Around 3 million people will still be worse off on universal credit, a study warns today.
The Resolution Foundation concludes that far more must be done to make it “fit for tackling the big challenge of in-work poverty” – where two-thirds of children below the breadline are in families where someone works. The think tank raises fresh concerns that the complex system will still heavily penalise single parents and second earners in families – who are usually women.
The Resolution Foundation report, Back in Credit?, says the number of working families who will lose out has only been cut from 3.2 to 3 million – with the number of families gaining up from 2.2 to 2.4 million.
The Resolution Foundation concludes that far more must be done to make it “fit for tackling the big challenge of in-work poverty” – where two-thirds of children below the breadline are in families where someone works. The think tank raises fresh concerns that the complex system will still heavily penalise single parents and second earners in families – who are usually women.
The Resolution Foundation report, Back in Credit?, says the number of working families who will lose out has only been cut from 3.2 to 3 million – with the number of families gaining up from 2.2 to 2.4 million.
The Foundation has raised concerns over:
* Single parents – who will start having their benefits clawed back, at 63p in the pound, after working just 8 hours a week, creating a strong incentive to limit their hours.
* Second earners – who have no separate work allowance so, in most cases, will lose benefits from the very first pound of their earnings.
The report said: “This discourages work. This matters because of the higher poverty risk of single earner couple households. Just 5 per cent of children living in couple families in which both adults are in full-time work are in poverty, compared to 34 per cent of children living in couple families with only one full-time worker.”
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