The British lone parent cohort 1991 to 1998
A hard copy of this report summary can be obtained by contacting Paul Noakes [E-Mail: Paul.Noakes@dwp.gsi.gov.uk] or by writing to him at the 'Social Research Division, Department for Work and Pensions Security, 4th Floor, Adelphi, 1-11 John Adam Street, London WC2N 6HT'.
Research Report No. 128
By Louise Finlayson, Reuben Ford, Alan Marsh, Stephen McKay and Arpita Mukherjee
In 1991 the Policy Studies Institute (PSI) conducted a survey of original income families in Britain. Since 1991 a cohort of lone parents that took part in the study have been followed up at key intervals (1992, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1998) to examine how lone parent families change over time. These studies form the core of the Department’s Programme of Research into Low Income Families (PRILIF).
The report is based on the last two interviews carried out with the cohort in 1996 and 1998 (sweeps 5 and 6). The report provides information based on the circumstances of the cohort at these two junctures and makes comparisons with their circumstances at earlier interviews thereby providing a comprehensive picture of the lives of the cohort over a seven year period from 1991 to 1998.
The key findings are:
- By 1998, 32% of cohort members were living as a couple. Of those now in couples, more than half were married with children, a third were cohabiting with children and the remaining 6% were living as a couple without dependent children. A sixth of respondents living as a couple were reconciled with a former partner prior to 1991.
- The rate of entry into work was gradual. In 1991, three in 10 lone parents in the cohort worked full-time. In 1996 the proportion in full-time work had risen to 45% and to exactly half in 1998. The growth in employment among cohort members is mainly attributable to the increase in the number of respondents working full-time and claiming Family Credit.
- Problems associated with childcare were important, particularly for those attempting to take up jobs, as both the availability and cost of childcare contribute to some lone parents’ difficulties in getting and keeping paid work. Generally however, parents were not seeking childcare to fit their prospective employment, they were looking for jobs with hours that enabled them to look after their children themselves.
- Half of the cohort who were on Income Support in 1991 remained on Income Support in 1998, but not necessarily continuously over the period. The rest of the cohort who began the study on Income Support had left Income Support by 1998 some of whom were claiming Family Credit. By 1998 it was the younger Income Support claimants with a youngest child aged 0-4 who remained on Income Support.
- Over time, the material well being of families improved. Forty four per cent of respondents improved their position on the hardship index and 32% remained at zero (a score that could not be improved). Fifteen per cent were in a worse position and 9% of those in hardship in 1991 held the same score in 1996.
- There has been an increase in the incidence of long-term illness amongst cohort families. By 1996 there had been a two-fold increase in reported ill health in both adults and children. Taking adult and child health together, half the cohort experienced limiting illness in 1998.
- One in six respondents said that their employment prospects were restricted by family ill health. Of those reporting a long-term illness, six out of 10 thought it limited the types of work they could do or where they could do it.
1 Introduction and study methods
- This is the report of the fifth and sixth sweeps of interviews from the 1991 DSS/PSI cohort study of lone parents carried out in 1996 and 1998.
- The first survey of a nationally representative sample of 941 lone parents was carried out in 1991. They were mainly lone mothers but 6 per cent were lone fathers. Respondents to the 1991 survey were followed up by a postal survey in 1992, and by new face-to-face interviews in 1993, 1994 and 1995. A special effort was made in 1996 and 1998 to obtain a high response rate from those who responded in 1995, and to re-capture as many as possible of those respondents who had dropped out of the study at earlier waves. Data was obtained from 770 cohort members in 1996 and 730 in 1998.
- The cohort study examined how lone parent families changed over time. For half the families over the seven years, this change involved leaving lone parenthood for a variety of reasons, including repartnering or no longer having dependent children. This report focuses on continuity and change in family structure, employment, hardship and health.
2 Family changes over time
- There has been considerable change in family size since 1991. Only a minority of families had the same number of dependent children in 1998 as in 1991. By 1996, 16 per cent of cohort members no longer cared for dependent children in their household, rising to 23 per cent in 1998. But grown children stayed on so that only seven per cent no longer had any children at all in their household.
- A third of cohort members had seen some of their children leave home. Most of these children were said to live in their own home: the majority as a couple and a third as single people. Five per cent of children who left now lived with their other parent. More than half worked full-time (16 hours or more each week) and a quarter were in education. Thirty five per cent now had children of their own and two-thirds of these were living with a partner.
- A fifth of lone parents felt their own children had encountered difficulties as a result of a single-parent upbringing, mostly connected to the absence of their father from the household and the shortage of money.
3 Child Contact and Maintenance
- Around three in 10 non-resident parents never saw their children in 1993 (when questions about contact were first asked) and continued absent from their lives in 1996 and 1998. At the other extreme, very few saw their children every day. Of those who saw their children every week, every month or every year in 1993, around half saw their children less frequently in 1996/98. The less frequently children were seen in 1993, the more likely that meetings had ended completely. In contrast, a quarter of those who never saw their children in 1993 were now making some contact.
- Whereas 29 per cent of lone parent families in 1991 received regular maintenance payments, by 1998, the proportion had dropped to 20 per cent. Half those in regular receipt in 1991 were no longer in receipt in 1998. Loss of payments was associated with re-partnering and children leaving school. Those who were in receipt in 1991 and 1998 made up two-thirds of those in receipt in 1998. The remaining third were newly in receipt, and nearly all of these had maintenance arrangements newly-instigated since 1991.
