothers by 70
age of youngest dependent child,Australia (1985-99) (%)
4.5 The ‘employment gap’ for lone and partnered mothers,Australia 71
(June 1999) (%)
4.6 Cancellation rates for JET and non-JET participants, by duration 75
of payment (1996) (%)
4.7 Receipt of earnings among JET and non-JET participants, by 76
target group (1996) (%)
4.8 Results of main Manpower Development Research Corporation 77
welfare employment evaluations and JET compared (%)

vi
5.1 Divorce rates and proportions of children born outside marriage, 89
Norway (1960s-1990s)
5.2 Women aged 25-34 living in cohabiting and married relationships 89
(1977-98) (%)
5.3 Characteristics of lone parents in Norway (1991) (%) 91
5.4 Employment rates for lone mothers in Norway (1990-98) (%) 91
6.1 Lone-parent families in the Netherlands 108
6.2 Sources of income per household (1997) 109
6.3 Income and household composition (1997) (%) 109
6.4 Employment by household type, men and women related to the 112
age of children (%)
6.5 Working hours of lone parents not on welfare (%) 112
6.6 Opinion about lone mothers’ obligations to work 116
6.7 People on welfare by household composition (1995-98) (%) 117
6.8 Social assistance classification 118
6.9 Integration and reactivation projects for women only 122
6.10 Sources of care used by lone parents (%) 126
7.1 Number of lone-parent families in France in 1990 and 2000 131
7.2 Number and proportion of lone-parent families in France 132
in 1990 and 2000, by marital status and age
7.3 Lone parents in 1990 and 2000, by marital status and age (%) 132
7.4 Number and age of children of the lone-parent families in 1990 135
and 2000
7.5 Level of qualification of lone parents and lone mothers compared 136
to partnered mothers in 1990 and 2000
7.6 Proportion of lone mothers and partnered mothers working 137
according to International Labour Office (ILO) criteria (%)
7.7 ILO and self-declared unemployment among lone and partnered 138
mothers (%)
7.8 Lone mothers’ working conditions (%) 140
7.9 Satisfaction with working conditions of mothers in paid 141
employment (1996)
7.10 The French system of social benefits for families and especially 143-4
for lone-parent families

vii
7.11 Lone-parent families’ structure of income 146-7
8.1 Selected Labour Force Statistics for 18 OECD countries ranked 157
by female share of labour force (1994) (%)
8.2 Part-time employment in 18 OECD countries ranked by 158
part-time employment as a proportion of female employment
(1995) (%)
8.3 Patterns of male and female paid work 159
10.1 Activity requirements for lone parents as a condition of 194
receiving financial support
10.2 Labour market programmes for lone parents: summary 199
10.3 Labour market programmes for lone parents: comparing 205
‘outcomes’
11.1 Recent developments in making work pay policies 215
11.2 Net replacement rates (NNRs) dervied from ‘theYork studies’ 218
(EU countries, May 1996, non-EU countries, May 1994)
11.3 Net replacement rates (NNRs) dervied from the ‘OECD Benefit 221
Systems andWork Incentives Series’ (all countries, 1997)
11.4 Net replacement rates (NNRs) over time for a lone parent 222
with one child aged 2 years and 11 months, at half national
average male production workers’ wages
11.5 Employment, non-employment and poverty 226
11.6 Relating the value of the paid work social transfer package 227
to poverty rates
12.1 Institutional differentiation of childcare and corresponding forms 240
of state subsidy
12.2 Average hours usually worked per week by full-time 249
employees (1998)
12.3 The average length of the working day in 1982 and 1992 (Britain) 249
12.4 Parental leave by country 251
Figures
2.1 Lone parents and work 22
3.1 Labour force participation rates of women with children (1960-98) 39
5.1 Lone parents as a proportion of all parents with children under 16 90
List of tables and figures

viii
5.2 Opinions on when ‘lone parents’ and ‘mothers’ should take 102
up paid employment
7.1 Lone parents’ marital status according to age in 1990 and 2000 133
9.1 Lone parents as a percentage of families with children 172
9.2 Routes into lone motherhood 174
9.3 Percentage of lone-mother families with children under 5 or 176
6 years old
9.4 Rates of teenage motherhood by social class of woman’s father 179
at age 14
9.5 Risk of having a pre-partnership birth by father’s social class 185
9.6 Employment rate of lone mothers in different countries 186
11.1 Net replacement rates (NRRs) and employment rates in 1996: 223
lone parent with one child aged 7, at half average earnings
11.2 Net replacement rates (NRRs) and employment rates over 224
time: lone parent with one child aged 2 years and 11 months,
at half average earnings and after childcare costs
12.1 Employment by levels of highest education attainment 238
12.2 Day nursery provided (1990-2000) 243
12.3 Places in day nurseries, with childminders and in playgroups 243
or pre-schools (1990-2000)

ix
Acknowledgements
Thanks to our contributors for their speed, efficiency and willingness to
deal with all our queries at short notice. Thanks also to Camilla Lucas at
the University of Bath for her help in preparing the manuscript. Dawn
Rushen at the Policy Press was the most helpful of the editors, and we
greatly appreciate her patience and competence. The Department for
Work and Pensions sponsored the seminar at which these papers were
first presented and we are also grateful for their support. Jane Millar
would also like to thank colleagues in the Political Science Program at
the Australian National University,where she spent some time as a visitor
while working on this book.
Jane Millar
Karen Rowlingson
Centre for the Analysis of Social Policy,
University of Bath
October 2001

xi
Notes on contributors
Jonathan Bradshaw is Professor of Social Policy at the University of
York and Associate Director of the Social Policy Research Unit. His
main research interests are in poverty, living standards, family change and
comparative social policy. His two most recent books are Poverty: The
outcomes for children (Family Policy Studies Centre,2001) and Absent fathers?
(Routledge, 1999). He is current President of the Foundation for
International Studies in Social Security (FISS).
Christine Chambaz works in the Directorate of Research, Statistical
Studies and Evaluation (DREES) in the French Ministry of Employment
and Solidarity. Her main activity consists of studying the impact of social
transfers on living standard inequalities and poverty, by microsimulating
the French social and fiscal system and by drawing analysis from large
surveys, such as the European Community Household Panel.
Sandra K. Danziger is Associate Professor of SocialWork and Director,
Program on Poverty and Social Welfare Policy, University of Michigan.
Her research examines family well-being and welfare policy
implementation. She recently co-authored‘Human capital,physical health,
and mental health of welfare recipients: correlates and consequences’,
Journal of Social Issues (2000).
Sheldon Danziger is Henry J. Meyer Collegiate Professor of Social
Work and Public Policy and Director of the Center on Poverty, Risk and
Mental Health at the University of Michigan. He is the co-author of
America unequal (Harvard University Press and Russell Sage Foundation,
1995) and Detroit divided (Russell Sage Foundation, 2000), co-editor of
Confronting poverty (Harvard University Press and Russell Sage Foundation,
1994) and Securing the future (Russell Sage Foundation, 2000) and author
of numerous articles and book chapters.
Majella Kilkey is Lecturer in Social Policy at the School of Comparative
and Applied Social Sciences, University of Hull. She is a co-author of
The employment of lone parents:A comparison of policy in 20 countries (Family
Policy Studies Centre,1996),and author of Lone mothers between paid work
and care. The policy regime in twenty countries (Ashgate, 2000).

xii
Trudie Knijn is Associate Professor at the Faculty of Social Sciences,
Department of Cross-Cultural Studies, University of Utrecht. She has
published articles on care (services) and welfare states, gender and
citizenship, and welfare policies for lone mothers. She is the co-author
of‘Careful or lenient:welfare reform for lone parents in the Netherlands’,
Journal of European Social Policy (2001).
Hilary Land is Professor of Family Policy and Child Welfare at the
University of Bristol. She has a long-standing interest in family policies
from comparative and historical perspectives. Recent publications include
(with Kathleen Kiernan and Jane Lewis),Lone motherhood in twentieth century
Britain (Open University Press, 1999) and ‘New Labour, new families?’ in
Social Policy Review 11, edited by Hartley Dean (1999).
Jane Lewis is Barnett Professor of Social Policy at the University of
Oxford. She is the editor of Lone mothers in European welfare regimes (Jessica
Kingsley, 1997) and the author of The end of marriage? Individualism in
intimate relationships (Edward Elgar, 2001).
Ruth Lister is Professor of Social Policy at Loughborough University.
Her research interests include poverty and social security, citizenship and
gender. Her most recent book is Citizenship: Feminist perspectives
(Macmillan, 1997).
Alan Marsh is Professor of Social Policy at the University ofWestminster
and Deputy Director of the Policy Studies Institute (PSI). At PSI he
carries out a programme of research into social change and social security
policy focused on low-income families,lone parents,and disabled people.
He has recently published Low-income families in Britain:Work, welfare and
social security in 1999 (DSS, 2001).
Claude Martin is a Sociologist, Research Fellow at the Centre national
de la recherche scientifique (CNRS) and Professor in the Institut d’études
politiques in Rennes (France). He is also Director of the Laboratoire
d’analyse des politiques sociales et sanitaires (National School of Public
Health). His research interests are the welfare state, social and family
policies reforms in Europe. Recent publications include l’Après divorce
(Presses Universitaires de Rennes,1997) and,with J.Commaille,Les enjeux
politiques de la famille (Bayard éditions, 1998).

