In-work poverty: the decline of the male breadwinner

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Today’s important JRF report on poverty and social exclusion highlights the changing nature of poverty in recent years, finding that more than half of those children and working‑age adults who are reported to be in poverty live in a working household. This trend pre-dates the recession and, as our work has shown, is particularly concentrated among families in which just one parent in a couple works.

 

Source: Resolution Foundation analysis of DWP, Households Below Average Income

This trend appears to have been driven by particularly poor wage performance among single-earner fathers. While the gender pay gap persists, it has narrowed: that is, wage growth has tended to be slower among men than among women over the last 15 years. The trend has been worse for fathers than for other men, and worst of all for working fathers with non-working partners.

The causes of this are likely to be many and varied, but the implication is clear: where once tackling poverty was a case of reducing the number of workless households, the challenge now is increasingly one of making it easier and more worthwhile for both members of a couple to work. It points to a need to reconsider the worsening of incentives for second earners under the Universal Credit as well as improving childcare and promoting flexible working.