Hi my name is Tina Haux. I'm a Lecturer in Quantitative Social Policy here at the University of Kent. I'm going to talk to you today about lone parents and welfare to work. Before we start, I'd like to very quickly define what I mean by welfare to work policies and also what I mean by lone parents so that we're all on roughly the same page. 

So, welfare-to-work policies are policies that support individuals to move into employment and they often come with a set of conditions attached. Lone parents we refer to as people who are single and who are looking after a child or a young person. 

Now why do we talk so much about lone parents, particularly in the UK? It's because they're often defined as a social problem. In the 1980s and 90s, the then Conservative government saw lone parents as a threat to society, particularly as a threat to the institution of marriage, but they also included them in this wider discourse around the underclass, the welfare scroungers, lone parents just getting pregnant to get benefits, to get a council house. People listening to the news today in the UK will recognise some of that rhetoric around lone parents and welfare recipients. 

With the incoming labour government in 1997, the focus shifted from the moral concerns around lone parenthood to employment. At the time, only 44 per cent of lone parents were in employment, so less than half and New Labour was particularly concerned about these workless households, children growing up in households where no adult was in employment. 

There were very high levels of child poverty, half the children in lone parent families were living in poverty and there are well-known studies about children growing up in lone parent families doing slightly worse in adulthood in terms of employment, earnings, health and wellbeing. 

However, both policy-makers and academics are still arguing about why that is the case. Are children doing worse because they grew up in a lone parent family, so is it the one parent and the absent parent? Or is it because children grow up in poverty? Is it a function of the lower socio-economic resources, that affect their adulthood? Or is it a function of the conflict levels around separation and often beyond. 

Now, very briefly, how many lone parents are there in the UK? We have eight million families with dependent children. Of those, two million are headed by a lone parent. In other words, 25 per cent of families, or one in four, are headed by a lone parent. Ninety percent of those families are headed by women and just under two per cent are teenagers; the average age is in fact 35. And these facts have stayed the same, these figures have stayed the same, for the past 20, 30 years. There's been very little change.

So really the focus is around the rather low employment rate in 1997. If we then look what happened to the employment rate in lone parents between 1997 and now, we see the graph being put together for the House of Lords Ð the black line at the top is the employment rate for married or cohabiting mothers. It starts in 1996 down here, it goes all the way to 2014. And we can see the employment rate for mothers in couples, in black, is much higher than that of lone parents. But it doesn't increase by particularly much up to 2014. It goes from about 67 to 72 per cent. In contrast, the employment rate for lone parents increases from just under 45 per cent as I said, all the way to about 66, 67 per cent which is where we are today. 

In policy terms, a 20 per cent increase in employment rate over 20 years is a huge success. It really is big. This is quite difficult to achieve. Therefore I wanted to look at what the welfare to work measures were that were introduced, other reasons, and whether, if this is success - what we should focus on now. 

I would argue that this is a story of two halves. The first half goes from 1997 to 2008, and a second half from 2008 to 2016. The first half I would argue was where welfare-to-work policies, that came with a range of supportive measures and increases in tax and benefits. The second half was characterised by an introduction of compulsion as well as austerity measures. 

Now, very briefly, part one Ð 1997, we had the incoming Labour government and a whole more positive climate and rhetoric around lone parents. There was talk about a new contract for welfare, introducing a whole range of measures such as child-care, increasing tax and benefits, the new deal for lone parents to enable lone parents to move into work. 
This was part of a bigger child poverty target that New Labour set itself. It was very ambitious. They wanted to halve child poverty by 2010 and eliminate it altogether by 2020. They just about missed the target in 2010 and the 2020 target has completely gone out of sight with a change of government. 

What happens in terms of employment? The employment rate of lone parents has increased from 44 to 60 percent and child poverty reduced by 20 percent Ð a big success in many ways. New Labour was particularly keen on work, because they thought work had wider benefits for society. The chance to work opens the chance to progress, to develop and to participate fully in society. We know that people in work are often healthier and more fulfilled than people who are not. It matters for society because the poverty linked to worklessness divides our communities and deprives too many children of a fair chance in life. So work makes you happy and healthy and is particularly good for children.

The second part of the story. We get to 2008 Ð this was just before the big crash. By now 60% of lone parents are in employment Ð it's all gone pretty well. But the Government thinks we've pretty much thrown all the resources we can at this, and still the employment rate is substantially lower than that of mothers and couples. We saw it was around 70% at that point. It's also lower than that of lone parents in other countries. So in Scandinavian countries the employment rate of lone mothers is around 85%.

Therefore there was a change of policy direction. We moved from support to introducing compulsion. What is now known as lone parent obligation required lone parents of older children to look for work and be treated almost like any other jobseeker. From 2010 onwards, it was accompanied by deep cuts in a tax and benefit system and, of course, a wholly different economic climate from 2008 onwards.

Nevertheless the employment rate increased from 60 to 67 percent during that time. A number of evaluations suggest that the increase in employment is due in large part to the new policies that were introduced Ð the child care system, the new tax credits, as well as the introduction of compulsion, have made a big contribution to increasing the employment rate of loan parents. 

I would argue though, that for the second part of the story, from 2008 onwards, the quality of the experience will change for loan parents. They are no longer better off in work necessarily. By now, half the children of lone parents in poverty have a working parent Ð so moving into work no longer is a route out of poverty as it was always meant to be. 

Secondly, we have higher unemployment of loan parents, we have higher underemployment Ð this is a particular feature of the labour market in the UK at the moment, where people would like to work more hours but can't find them and this proportion has doubled for lone parents at that time. We have an increased use of sanctions. Pete Dwyer and Sharon Wright at York have a wonderful research project on this at the moment. 

And finally, from the qualitative evidence, a suggestion that the lone parents jump before they're pushed Ð so before your child reaches the age of five, as it is now, lone parents get any job, doesn't matter what, just to avoid the job centre, with the aim of them improving their job, get moving to another job, doing more training on the side. But I would argue that this  doesn't tend to happen in the British economy. 

Therefore I would like to make two points of where to pick up from now. The first point is we need to make sure that work pays. Yes, it was a New Labour mantra, but it's meant to be the route out of poverty; it's meant to get children out of poverty. The lone parents are fulfilling the obligation Ð work needs to pay again, therefore we need to reverse some of the cuts in taxes and benefits. 

We need to also focus on progression Ð now that so many lone parents are in work, we can focus on the group that's in work and see whether they get additional training and can move up in the hierarchy or to different jobs. And in order to do that, I think we also need to change the entry point following parents, so they don't go into any job but they go into qualified and better jobs which we know are better for parents; they tend to be the more flexible jobs. 

And finally, I think we need support for those who can't work. This is likely to be a very small group who, for various reasons at this point in their life Ð be it due to chaotic family circumstances, be it because they have multiple disadvantages such as health problems and little qualifications or work experience Ð won't be able to compete in a labour market. So, rather than making them go to the job centre, making them apply for jobs which they have no chance of getting, we need to think more creatively about how to support this group.

Thank you for listening.