xiii
Jane Millar is Professor of Social Policy and Director of the Centre for
the Analysis of Social Policy at the University of Bath. Her main research
interests are social security and family policy, especially lone parenthood,
poverty, and support for children. Recent publications include Private
lives, public responses: Lone parenthood and future policy (PSI, 1998, co-editor
with Reuben Ford); and the chapter on the UK in Benefits for children:A
four country study (edited by K.Battle and M.Mendelson,Caledon Institute,
Canada, 2001).
Karen Rowlingson is a Lecturer in Social Research at the University of
Bath. She has previously worked at the PSI where she carried out research
into lone parenthood and family finances. She has published Social security
in Britain (Macmillan, 1999) and The growth of lone parenthood (PSI, 1998)
both with Stephen McKay.
Kristin S. Seefeldt is a Senior Research Associate in the University of
Michigan’s School of Social Work. Her research focuses on
implementation analysis and field research of welfare and employment
and training policies and programmes. With Sandra Danziger, she is the
author of ‘Ending welfare through work first’ (Families in Society, 2000).
Anne Skevik is a researcher at NOVA (Norwegian Social Research).
Her main research interests are lone parenthood;comparative family policy;
and child maintenance arrangements. Recent publications include the
doctorate thesis, Family ideology and social policy: Policies toward lone parents
in Norway and the UK (NOVA, Oslo, 2001).
Frits van Wel is Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Social Sciences,
Department of Cross-Cultural Studies, University of Utrecht. He has
published articles on (lone) motherhood in the Netherlands, social
intervention, and youth cultures. He is co-author of ‘The labor market
orientation of single mothers on welfare in the Netherlands’, Journal of
the Marriage and the Family (2001).
Jane Waldfogel is Associate Professor of Social Work and Public Affairs
at Columbia University School of SocialWork,and Research Associate at
the Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion at the London School of
Economics and Political Science. She studies family leave,childcare,welfare,
and child welfare. She is the author of The future of child protection (Harvard,
Notes on contributors

xiv
1998) and co-editor (with Sheldon Danziger) of Securing the future (Russell
Sage, 2000).
Peter Whiteford is Principal Administrator (Social Policies), Non-
Member Economies and International Migration Division of the
Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).
He has worked in the Australian Department of Family and Community
Services, and at the University of York, UK and the University of New
South Wales, Australia. His recent research has concentrated on
international comparisons of systems of social protection and of poverty
and income distribution.

xv
Foreword:Lone parents:
the UK policy context
This foreword sketches the broader policy context within which policies
towards lone parents and employment are being developed in the UK.
In some ways, policies towards lone parents are emblematic of New
Labour’s welfare reform project, the dominant theme of which can be
summed up in the two mantras: ‘reforming welfare around the work
ethic’ and a third way in welfare ‘that believes in empowerment not
dependency’. Policies to encourage lone parents off social assistance and
into paid work are a key plank in delivering the project.
Lone parents have also been at the centre of controversy over benefit
levels. When New Labour came to power it gave notice that it rejected a
status quo supported by those who “believe that poverty is relieved
exclusively by cash handouts”(DSS,1998,p 19). Improving benefit levels
for those not in work was regarded as ‘old Labour’ and therefore not on
the agenda. Furthermore, within a few months of coming to power, the
government implemented a Conservative plan to abolish the modest
additional benefits paid to lone parents, both in and out of work, which
followed a period of vilification of lone mothers by Conservative politicians
and the media. They were cast as “a drain on public expenditure and as
a threat to the stability and order associated with the traditional two-
parent family” (Kiernan et al, 1998, p 2). This discourse of lone mothers
as a threat overlaid a longer standing discourse of lone mothers as a
problem.
The decision to go ahead with the abolition of lone parent benefits
created an outcry, which took the government aback. It created an
enormous amount of ill-feeling and contributed to a widespread
perception that the welfare reform agenda was a cuts agenda. However,
partly as a result of the anger generated, there was something of a rethink
on the benefits front in the 1998 Budget a few months later. Improvements
in benefits for children in families both in and out of work were
announced. A year later the Prime Minister committed the government
to the eradication of child poverty in two decades and one of its policy
tools is proving to be further improvements in children’s benefits.
These two themes – an active welfare state focused on work not welfare
(New Labour) and the eradication of child poverty (old Labour) – are

xvi
explored briefly. This is followed by discussion of a rather less well
articulated theme,described as the crossing of the Rubicon from“the left
bank of welfare-for-all to the right bank of means-testing”(The Economist,
6 March 1999).
An active welfare state
The 1998 Green Paper on welfare reform established the central principle
of welfare reform as: “work for those who can, security for those who
cannot”. It held out a vision of “a new welfare contract” in which the
first two duties of the individual are to “seek training or work where able
to do so”and to“take up the opportunity to be independent if able to do
so”. The first duties on government are to “provide people with the
assistance they need to find work” and to “make work pay” (DSS, 1998, p
80). This encapsulates the central concerns to promote responsibility
and opportunity, primarily through paid work (see Lister, 2002:
forthcoming).
Welfare-to-work
The vehicle for exercising these responsibilities and seizing these
opportunities is a series of New Deal ‘welfare-to-work’ programmes (see
ChapterTwo) together with a new integrated ‘working age agency’. The
aim of the new agency, the Prime Minister announced, is “to accelerate
the move from a welfare system that primarily provides passive support to
one that provides active support to help people become independent”
through paid work. He emphasised that it will promote a ‘new culture’
of independence and responsibilities and will develop the “partnership
approach to working with local authorities and the private and voluntary
sectors” in delivering welfare-to-work policies (Blair, 2000).
The introduction of the working age agency is linked to that of a new
requirement that virtually all claimants of working age will have to attend
interviews with a personal adviser to discuss the prospects of finding
work. Although there is no work obligation as such on lone parents and
others not actually classified as unemployed, attendance at the interviews
will be a pre-condition of an initial claim and of subsequent entitlement
to full benefit. This new requirement was announced in‘tough’language
typical of New Labour when it wants to impress Middle England. The
Social Security Secretary, for instance, made clear that there were to be

xvii
“no apologies” for “our tough benefits regime” (The Independent, 10
February 1999).
Typical of this ‘tough benefits regime’ is increasingly punitive sanctions
for unemployed people who fail to comply with the New Deal,as well as
a series of drives against ‘fraudsters’, aimed particularly at those believed
to be working‘on the side’while claiming benefit. The view is that,with
unemployment at its lowest overall level for years and with the assistance
that the government is now providing, there is no excuse for people not
to take full-time jobs in the formal labour market. In other words, with
opportunities come responsibilities.
However, critics argue that there are still parts of the country, in which
the groups covered by the New Deal tend to be concentrated, where the
jobs are not available. There is also a growing concern that such strict
and inflexible social security rules are discouraging people from
volunteering and contributing to their communities,in other words from
exercising responsibility in ways other than through a job. This links in
with arguments, put particularly in relation to lone parents, about the
need to value the work of care as a form of citizenship responsibility.
The government’s responsibility agenda, although focused primarily
on paid work, is not confined to it. It is using the benefit system more
generally explicitly to promote responsible behaviour in ways which are
novel in the modern UK benefits system. Similarly, its reforms of the
child maintenance system emphasise the financial responsibilities of non-
resident parents.
Making work pay
The other piece in the active welfare state jigsaw is the raft of policies
designed to‘make work pay’– the carrots to sweeten the sticks. These are
of two kinds, aimed at increasing in-work incomes and at easing the
transition into paid work. Policies to increase in-work incomes include:
• the introduction of a statutory minimum wage for the very first time
in the UK; despite its low level, it is of particular importance to female
workers;
• a real increase in child benefit – especially for the first/oldest child;
• the introduction of new tax credits administered by the Inland Revenue,
in place of less generous means-tested benefits.
Payment of the credits through the wage packet is supposed to signal
Foreword

