Some 1.9 million single mothers are affected by the government's decision to continue the benefit freeze.
A lone parent who is not in employment is around £900 a year worse off due to the freeze.
Benefits – including tax credits, universal credit, child benefit and jobseeker’s allowance – generally rise every year in line with inflation. However, as part of ongoing austerity measures, they have been frozen since 2016, leading to a decline in their real term value while inflation rises. In April 2016, the Conservative Party froze most working age benefits for four years – including jobseeker’s allowance, employment and support allowance, income support, housing benefit, universal credit, child tax credits, working tax credits and child benefit.
A lone parent who is not in employment is around £900 a year worse off due to the freeze.
Benefits – including tax credits, universal credit, child benefit and jobseeker’s allowance – generally rise every year in line with inflation. However, as part of ongoing austerity measures, they have been frozen since 2016, leading to a decline in their real term value while inflation rises. In April 2016, the Conservative Party froze most working age benefits for four years – including jobseeker’s allowance, employment and support allowance, income support, housing benefit, universal credit, child tax credits, working tax credits and child benefit.
According to the analysis, the benefit freeze means that a lone parent who is not in employment with one child is around £900 a year worse off and a parent with two children is just over £1,200 a year worse off, whether in the legacy system or the universal credit system. It found a lone parent in employment with one child is £810 worse off in the legacy system and £895 worse off in the universal credit system. While a lone parent with two children who is in employment is nearly £1,000 worse off in the legacy system and £1,200 worse off in the universal credit system.
New government data published on Thursday showed 14 million people in the UK are living in absolute poverty. This includes 3.7 million children – 200,000 more than last year.
Helen Barnard, deputy director of policy and partnerships at the independent Joseph Rowntree Foundation, said: “It goes against what we stand for as a country to see so many lone-parent families locked in poverty. Currently, there is a lone-parent penalty, which means nearly half of children in lone-parent families live in poverty compared with one in four of those in couple families. Lone parents are also twice as likely to be locked in persistent poverty, and living in poverty for long periods of time is particularly damaging..."
Alison Garnham, the chief executive of Child Poverty Action Group, argued,
"To have almost half of lone parents’ children in poverty is unacceptable in a society that believes that every child deserves support,” she said. Ms Garnham added: “Lone parents have been hit particularly hard by cuts to universal credit – with big losses of on average £2,380 per year, affecting their gains from work. Some 68 per cent of lone parents are working but as the annual poverty statistics published yesterday show, 47 per cent of their children are living under the poverty line.”
A lone parent working full-time on the “national living wage” is now 20 per cent (£74 per week) short of what they need to achieve a socially acceptable minimum standard of living, as defined by the public.
No comments:
Post a Comment