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Poverty: Children

Volume 486: debated on Tuesday 20 January 2009

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (1) how many children are living in relative poverty in a working age single parent family; and how many of them are living in a family in which the adult is (a) working full-time, (b) working part-time and (c) not working, broken down by the smallest geographical area for which figures are available; and if he will make a statement; (244146)

(2) how many children are living in relative poverty in a household with more than one working age parent, and how many of them are living in a household in which (a) at least one of the adults is (i) working full-time and (ii) working part-time and (b) neither parent is working, broken down by the smallest geographical area for which figures are available; and if he will make a statement.

Available information is shown in the following tables.

Child poverty statistics, published in the Households Below Average Income series, only allow a breakdown of the overall number of children in relative poverty at Government office region level or for inner or outer London, with no further tabulations available broken down by Government office region or by any lower geography.

Table 1: Numbers of children living in households with incomes below 60 per cent of median in 2006-07 in a working age lone parent family overall and by whether the adult is working full-time, working part-time or not working, United Kingdom

Work status of working age lone parent family

Number of children

All children in working age lone parent families

1,200,000

of which:

Parent is working full-time

Parent is working part-time

200,000

Parent is not working

900,000

Source:

Households Below Average Income, 2006-07

Table 2: Numbers of children living in households with incomes below 60 per cent of median in 2006-07 in a family with more than one working age parent by whether at least one of the adults is working full-time, at least one of the adults is working part-time or neither parent is working, United Kingdom

Work status of family with more than one working age parent

Number of children

All children in families with more than one working age parent

1,700,000

of which:

At least one parent is working full-time

1,000,000

At least one parent is working part-time

500,000

Neither parent working

400,000

“—” Indicates less than 50,000 children.

Notes:

1. Figures in table 1 may not sum due to rounding.

2. In table 2, the categories ‘At least one parent is working full-time’ and ‘At least one parent is working part-time’ are not disjoint, as families where one parent is working full-time and the other working part-time will be included in both categories. Figures therefore do not sum.

3. These statistics are based on Households Below Average Income, sourced from the Family Resources Survey.

4. Small differences should be treated with caution as these will be affected by sampling error and variability in non-response.

5. The reference period for Households Below Average Income figures is single financial years.

6. The income measures used to derive the estimates shown employ the same methodology as the Department for Work and Pensions publication ‘Households Below Average Income’ series, which uses net disposable household income, adjusted (or “equivalised”) for household size and composition, as an income measure as a proxy for standard of living.

7. Incomes have been equivalised using OECD equalisation factors.

8. Numbers of children have been rounded to the nearest hundred thousand children.

9. Children have been counted as being in workless families where they are in lone parent families where the parent does not work or in couple families where both parents do not work.

10. Families have been included if the parent is of working age (i.e. 64 or below for men, 59 or below for women) for lone parent families and both parents are of working age for couple families.

11. An adult has been classified as working full-time if they are working for 31 or more hours per week, in line with the Households Below Average Income publication.

Source:

Households Below Average Income, 2006-07