xviii
more clearly that ‘work pays’ and to be less stigmatising than the cash
benefits they replace. This remains to be proven. In fact, in face of
criticism that payment of the Working Families’ Tax Credit (WFTC)
through the wage packet would mean a shift in resources from mothers
to fathers, to the detriment of children, the government compromised
and agreed that one-earner couples could have a choice as to payee.
Subsequently, it accepted the argument completely. It now proposes,
from 2003, to replace the WFTC with a new Integrated Child Credit
(ICC) paid to the caring parent, alongside an Employment Tax Credit
(ETC) for low-income working adults,whether or not they have children.
A number of small but useful changes are being introduced to ease the
transition into paid work and to cushion people if they fall back onto
benefit after a short period. In addition, there are also a number of
limited ‘family-friendly’ employment measures, mainly the result of
European directives,and a national childcare strategy (see ChapterTwelve).
Eradication of child poverty
Most of these initiatives also contribute to the goal of the eradication of
child poverty,the level of which is one of the highest in the industrialised
world. There are,in addition, further measures more specifically targeted
on this goal, involving both benefits and services.
Benefits
Of particular significance has been a phased 80% real increase (by October
2001) in the income support rates paid for children aged under 11 and a
smaller real increase for older children. This is a very welcome move but
the government is reluctant to trumpet it, so as not to alienate ‘Middle
England’ tax payers. The result is that many people seem unaware of it
and continue to criticise the government for doing nothing for families
not in work.
Despite these improvements (and also some improvements to certain
benefits for severely disabled people,pensioners and carers),the government
has resisted calls for a comprehensive review of the adequacy of benefits.
There has been no public official review of benefit levels since they were
first set after the Second World War.
There have also been some improvements to maternity benefits,
including a trebling of the lump sum maternity grant paid to poorer
mothers (with a further £200 increase promised in 2002). More in tune

xix
with the New Labour philosophy, the increase was ‘in return for parents
meeting their responsibilities’, that is, the grant will be conditional on
attendance at child health check-ups, which is a new departure in UK
social security policy but is a long-established practice in France.
Services
The maternity grant has been incorporated into a new Sure Start
programme,inspired by practice in the US. Sure Start works with children
aged under three and their parents to promote children’s physical, social
and emotional development. There is also to be a new Children’s Fund.
The bulk of it will be devoted to local preventive work with children
primarily in the 5-13 age group, in partnership with local authorities and
the voluntary sector.
Although these services are not part of the welfare reform programme
as such,they do exemplify how that programme is part of a wider strategy
for tackling poverty and social exclusion. They also illustrate how that
wider strategy places particular emphasis on area-based interventions and
partnership between the statutory and other sectors.
The initial pledge to abolish child poverty in two decades has been
supplemented with a further pledge to halve it in one and also to publish
annual monitoring reports. In 2000, the government estimated that it
will have lifted 1.2 million children out of poverty by the end of its first
Parliament. This is broadly in line with independent analysis. Overall, it
is an impressive start, but there is still a long way to go, given that there
are over four million children in poverty.
Across the means-testing Rubicon
The final theme can be discerned in a number of policy measures, which
together are strengthening the means-tested side of the social security
system relative to its universal and contributory elements. This is not an
explicit strategy and indeed there are some counter examples. Nevertheless,
a growing number of commentators are suggesting that we are witnessing
the slow death of National Insurance (NI) and movement towards a
two-tier system in which the majority are expected to look to private
sources of insurance and the poor have to rely on means-tested support.
Those expressing concern about the demise of NI include the
government’s Social Security Advisory Committee and the House of
Commons Social Security Select Committee. The latter has expressed
Foreword

xx
‘unease’ that the NI system “is disappearing by default, without proper
acknowledgement or debate” (2000, para 1).
Ministers themselves are disinclined to debate the issue of the balance
between different kinds of benefit. They prefer a pragmatic ‘what works’
approach, although some argue that means-tested benefits do not work
very well and could undermine other goals such as promoting personal
responsibility.
At the same time,although there has been a real increase in the value of
child benefit, means-tested support for children is being increased by
significantly more and the proposed ETC can be seen as an extension of
means-tested subsidies for low pay. Moreover, it and the proposed ICC
have been described by the Treasury as “a further important step towards
tax and benefit integration”(HMTreasury,2000a,para 2.29),the implication
being the further extension of means-testing. This,the Chancellor of the
Exchequer has made clear, will mean cementing the couple rather than
the individual as the basic benefit unit, with possible implications for
independent taxation.
Conclusion
The government is clear in its objectives to create a social security system
focused on promoting paid work and to end child poverty. Beyond that,
the direction of welfare reform is not always obvious,especially when the
reality and the rhetoric are at odds with each other – sometimes with a
more progressive reality than rhetoric (Lister, 2000b).
In terms of the underlying structure of social security,that is, the balance
between contributory, categorical and means-tested benefits, there is no
explicit strategy at all. Instead, there are a number of pragmatic steps,
made in the name of ‘targeting’ and of ‘what works’, which could result
in a rather different welfare mix to that traditionally associated with the
UK:one which shifts us further towards a liberal residual model of welfare,
albeit of a uniquely British variety (Glennerster, 1999).
Ruth Lister
Loughborough, 2001

1
ONE
Comparing employment policies
for lone parents cross-nationally:
an introduction
Jane Millar and Karen Rowlingson
Policy towards lone parents in the UK has undergone significant changes
since 1997. In particular, for the first time in the post-war period, the
government is offering positive support for lone parents to enter the
labour market. A target has now been set to reach a lone-parent
employment rate of 70% within 10 years (DfEE, 2001a). This is being
implemented through policies that are intended to support and encourage
lone parents to take up employment, including in-work benefits and
improved support for childcare. Lone parents receiving Income Support
will have to take part in compulsory work-focused interviews but benefit
support will continue to be available to those who do not choose to
enter paid work. However,in some other countries more radical measures
have been introduced, with lone parents being required to seek work, to
take up training, or to participate in work or work-based employment
programmes, as a condition of benefit receipt.
The aim of this book is to explore the nature of the policy changes
affecting lone parents, the rationale for these, the way in which they are
being implemented,and the outcomes for lone parents and their children.
The approach is both country specific and thematic. Part 1 includes six
country-based chapters that provide a detailed and contextualised
examination of national policy goals, how these have been implemented,
and their outcomes. Part 2 includes five chapters that explore particular
aspects of policy through comparative cross-national analysis, and a
concluding chapter that reviews future policy options. This chapter
provides an introduction to the collection through a discussion of three
topics:the aims of the book; the choice of the countries included and the
topics covered for each; and the five thematic issues addressed.

2
Before turning to the specifics of the issues to be addressed in the
book, however, it is worth pausing to note the wider importance of these
policy trends. As Ruth Lister points out in the foreword,the government
is committed to the creation of an ‘active welfare state’, in which the
main role of policy is to enable people to support themselves through
paid employment. Including lone parents in this goal – even on a voluntary
basis – represents a break with the past, and a shift away from the
assumptions about the role of mothers that have shaped UK policy for
many years. It places paid work at the centre of the relationship between
citizen and the state, with active participation in society defined in terms
of active participation in employment (Levitas, 1998; Lister, 2000a). This
raises questions about the nature and extent of the social rights of those
who provide unpaid care work in the family, as most women continue to
do. What happens to ‘rights to give and receive care’ (Knijn and Kremer,
1997) if all working-age adults are expected and required to engage in
paid labour? This tension between requirements to work and obligations
to care is particularly visible in respect of lone mothers, as is clear from
the policy debates and recent policy changes that are discussed in this
book.
Examining policy and understanding implementation
The government has cited cross-national comparisons of employment
rates for lone parents to argue that it is possible to achieve higher
employment rates in the UK. For example, in the Treasury’s pre-Budget
report in November 2000:
Employment rates of lone parents in the UK are low,both in comparison
to lone parents in other countries and compared to mothers in couples
in the UK.… More recently,the proportion of lone parents in work in
the UK has begun to rise … although the UK still lags substantially
behind other industrialised countries. In the US,around 70 per cent of
lone parents are in work, and in France over 80 per cent. The reasons
for these differences are complex but may include the demographic
characteristics of lone parents, health and education, the area in which
they live, the availability and cost of childcare, work requirements and,
historically, the gains to work. Yet the characteristics of lone parents in
both France and, particularly, the US are broadly similar to those of
lone parents in the UK. (HMTreasury, 2000b, Box 4.2)

3
A number of previous cross-national studies have sought to explain these
variations in employment rates, most comprehensively the study by
Jonathan Bradshaw and his colleagues in the mid-1990s (Bradshaw et al,
1996), and from a more socio-cultural perspective in the work of Simon
Duncan and Rosalind Edwards (Duncan and Edwards, 1997b). Our aim
in making cross-national comparisons is, however, rather different. We
did not set out to explain cross-national variations in employment rates,
but to explore the policy measures behind these and specifically to examine
how other countries were putting work-based systems for lone parents
into practice, and with what results. To do this it was necessary to place
these policy measures in their national context, in order to explain the
nature and form of these.
This was the agenda addressed in the policy-oriented seminar that
provided the starting point for this book. The seminar was held at the
University of Bath in the autumn of 2000, funded by the Department of
Social Security1
and attended by representatives from several other
government departments involved in making and implementing policy
for lone parents. The focus on policy implementation and policy outcomes
was intended to help policy makers consider,evaluate and develop different
policy options. We wanted to explore the potential advantages and
disadvantages of these policy shifts to employment-based systems, to
examine how policy goals were being translated into practical measures,
and to analyse how success (or failure) was being defined and measured.
The countries and topics
The countries included were chosen to represent a variety of approaches
to the issue of lone parents and employment,but also to include countries
which have made policy changes in the same sort of direction as the UK.
Three are European countries:France,the Netherlands and Norway. The
other two are English-speaking and non-European:Australia and the US.
There is also a chapter exploring the same issues in the UK itself. The
authors were asked to address (as far as possible) a set of common issues
which included: describing the demographic profile of lone parenthood;
the labour market participation rates of lone and married mothers;attitudes
to employment;the rules regarding employment obligations and whether,
how and why these had changed; the operation of labour market
programmes; the nature and level of other measures to support
employment, especially ‘make work pay’ and childcare policies; and the
way in which outcomes were being defined and measured. In addition
Comparing employment policies for lone parents cross-nationally