- Households newly in receipt of maintenance divided almost equally into those for whom this was due to a court order alone (31 per cent), for whom it was due solely to a new voluntary agreement (32 per cent) and those who had new CSA assessments (31 per cent). By 1998, about half had had some contact with the CSA, including a majority of those on Income Support and Family Credit.
4 Joining a new partner
- By 1998, 32 per cent of cohort members were living as a couple. Of those now in couples, more than half were married with children, a third were cohabiting with children and the rest (six per cent of the cohort) were living as a couple without dependent children. A sixth of these respondents were reconciled with a former partner from before 1991.
- Younger cohort members were more likely to gain partners, but less likely to (re)marry than older cohort members. In contrast, by 1998 not one widow with children had remarried. Few lone parents separated from marriage in 1991 were back with the same partner. Three-quarters of those living with partners in 1998 had formed a step-family in the sense that either their own still-dependent children were step-children to the new partner or, more rarely, the new partner's own children had joined the household too.
- Couples were less likely to report a long-term or limiting illness, were more likely to live in owner-occupied accommodation and to be younger than continuing lone parents. The mean age of cohort members’ partners in 1998 was 36 years. Three-quarters of their partners were in paid work of 24 hours or more each week. A third of couples had both partners working such hours. In 12 per cent of couples both partners were out of work.
- The sequence of finding work and partners among lone parents who were out of work when the study began in 1991 showed that by 1998 59 per cent had ended their spell of out-of-work lone parenthood by getting a job (31 per cent got a job and a partner). Eleven per cent got a partner but no job so in total forty two per cent (31 plus 11) got a new partner. Thus seven out of ten got a partner and/or a job while three in ten of 1991's out-of-work lone parents remained out-of-work lone parents in 1998.
5 Changes in Income Support and Family Credit receipt over time
- Half those on Income Support in 1991 - a third of the whole 1991 sample - remained on Income Support in 1998. More than a third of them (38 per cent) stopped claiming Income Support while the remainder (14 per cent) claimed Family Credit instead.
- More than half of those beginning on Family Credit in 1991 were no longer receiving it or had left at some point and returned to Family Credit. A third were still on Family Credit but not continuously throughout the period. Thirteen per cent of them had ended up on Income Support by 1998.
- Those claiming neither Income Support nor Family Credit in 1991 generally stayed off benefit throughout and 86 per cent of them claimed neither in 1998.
- Multivariate analyses of the rate of departure from Income Support confirmed that having younger children and, independently of their ages, having more children, together with ill health, were the most important barriers, while receiving maintenance hastened their departure from Income Support. The same factors were important in inhibiting returns to Income Support, especially the presence of young children.
6 Changes in employment
- In 1991, 29 per cent of the cohort worked full-time, now defined in all years as 16 or more hours a week. By 1996, the proportion in full-time work had risen to 45 per cent and rose again to exactly half by 1998. Rather more households (53 per cent) contained a full-time worker, due to the presence of working partners.
- The growth in employment among cohort members was mostly fuelled by the increase in the number of respondents working full-time and claiming Family Credit, both in 1993 and in 1998, with a minor role identified for growth in non-Family Credit full-time employment in 1994. Owner-occupiers, the better educated, the formerly married and the newly married, and those who no longer had pre-school children, were those most likely to have had uninterrupted work histories.
- Problems associated with childcare were important, particularly for those attempting to take up jobs over the study period, as both the availability and cost of childcare contribute to some lone parents’ difficulties in getting and keeping paid work. But in the main, parents were not seeking childcare to fit their prospective employment, they were looking for jobs with hours that allowed them to look after their children themselves.
- When those in work were asked what had been the most difficult aspect of trying to make childcare arrangements, the most frequent answer was more money to pay for childcare; the average quoted amount needed being £55 per week.
7 Hardship
- Over time, the material well being of families improved. By 1998, six out of 10 were no longer scoring any points on the zero-to-six-point hardship index, and 14 per cent were in 'severe hardship' (scoring three point or more), compared to 26 per cent - among the same respondents - in 1991.
- A move out of hardship was most likely for those who left income-tested benefits altogether. Multivariate analysis showed that the most reliable route out of hardship was to leave lone parenthood itself, with all that implies in terms of new partnerships, or the departure of dependent children, or the freedom to work.
- Change in the components of the hardship measure were analysed separately. Most commonly in 1998, it was in the areas of clothing and leisure expenditure and meeting newly identified needs that families went short. Fewer in 1998 experienced problem debts and at least part of this recovery seemed due to the metering imposed by utilities. Conversely, self-disconnection had left five per cent - as many as had improved their problem debt position - without an electricity supply at some point in the recent past.
8 Patterns of health among families
- There was an increase in the incidence of long-term illness among cohort families. By 1996, there had been a two-fold increase in reported ill health in both adults and children. Taking adult and child health together, half the cohort families were free from limiting illness in 1996. The same position was seen in 1998, though it became no worse.
- Most cohort members who reported a limiting illness were not receiving disability benefits. There was an element of 'low-level' illness among, though the “cumulative” pressure of illness over a period of time may be considerable. Musculoskeletal and respiratory problems predominated among respondents, together with a substantial minority having mental difficulties, mainly depression. Respiratory problems, particularly asthma, were common among children.
- One in six cohort members in 1998 said that their employment prospects were restricted by family ill health. Of those reporting their own long-term illness, six out of 10 thought it limited the types of work they could do or where they could do it.
- A number of factors such as age, employment status, smoking behaviour, the presence of severe hardship and a history of marital violence, were shown to be associated with the presence of long-term illness among cohort families in 1998.
Publication details:
Finlayson L, