Of the 1.8 million single parent households in the UK, 650,000 – almost one in four – are not in any sort of work, with the average single parent household claiming twice as much in benefit support as the average two parent household.
A new Policy Exchange report says that the proportion of lone parent households UK is the fourth highest in the EU – trailing only Estonia, Latvia and Ireland.
The paper found that the level of unemployed single parents can partly be attributed to when they had children. Over half (52%) of lone mothers who had their first child as a teenager (16-19) are not in work or looking for work, compared to 40% who had their first child aged 20-23 year olds, 29% of those who had their first child aged 24-29 and 19% who had their first child in their early thirties.