4
to this wealth of information, the authors were also asked to place this in
context, to provide a rounded picture that would help the reader
understand the genesis of policy change, and how policy towards lone
parents related to the wider social and economic policy agenda within
each country.
Many countries could have been included but, as in all cross-national
research, it was necessary to select and focus on particular cases. We
chose these pragmatically rather than theoretically. In each case there
was some aspect of policy and/or practice that we thought particularly
interesting and potentially illuminating to UK policy debates. The US
was an obvious choice in this respect,with US policy and evidence already
playing a significant role in policy debates in the UK. In 1996, the US
introduced the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity
Reconciliation Act, which, among other measures, made it compulsory
to participate in employment or employment-related activities as a
condition of receiving welfare, even for lone mothers with very young
children. It also gave the individual states a great deal of autonomy in
how they applied the new system, making state variation even more
substantial and thus providing a range of examples of policy and practice
innovation. State support for childcare has increased substantially and so
have the federal programmes to ‘make work pay’, especially the Earned
Income Tax Credit.
Australia was chosen because of the apparent similarities between the
New Deal for Lone Parents and their main labour market programme for
lone parents, the Jobs, Education and Training (JET) programme
introduced in 1989. This is a voluntary programme,in which participants
are assessed by a JET adviser, who can then refer them for education,
fund a pre-vocational course, or refer them for assistance with looking
for work. Australia is also interesting because lone and married mothers
are not treated as separate categories for benefit purposes, with the
Parenting Payment (Single) for lone parents and the Parenting Payment
(Partnered) for partners (usually wives) of income support recipients with
dependent children. And Australia is currently introducing some of the
same sorts of policies as the UK, including compulsory work-focused
interviews for lone parents with primary school age children.
Of the European countries, Norway and the Netherlands were chosen
because both have recently introduced new activity requirements for lone
parents. In Norway lone parents used to be eligible for the ‘transitional
allowance’ without a work test until the youngest child was aged 10.
Since 1998, receipt of this benefit has been limited to three years (five if

5
the parent is in education) and only those with children aged under
eight are eligible. Lone parents with children aged over three are required
either to seek work, take a part-time job, or take part in education and
training as a condition of receiving benefit. In the Netherlands there is
no special lone-parent benefit, but lone parents receiving social assistance
were not required to seek work if they had dependent children under the
age of 18. From 1996, lone parents with a youngest child aged over five
may be required to be available for full-time or part-time work, at the
discretion of the local social assistance office. There are now proposals to
extend some activity requirements to all lone parents, regardless of the
age of the child. By contrast, France was chosen as a country where
there has been no recent policy change and which has apparently already
achieved what many of the other countries are seeking: relatively high
employment rates for lone parents, alongside relatively generous lone-
parent benefits.
The countries thus represent a range of different approaches to
employment-related policies for lone parents: compulsory or voluntary;
with different definitions of the group covered; treating lone parents as a
separate group or within the general system; combining national and
local or federal and state systems; and with varying degrees of discretion
in administration.
The countries also vary in terms of the context within which lone
parenthood exists. The US has the highest rate of lone parenthood in the
developed world, followed some way behind by the UK and Norway.
Australia has a slightly lower rate of lone parenthood,with the Netherlands
a further step away. France has the lowest rate of lone parenthood of all
the countries covered in this book. In the US and UK, teenage lone
parenthood and single motherhood are much more common than in the
other countries.
There are also differences in terms of the employment rates of lone
parents in these countries. France has the highest rate of employment for
lone mothers in all these countries, followed by Norway and the US in a
second tier, then by Australia, the UK and the Netherlands. There are
also variations in the relative generosity of benefit rates for lone parents,
and these do not seem to be linked to employment rates. Benefit rates
for‘inactive’lone parents in the US (where they are allowed to qualify for
such benefits) are very meagre. The UK’s system of support for non-
employed lone parents is also not generous, although there have been
recent changes that have substantially increased benefit levels for children
in families receiving Income Support. In Australia the parenting benefits

6
are set at 25% of average male earnings. The most generous levels of
support for non-employed lone parents are in France, the Netherlands
and Norway.
In terms of the relationship between poverty and lone parenthood, the
US and then the UK have the highest rates of poverty among lone parents,
and these have increased in recent years. Poverty rates are also relatively
high in Australia but have fallen since the 1980s. Lone parents in France,
Norway and the Netherlands have low rates of lone-parent poverty.
There are thus both similarities and differences across these countries.
Our national and thematic approach allows us to compare policies within
these various contexts to see how they work (or do not work) in practice.
The themes
Part 2 of the book explores a number of more general themes. These
chapters are partly based on the national chapters, making comparisons
across these six countries. But the thematic chapters also take a wider
view, first by placing these six countries in the context of other countries
and their policies; and second, by placing policy for lone parents in the
context of social policy more generally. This includes,for example,policies
intended to help parents reconcile work and family life, policies aimed at
tackling poverty among poor families, and welfare-to-work policies as
they affect unemployed people and other benefit recipients.
The first chapter in Part 2 starts with wider issues and discusses how
changing assumptions about the gendered division of labour within the
family are influencing policy in many countries. This includes a critical
assessment of both the extent to which this is justified by actual changes
in the work/care practices of women and men, and the extent to which
care work is adequately addressed by policy makers and governments.
The second chapter is also contextual,but in a different way. This chapter
summarises cross-national evidence on demographic trends in lone
parenthood, how these vary across countries, and how far they explain
differences in the labour market participation rates.
These two chapters provide the context for the three following chapters,
which return to specific policy areas. These chapters examine in turn the
three main types of policies and programmes that have been introduced
with the aim of helping lone parents enter, and stay in, paid work. These
are measures to make work possible (labour market programmes); to make
work pay (financial support for employment); and to make work feasible
(measures to help reconcile work and family life). Each of these

7
encompasses a range of different possible policy instruments, and the
chapters describe these,assess the sort of impact they have had in different
contexts, and consider whether there are any lessons or implications for
UK policy. The final chapter also considers implications for the UK. It
first of all considers what lessons can be drawn about specific policy
measures, and then discusses broader issues that affect whether or not
policies to encourage lone parents to get and keep paid work will be
successful.
Overall, the book gives a comprehensive account of existing and
emerging employment-based policies for lone parents; their origins,
objectives and implementation.
Note
1
We are grateful to the Department of Social Security (now the Department for
Work and Pensions) for funding the seminar.

Part 1: Policies within
specific countries

11
TWO
Helping British lone parents get
and keep paid work1
Alan Marsh
Introduction
By most international comparisons British lone parents have low rates of
labour market participation. Fewer than four out of 10 work full time,
which in Britain is 16 hours a week or more, when they qualify for in-
work benefits. Britain also has more lone parents than most other
countries. About one in four of Britain’s seven million families with
dependent children are headed by a lone parent, which is a threefold
increase in 25 years. This means that 1.7 million lone-parent families are
caring for about three million children. More than nine out of 10 of
them are women. Six out of 10 rely on out-of-work benefits, often for
long periods, and more than half live in social accommodation. They are
prone to hardship and form the largest group in Britain among people of
working age who live on household incomes below half the national
average. This chapter sets out the development of policy in this area. It
next provides a profile of lone parents’ demographic and employment
patterns in Britain. The chapter then discusses the incentives and barriers
to work before speculating about the future direction of policy.
The development of policy
It is beyond debate that Britain’s lone-parent families need more income
and it would be hard to argue that increased labour market participation,
where possible, should not provide part of this increase. To this end,
British ‘welfare-to-work’ policy has four main strands:

12
• wage supplementation, including cash payments through Working
Families’Tax Credit (WFTC) and a National MinimumWage,to‘make
work pay’;
• active case management;
• child support payments;
• a national childcare strategy, including cash additions to wage
supplements.
Making work pay
Since 1971, successive British administrations have relied on direct wage
subsidies to try to ensure that parents have an incentive to work greater
than the value of their benefits when out of work. This is especially
important for lone parents because unlike couples with children, they are
not required to seek work until their youngest child is 16 or 18 years old
and in full-time education.
From 1971, Family Income Supplement (FIS) provided limited cash
payments to parents working more than 30 hours a week. Family Income
Supplement had a poor record, reaching only about 200,000 families and
leaving some worse off in work. Family Credit replaced FIS in April
1988, lowering the qualifying hours of work to 24 per week and based
on a net income formula. No one could now become worse off by
earning more, though withdrawal rates of benefit entitlement against
new income remained high,typically between 70 and 80%,creating what
Field and Piachaud (1971) have called ‘the poverty trap’.
In 1991, 350,000 families received Family Credit, 38% of them lone
parents. In 1992, the qualifying hours were further reduced to 16 per
week, which particularly assisted lone parents. Other reforms included
useful bridging payments of Housing Benefit to ease the transition to
work, introduced in October 1996. By 1999 the caseload had risen to
800,000 families and half were lone parents.
Thus, a policy emerged that relied on a system of ‘in-work benefits’ to
supplement the wages of low-paid workers with children, led by Family
Credit and backed up by Housing Benefit and Council Tax Benefit for
those with high housing costs, high local taxes and small wages. The
policy drew criticism from those who felt that extending means testing
for people in work was unfair and attracted stigma. The proportion with
‘withdrawal rates’ of over 80% had increased and compared unfavourably
with the much-reduced tax regime for better-off families. People could

13
become discouraged and get stuck in low-paid jobs when they might be
striving for better terms. A dependency on out-of-work benefits was
replaced, it was said, by a dependency in work.
It is hard to know whether remaining in low-paid work is being‘stuck’
or just a sensible strategy that balances demanding home care with
undemanding or short working hours (Bryson et al, 1997). The gains for
lone parents were marked since the adult component of their Family
Credit was the same as for couples. As for renewed dependency in work,
research indicated that families who could move on from Family Credit
did so unhesitatingly (Bryson and Marsh, 1996). There was, anyway, an
awareness that their Family Credit would no longer be available when
children grew up and the disincentive of high withdrawal rates were
cushioned by the six-month duration of the awards.
In October 1999,Family Credit was replaced byWorking Families’Tax
Credit. This is not a tax credit in the full sense, since it is not worked out
annually at the same time as tax codes are worked out, but separately
every six months. Many recipients also qualify for other health and
welfare benefits2
. Working Families’ Tax Credit offered several
improvements over Family Credit. The rates of payment were increased
and the withdrawal rate against new income was reduced from 70 to
55%, which eased the poverty trap3
. Help with childcare was altered so
that even those with the smallest wages would now benefit. Whereas
Family Credit allowed recipients to keep £15 a week in Child Support,
all such payments are now ignored when working out WFTC.
As a result of these changes, lone parents who work, claim WFTC and
receive child support payments,can now expect a standard of living similar
to those of many single-earner couples with children. Potentially, this is
a major improvement. The difficulty is that only a minority of lone
parents will receive all three elements of this income package. However,
as fromApril 2001,the new system delivers a guaranteed minimum income
of £214 a week to any family with two children receiving WFTC, and
typically they will have more. This compares with an equivalised average
income after housing costs of £108 a week for lone parents who were
out of work in 1999 (Marsh et al, 2001, Table 5.1). The loss of other
benefits, on the other hand, typically the loss of help with housing costs
and local taxes from in-work incomes, reduces the difference between
these two figures. And those getting extra help with childcare still have
to find 30% of their outlay, which from small wages can be a drain on
final income.
The new system has been underpinned by three other measures:
Helping British lone parents get and keep paid work

14
• the introduction in April 1999 of a National Minimum Wage, now
£3.70 (€6.00) an hour, which effectively prevents too much of the
wage subsidy from ending up in employers’ pockets;
• adjustments to National Insurance payments that removed the lowest
paid from liability but protected their benefits, a problem which had
previously undermined the position of low-paid female workers;
• the introduction of higher tax thresholds and a 10p in the pound tax
rate for the lowest paid.
As a policy, all this amounts to a deep commitment to low-wage subsidy.
Active case management
The Labour government came to office in 1997 with a manifesto
commitment to introduce a range of New Deal programmes for both the
unemployed and the non-employed. The first was a New Deal for Lone
Parents (NDLP) whose design had taken on board lessons from the
evaluation of the Australian Jobs, Education and Training (JET) scheme
and the Greater Avenues for Independence (GAIN) programme in
California. Lone parents whose youngest child was older than five years
and three months were invited to attend voluntarily a meeting with a
personal adviser. This meeting considered the whole range of their
circumstances influencing their preparation for work.
Evaluation of the early stages of the NDLP was positive. Although the
majority of those invited declined to attend, quite large numbers of
unexpected volunteers from among those with children younger than
five turned up looking for advice. Obviously, personal advisers had the
luxury of dealing with clients who were, to varying degrees, keen to
work. Their advice was well received. Half the programme participants
got work and 28% of these credited their personal adviser with a significant
part in their success. Others said that their search was made easier by the
help they received. Compared to similar areas, the eight areas chosen to
pilot NDLP achieved a 3.3% improvement in the rate of return to work
(Hales et al, 2000). The scheme began nationally in 1998.
Two recent developments have set aside the voluntary nature of coming
into the office to hear advice from a personal adviser:
• The ONE4
experiment is aimed at the in-flow to benefit. New benefit
claimants, including lone parents, will be required to meet a personal
adviser as a condition of their claim being processed.

15
• The work-focused interview (the personal adviser meeting) will be aimed
more at the stock of benefit claimants, starting with those whose
youngest child is 13 to 15 years old. From April 2001 onwards these
interviews are compulsory for lone parents with older children.
Child support
The introduction of the Child Support Agency (CSA) in 1995 removed
from the courts the responsibility for recovering from non-resident parents
a proportion of their income for the financial support of their children.
It was not explicitly a pro-employment policy for lone parents. Had it
been more successful in boosting the proportion achieving payments,
however, an increase in the proportion working would probably have
resulted. Given its new simplified formula for calculating liability and
new lease of life, it may yet do so. It was known that lone parents who
worked were more likely to receive child support payments (Bradshaw
and Millar, 1991). But this was thought to be one more among other
advantages that better educated women had, including the ability in their
own right to return to work when they needed to. Subsequent research
showed that when educationally disadvantaged lone parents receive
maintenance it helps them get work (Finlayson and Marsh, 1998). It
provides an income they can rely on in work, which under the new rules
for WFTC leaves their cash subsidy untouched.
The national childcare strategy
The Department for Education and Employment is supporting a national
strategy aimed to improve the availability of good quality childcare for
children up to the age of 14. It has concentrated on starting children in
full-time education at the age of four rather than five and on the provision
of after-school clubs and holiday schemes, effectively lengthening the
school day nearer to their parents’ working hours. This measure is aimed
at the most often cited problem of bridging the gap between three and
six o’clock each afternoon.

16
Demographic and employment patterns
A social profile of Britain’s lone parents
Demographics
Table 2.1 provides a summary of the main social characteristics of Britain’s
lone parents in 1999,and compares these distributions with similar surveys
carried out over the past 10 years.
As their numbers grew, so the social composition of lone parents
changed. In the early 1970s,a fifth of Britain’s 600,000 lone parents were
widows. Now only 4% are widows. Growth in the late 1970s and early
1980s was first associated with a surge in separations from marriage and
divorce. Later, new growth came from a sharp increase in the proportion
who had never married or cohabited (Rowlingson and McKay, 1998).
By the 1990s these trends stabilised, though by then barely more than
half were entering lone parenthood from legal marriage. The rest were
divided evenly between those who had never lived as a couple since a
year before the birth of their eldest child, and those who had cohabited.
The rest of the pattern shown inTable 2.1 is a fairly stable one over the
1990s. Lone parents remained overwhelmingly women,for example,and
more than half continued to rely on social housing. Most are white, but
the proportion that is non-white is higher than among the general
population of a similar age (about 9% rather than 6%). But there are
some interesting trends. The proportion with pre-school aged children
fell from 47 to 37% in eight years,which together with some improvement
in their educational qualifications,will encourage those hoping to improve
lone parents’ rates of labour market participation. Their children were
two years older in 1999 compared to 1991, on average. This was part of
an ageing trend. Lone parents’ average age increased three years in 10 –
from 32 to 35 – and the proportion aged under 25 fell from 23 to 12%.
The age trend also reflects slow outflow from the lone parent population:
the average length of spells in lone parenthood increased steadily in
successive samples. The 1991 sample reported in Table 2.1 was re-
interviewed in 1993,1994,1995,1996 and 1998 – this data will be referred
to from now on as ‘the 1991 cohort’. After eight years, half the 1991
cohort were still lone parents looking after dependent children and more
were alone with their non-dependent children. Less than a third (32%)
had re-partnered.

17
Table 2.1: Characteristics of lone-parent families (excluding the
bereaved)
Column % (except means and medians)
1989 1991 1993 1994 1999
Marital status
Divorced 45 36 35 36 27
Separated from marriage 18 18 22 19 21
Separated from cohabitation }37 22 25 24 28
Never lived as a couple 24 18 21 24
Sex
Female 95 95 94 96 95
Male 5 5 6 4 5
Age
Under 25 years 23 18 15 14 12
25-29 years 20 22 20 19 17
30-34 years 20 21 24 21 22
35-39 years 15 18 20 21 20
40 years+ 22 21 22 24 29
Mean age (all) 32 yrs 33 yrs 33 yrs 34 yrs 35 yrs
Divorced 36 yrs 37 yrs 37 yrs 38 yrs 39 yrs
Separated from marriage 33 yrs 34 yrs 36 yrs 35 yrs 36 yrs
Separated from cohabitation }26 yrs 31 yrs 30 yrs 31 yrs 32 yrs
Never lived as a couple 27 yrs 27 yrs 28 yrs 28 yrs
Median age (all) 31 yrs 32 yrs 33 yrs 34 yrs 34 yrs
Number of dependent children
1 54 46 49 48 50
2 31 34 35 36 33
3 10 15 11 11 12
4+ 4 5 5 5 5
Age of youngest child
0-4 years – 47 43 39 37
5-10 years – 31 33 35 35
11-15 years – 18 18 22 22
16 or 17/18 years and in FTE – 3 6 3 6
Median age of youngest child – 5 yrs 7 yrs 7 yrs 7 yrs
Median age of oldest child 8 yrs 9 yrs 10 yrs 10 yrs 11 yrs
Household size
2 36 38 37 38 39
3 36 34 37 37 37
4 16 19 17 17 15
5+ 12 9 10 8 8
Left school at age
Before 16 years – 29 28 27 20
16 years – 49 47 49 53
17-18 years – 15 18 19 18
19 years+ – 7 6 5 9
Note: Some percentages do not total to 100 because of rounding.

18
Employment patterns: work and entry to work
Thirty-eight per cent of lone parents work 16 hours a week or more,
which is the point at which they qualify forWFTC (Table 2.2). A further
6% work less than 16 hours a week, even though earnings above £15 a
week are surrendered pound-for-pound against their Income Support,
which is their main out-of-work social security benefit. Five per cent
are unemployed and seeking work in the official sense, so a total of 49%
can be said to be economically active. Most of the rest (41% overall) say
Table 2.1: contd.../
Column % (except means and medians)
1989 1991 1993 1994 1999
Highest qualification
None 50 41 38 39 26
Below O-level 12 21 16 14 15
GCE O, City & Guilds 23 22 25 28 34
GCE A or similar 5 6 9 8 10
Above A-level 9 10 12 11 14
Housing tenure
Owner 24 27 30 25 26
Social tenant 55 56 53 55 54
Private tenant 6 10 7 9 11
Other tenure 13 7 11 11 9
Ethnic group
White 89 91 93 94 91
Black – Caribbean 4 3 3 3 3
Black – African 1 1 * 1 2
Indian * 1 1 * 1
Other 4 2 1 * 3
Refused/not answered 1 3 2 1 *
Time spent as a lone parent:
current spell
Mean – 4y 9m 4y 7m 5y 3m 5y 6m
Median – 3y 7m 3y 5m 4y 3m 4y 5m
Number of respondents 1,342 938 849 833 2,402~
Notes:
* >0.00 but <0.5
~ Number of lone parents, not including those known to be bereaved.
Source: 1989 data from Bradshaw and Millar’s survey quoted in Ford et al (1995)
1991/93/94 data from PSI Programme of Research into Low-Income Families surveys quoted in
Marsh et al (1997)
1999 data from the Survey of Low-Income Families (Marsh et al, 2001) which also included a large
sample of low-income couples not shown here

19
they are at home looking after their families, while the remainder are
mostly sick or disabled. Only tiny numbers are in full-time education.
The proportion in work had risen from the 27% in ‘full-time’ work in
1991, which was then defined as 24 hours a week or more. Subsequent
changes in the benefit rules make this comparison difficult.
Among those not working, only 15% have any record of paid work of
16 or more hours a week in the previous two years,36% have not worked
in the past five years and 16% have never had a paid job. In contrast,
workers had often held their jobs for a long time. Those earning above
Family Credit levels had been in work for six and a half years – longer on
average than they had been lone parents.
In the 1999 sample, the majority of the workers were workers when
they became lone parents. Looking at the previous two years, only 6% of
those entering lone parenthood out of work had entered work six months
later. Of those entering as Family Credit recipients (which they had
claimed as a couple) three quarters remained on Family Credit. Of those
entering as better-paid workers,eight out of 10 remained in work,though
a third moved onto Family Credit.
Being in work was associated with being a homeowner rather than a
social tenant,having better educational qualifications,having been married,
avoiding family ill-health and receiving child support payments. This
emphasises the initial gulf in advantage and disadvantage between workers
Table 2.2: Lone parents’ economic activity status in 1999 (%)
Working 16+ hours 38
Working <16 hours 6
Unemployed and seeking work 5
On a training scheme *
Full-time education 2
Sick/disabled (<6 months) 1
Sick/disabled (6+ months) 4
Looking after home or family 41
Caring for a sick, elderly or disabled person 1
Retired *
Other 1
Base 2,494
* <0.5%.
Source: 1999 data from the Survey of Low-Income Families (Marsh et al, 2001)

20
and non-workers:they are socially and economically different populations,
so migration from one to another is quite difficult.
This also means that static comparisons between workers and non-
workers among lone parents are not always very helpful in estimating
what factors might help them into work during the time that they are lone
parents.
In the 1991 cohort, movement into work was slow in the following
seven years. Among those interviewed in 1998, the proportion in work
had risen from 29% in 1991 to exactly half, an increase of just three
percentage points a year. A multivariate model of the rate of entry to
work showed that meeting a new partner was associated with entry to
work5
. But having young children, especially new babies, having sick
children, and beginning lone parenthood in hardship, were powerful and
independent factors in preventing entry to work. Young children and
hardship were incremental factors too: having two young children rather
than one was independently significant, so was being in severe hardship
rather than moderate hardship. And time was also an independent factor:
the longer they remained out of work from 1991 onwards, the smaller
grew their chances of entry into work, all else considered.
The subtext of the cohort survey findings seemed clear. Bringing up
small children in difficult circumstances causes out-of-work lone parents
to centre on that task. The more difficult that task, the more intensely
they centre on it. However much the financial advantages of work may
beckon, coping with the domestic task isolates them into a non-work
identity. This also explains why the decision to go to work, when it
comes,seems to come so suddenly. They seem to‘flip’between identities.
Employment patterns: work and benefits
Many who stay in work, and most who manage to enter work from
Income Support,relied on continued support from means-tested benefits
such as Family Credit and Housing Benefit,and will now rely onWFTC.
In-work benefits make up some of the income lost by the absence of the
children’s father,though not all non-resident fathers were current workers.
It is the bridge British lone parents cross as they move slowly from Income
Support to work. Among those in the 1999 cross-section survey who
had entered work in the previous two years, seven out of 10 had claimed
Family Credit on entry and another one in 10 claimed within two months
of starting work. Similarly,three quarters of the 1991 cohort who entered
work by 1998 claimed Family Credit as they did so.

21
Lone parents’position in the labour market was so dependent on Family
Credit, and now on WFTC, that it is usually sensible to condition any
analysis of their labour market participation in relation to it. Table 2.3
shows the position in 1999.
In fact, only 12% of all lone parents have jobs that pay enough to lift
them clear of the scope of Family Credit and about a quarter of these had
claimed the benefit in the past. At the introduction of WFTC, the
proportion left clear of in-work cash assistance will be about 7 to 8%.
If we take this combined work and benefit status and divide it by the
four most important individual measures associated with working and
not working, we obtain a kind of ‘core profile’ that describes the main
problems that beset lone parents in relation to the labour market (Table
2.4). The role played by Family Credit and now by WFTC is clear, since
recipients were more like the out-of-work lone parents than they were
like the higher earners.
Family Credit, and WFTC, also paid a ‘bonus’ of what is now just over
£11 a week if recipients managed to work 30 hours a week or more.
Figure 2.1 shows how entry to work and the choice of shorter or longer
working hours (divided at 30 hours) is related to the transition of their
children first to primary school and then to secondary school.
Only when the youngest child passes into the secondary stage at age
11 or 12 does a longer working week predominate, and even then about
Table 2.3:Work and benefit status in 1999 (%)
• Non-working Not working 16 or more hours per week,
although some working fewer hours 62
• Self-employed Self-employed and working 16 or more hours
per week 3
• Family Credit claimant Employed, working 16 or more hours per week
and receiving Family Credit 18
• Eligible non-claimant (ENC) Employed, working 16 or more hours per week,
and eligible for, but not receiving, Family Credit 5
• Moderate income Employed, working 16 or more hours per week,
and income exceeds Family Credit limit by up
to 35% 6
• High income Working 16 or more hours per week, and
income exceeds Family Credit limit by more
than 35% 6
Base: 2,494

22
a quarter still work fewer than 30 hours. It is particularly worth noting
that more than half of British lone parents with only teenage children are
in work. Add to the total working all those unemployed and seeking
work and their economic activity rates approach 70% at the point when
their youngest child is leaving education, typically in their own mid-40s.
By comparison, British men aged 45-64 have economic activity rates of
78% (ONS, 1998). We will hardly ask more of lone parents.
Table 2.4: Core profile of lone parents’ position in the labour
market (%)
Non- FC Self- Moderate High
work claimant ENCs employed income income (all)
Social tenants 66 49 31 21 14 10 (53)
With no 44 34 22 29 17 5 (37)
qualifications
With long- 35 23 20 23 22 14 (30)
standing illness
With pre-school 44 29 16 15 13 14 (35)
child
Base 1,551 441 131 71 147 153 (2,494)
Note: FC = Family Credit; ENC = eligible non-claimant
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
1 3 5 7 9 11 13 15 17
Age of youngest child
%
of
lone
parents
Working 30+ hours
Working 16-29 hours
Figure 2.1: Lone parents and work

23
Is it worth working?
Given the kind of barriers faced by so many out-of-work lone parents,
the rewards must be substantial to justify the effort needed to overcome
them. The theory of incentives was outlined earlier. What is the evidence?
There are three questions we can ask: do lone parents think work is
worthwhile? Do they get enough extra cash for their efforts? Do their
material living standards improve?
Attitudes
Those in the higher income brackets could hardly question their gains
from work compared to out-of-work benefit levels. Those earning less
and claiming Family Credit also felt in little doubt. Those among them
who had earlier claimed Income Support were overwhelmingly sure that
Family Credit was better: 82% of them said they preferred Family Credit
and only 12% had any remaining preference for being out of work and
on Income Support. By comparison, about a third of those on Income
Support who had once had the experience of working and claiming
Family Credit said they preferred their life on Income Support.
Incomes
In cash terms, Family Credit recipients were £57 a week better off than
they would be on their equivalent out-of-work incomes6
. This figure fell
to £40 a week if average childcare and travel costs were factored into the
estimate, however, the new rules under WFTC will widen this gap
considerably.
Hardship
In terms of material well-being, the 1999 survey used a complex measure
of hardship to detect the relative difference in living standards between
families with differing work and benefit positions. The scale adds up a
large number of items of everyday expenditure such as food, clothing,
durables and simple social participation that respondents say they cannot
have because they cannot afford them.To these are added reports of problem
debts, poor housing conditions, overcrowding, and financial anxieties7
.
Families who exceeded the threshold on one or two of these dimensions
were said to be in ‘moderate hardship’, while those exceeding three or

24
more were in ‘severe hardship’. Table 2.5 shows the effects of work on
these hardship scores.
The 12% of the 1999 sample who had earnings above the Family Credit
levels were experiencing relatively little hardship, even among those who
worked shorter hours,because many of these had child support payments
too. The contrast between these and the large group relying solely on
Income Support could hardly be more complete. Those on benefit were
six times more likely to be in hardship. Those working and claiming
Family Credit were better placed, but by no means clear of hardship.
Some were recent entrants from Income Support and it can take a long
time to recover material living standards after years of hardship. The
small group working part time also saw improvements – it is amazing
what a difference just £15 a week8
can make in abating the rate of severe
hardship. In fact the average difference in family incomes between all
those in severe hardship and those experiencing none was just £34 a
week.
Barriers to work
This section reviews briefly some of the well-known barriers to work
faced by out-of-work lone parents and looks at the new and sometimes
Table 2.5: Lone parents’ hardship by work and benefit status in
1999 (%)
Not in Moderate Severe
hardship hardship hardship Base
Combining work and benefits
Working 30+ hours 33 51 16 114
and claiming FC
Working 30+ hours 66 28 6 352
not claiming FC
Working 16-29 hours 33 46 21 354
and claiming FC
Working 16-29 hours 59 33 8 123
not claiming FC
Working <16 hours 24 48 28 107
and claiming IS
Not working and 15 42 43 1,192
claiming IS
Note: FC = Family Credit, IS = Income Support

25
quite surprising evidence for their height and difficulty as lone parents
themselves experience them.
Intentions
By 1994, it was quite easy to describe British lone parents’ orientation to
the labour market: out of every 10 lone parents:
• three worked 16 hours a week or more;
• three were ready to work, one of them looking actively and a few
trying part-time work of less than 16 hours a week;
• three would look for work one day, but not yet;
• one believed they might never work.
In 1999, intentions had moved somewhat (Table 2.6):
• four worked 16 hours a week or more (38%);
• two were ready to work, either looking actively (10%) or working less
than 16 hours a week (5%) or ready to look soon (6%);
• three will look for work one day, but not yet (32%);
• one would (probably) not look for work (4% did not know when they
might look and 5% thought they never would).
Only 5% in 1999 appeared to rule out work altogether, usually because
of illness. But the proportion holding back from work has not changed.
Table 2.6: Lone parents looking for work in 1999 (%)
Non-working All
lone parents lone parents
Working 16+ hours per week – 38
Currently looking for work 17 10
Not currently looking for work, and...
Working less than 16 hours 7 5
Expects to look in the next few weeks/months 9 6
Expects to look sometime in the future 52 32
Does not know when he or she will look 7 4
Does not expect to look for work in the future 7 5
Base 1,537 2,494

26
The increase in workers came from a faster take-up into work from
among those who were ready to go to work. This is an interesting
finding because it suggests that improvements in labour demand,together
with fewer lone parents with pre-school children, account for the
improvement in work participation rates, rather than anything that is
happening among lone parents themselves.
Parenthood, work and choice
The majority of lone parents were until recently wives,husbands (though
rarely) or partners sharing the care of young children. Traditionally, at
least, the balance of advice to them, from family, friends and even
professionals, will not have favoured an early re-entry to work. These
values can be deeply held and are not easily thrust aside just because the
children’s father or mother is gone. More than a third still have pre-
school children. The judgement that there are times when a parent’s best
choice is to remain with the children, typically following a difficult
separation from their other parent, is not one to be challenged carelessly
on the grounds that work is always better.
Choice features quite strongly in their answers to the question“is there
anything in particular that is stopping you looking for a job of 16+
hours per week?” (Table 2.7). At least a third of those open to the idea of
working but not yet ready to seek work actively, said simply that their
place was with their children and they did not want to spend any more
time away from them. About half this group also complained about the
lack of childcare or its likely cost,while those not considering work were
far more likely to cite their own or their child’s illness or disability.
Among lone parents, having a new baby is one of the more effective
barriers to work. In the 1991 cohort, a quarter had had new babies or
were pregnant by 1998. Half of them also had new partners.
Few thought that jobs might not be available – though few had probably
thought things through that far – while a minority still persisted in the
belief that they would be better off not working.
The following sections look at some of these reasons for not working.
Hardship, morale and health
Many out-of-work lone parents experience a malign spiral of hardship,
poor health and low morale. There is something about this experience
that builds up its own barriers to work. Using a scale of morale that

27
combined self-reported happiness and self-esteem, we were able to show
that those in severe hardship were three to four times more likely to
suffer low morale, compared with those not in hardship. It is quite hard
to contemplate work if you are that demoralised and hard up.
Table 2.7: Lone parents’ reasons for not working 16+ hours per
week in 1999 (multiple response percentages)
Looking for Not looking
work for work All
Expects Expects Does Does
to to not not
look look know expect
over some- when to
Working next time will look
<16 few in next in
hours months future look future
Nothing, already 38 0 0 0 0 0 7
looking
Cannot afford 20 19 26 28 13 5 23
childcare
No childcare 12 26 22 19 8 1 16
available
Don’t want to spend 4 37 27 34 22 10 27
more time away
from children
Own illness/disability 6 5 11 13 35 50 16
Child’s illness/ 1 6 4 9 9 6 7
disability
Other family illness <1 1 1 3 3 2 2
No work available 4 1 4 2 4 2 2
Don’t have the skills 5 5 10 6 5 11 6
Studying/training 3 0 8 9 2 1 6
scheme
Better off 6 0 12 12 9 6 10
not working
Would not be able 4 8 3 2 1 0 3
to pay rent
or mortgage
Pregnant 0 0 0 0 0 10 1
Retired 5 0 6 4 7 10 5
Base: non-working 255 115 143 801 108 115 1,537
lone parents
Is there
anything in
particular that is
stopping you
looking for a job
of 16+ hours
per week?

28
The links with ill-health are equally strong. Overall, reports of ‘a long-
standing illness or disability’ doubled among out-of-work lone parents
between 1991 and 1999, from 17 to 35%9
. Even among those actively
seeking work,29% had such a problem and the majority of these thought
it would restrict their working opportunities. However, this fraction rose
to a third among those delaying a search for work until sometime in the
future and it was more than half among those doubtful that they would
ever start to look.
The experience of the 1991 cohort was particularly interesting in this
respect. They started out in 1991 somewhat healthier than other British
women of a similar age. Then their health deteriorated until a third were
suffering long-term problems by 1998. Part of this deterioration appeared
to have its origins in injury sustained during separation from violent
partners, and part was connected to poor health behaviour, including
high rates of smoking.
Children’s and families’ health
Among out-of-work lone parents, the same proportion who have long-
standing illness or disability themselves, have children who have the same
problems (35%), rising to 43% in those who do not expect to seek work
in the foreseeable future. One in 10 of all out-of-work lone parents have
a child whose illness restricts opportunities to work. The same proportion
has someone else in the house for whom they have caring responsibilities,
usually their own parent. In the 1991 cohort study, little more than half
the whole sample (workers included) reached 1998 without one or other
member of the family ill in this way. In 12% of cases, parent and child
were both ill.
Qualifications and skills
The profile of British lone parents above noted a lack of marketable
qualifications among them,though some improvement had occurred over
the past 10 years. Among out-of-work lone parents the problem is worse:
44% have no academic qualifications, 62% have no vocational
qualifications, and a third have neither. Those looking for work have
more,although 22% of them have none and only one in six have anything
better than basic school leaving qualifications. The weaker their attachment
to the labour market, the fewer qualifications they have.
Few had received any training recently. Just 3% of out-of-work lone

29
parents on Income Support (though 7% of those actually looking for
work) had participated in the New Deal for Lone Parents. Sixteen per
cent had attended a training course in the previous two years that did not
lead to a qualification. However, almost three quarters of out-of-work
lone parents (72%) would consider going on a training course. Twelve
per cent had recently applied for a course,53% said they had just considered
it and 35% said they would consider it in the future.
Fewer than half hold that other passport to a job in Britain: a driving
licence. Fewer still have access to a car.
Childcare
As you would expect, a great deal of British research on out-of-work
lone parents has centred on the issue of childcare. Most research has
identified a lack of affordable childcare as a major barrier to work
(Holtermann and Clarke,1992). It seems a simple question:if lone parents
work and their younger children are out of school, then self-evidently
someone else has to be looking after them. For such an obvious
proposition, the research evidence can be surprisingly hard to interpret.
One thing we have learned from the Programme of Research into Low-
Income Families (PRILIF) (see for example, Ford, 1996) is that the issue
is a good deal more complicated than seems reasonable.
In Table 2.7 above, a third of out-of-work lone parents cited a lack of
affordable childcare as a barrier to work and only a minority of these said
it was the sole barrier. Similarly, lone parents long-established in work
rarely cited childcare as a major difficulty that they had to overcome to
enter and/or to keep paid work. This was a particular surprise in the
1991 cohort study whose successful workers rarely cited childcare as a
major obstacle they had found difficult to overcome. Following these
families in their journey from Income Support into work,it seemed clear
that arranging childcare was the last hurdle into work in a long row of
hurdles. They seemed to seek work that fitted their own view of their
childcare needs – that is, the arrangements for care that best fitted what
they wanted for themselves and their children – rather than trying to find
childcare that suited a particular job. High on their list of childcare needs
was the opportunity to spend as much of their own time with their
children as possible.
Lone parents’ passage into work is a journey marked by a number of
changes in attitude and self-definition, and by a resumption of control
over their personal circumstances. If that process fails in other ways,

Random documents with unrelated
content Scribd suggests to you:

1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend
considerable effort to identify, do copyright research on,
transcribe and proofread works not protected by U.S. copyright
law in creating the Project Gutenberg™ collection. Despite these
efforts, Project Gutenberg™ electronic works, and the medium
on which they may be stored, may contain “Defects,” such as,
but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or corrupt data,
transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual property
infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be
read by your equipment.
1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except
for the “Right of Replacement or Refund” described in
paragraph 1.F.3, the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
Foundation, the owner of the Project Gutenberg™ trademark,
and any other party distributing a Project Gutenberg™ electronic
work under this agreement, disclaim all liability to you for
damages, costs and expenses, including legal fees. YOU AGREE
THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT
EXCEPT THOSE PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE
THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY
DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE LIABLE
TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL,
PUNITIVE OR INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE
NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.
1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you
discover a defect in this electronic work within 90 days of
receiving it, you can receive a refund of the money (if any) you
paid for it by sending a written explanation to the person you
received the work from. If you received the work on a physical
medium, you must return the medium with your written
explanation. The person or entity that provided you with the
defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu

of a refund. If you received the work electronically, the person
or entity providing it to you may choose to give you a second
opportunity to receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.
If the second copy is also defective, you may demand a refund
in writing without further opportunities to fix the problem.
1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set
forth in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you ‘AS-IS’,
WITH NO OTHER WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR
IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF
MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of
damages. If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this
agreement violates the law of the state applicable to this
agreement, the agreement shall be interpreted to make the
maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by the applicable
state law. The invalidity or unenforceability of any provision of
this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the
Foundation, the trademark owner, any agent or employee of the
Foundation, anyone providing copies of Project Gutenberg™
electronic works in accordance with this agreement, and any
volunteers associated with the production, promotion and
distribution of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works, harmless
from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees, that
arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you
do or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project
Gutenberg™ work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or
deletions to any Project Gutenberg™ work, and (c) any Defect
you cause.

Section 2. Information about the Mission
of Project Gutenberg™
Project Gutenberg™ is synonymous with the free distribution of
electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of
computers including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new
computers. It exists because of the efforts of hundreds of
volunteers and donations from people in all walks of life.
Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
assistance they need are critical to reaching Project
Gutenberg™’s goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg™
collection will remain freely available for generations to come. In
2001, the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was
created to provide a secure and permanent future for Project
Gutenberg™ and future generations. To learn more about the
Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and how your
efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4 and the
Foundation information page at www.gutenberg.org.
Section 3. Information about the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non-
profit 501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the
laws of the state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status
by the Internal Revenue Service. The Foundation’s EIN or
federal tax identification number is 64-6221541. Contributions
to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation are tax
deductible to the full extent permitted by U.S. federal laws and
your state’s laws.
The Foundation’s business office is located at 809 North 1500
West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887. Email contact

links and up to date contact information can be found at the
Foundation’s website and official page at
www.gutenberg.org/contact
Section 4. Information about Donations to
the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
Foundation
Project Gutenberg™ depends upon and cannot survive without
widespread public support and donations to carry out its mission
of increasing the number of public domain and licensed works
that can be freely distributed in machine-readable form
accessible by the widest array of equipment including outdated
equipment. Many small donations ($1 to $5,000) are particularly
important to maintaining tax exempt status with the IRS.
The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws
regulating charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of
the United States. Compliance requirements are not uniform
and it takes a considerable effort, much paperwork and many
fees to meet and keep up with these requirements. We do not
solicit donations in locations where we have not received written
confirmation of compliance. To SEND DONATIONS or determine
the status of compliance for any particular state visit
www.gutenberg.org/donate.
While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states
where we have not met the solicitation requirements, we know
of no prohibition against accepting unsolicited donations from
donors in such states who approach us with offers to donate.
International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot
make any statements concerning tax treatment of donations
received from outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp
our small staff.

Please check the Project Gutenberg web pages for current
donation methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a
number of other ways including checks, online payments and
credit card donations. To donate, please visit:
www.gutenberg.org/donate.
Section 5. General Information About
Project Gutenberg™ electronic works
Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project
Gutenberg™ concept of a library of electronic works that could
be freely shared with anyone. For forty years, he produced and
distributed Project Gutenberg™ eBooks with only a loose
network of volunteer support.
Project Gutenberg™ eBooks are often created from several
printed editions, all of which are confirmed as not protected by
copyright in the U.S. unless a copyright notice is included. Thus,
we do not necessarily keep eBooks in compliance with any
particular paper edition.
Most people start at our website which has the main PG search
facility: www.gutenberg.org.
This website includes information about Project Gutenberg™,
including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg
Literary Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new
eBooks, and how to subscribe to our email newsletter to hear
about new eBooks.

Welcome to our website – the perfect destination for book lovers and
knowledge seekers. We believe that every book holds a new world,
offering opportunities for learning, discovery, and personal growth.
That’s why we are dedicated to bringing you a diverse collection of
books, ranging from classic literature and specialized publications to
self-development guides and children's books.
More than just a book-buying platform, we strive to be a bridge
connecting you with timeless cultural and intellectual values. With an
elegant, user-friendly interface and a smart search system, you can
quickly find the books that best suit your interests. Additionally,
our special promotions and home delivery services help you save time
and fully enjoy the joy of reading.
Join us on a journey of knowledge exploration, passion nurturing, and
personal growth every day!
ebookbell.com

Lone Parents Employment And Social Policy Crossnational Comparisons Jane Millar Editor Karen Rowlingson Editor

More Related Content

Similar to Lone Parents Employment And Social Policy Crossnational Comparisons Jane Millar Editor Karen Rowlingson Editor

Recently uploaded

Lone Parents Employment And Social Policy Crossnational Comparisons Jane Millar Editor Karen Rowlingson Editor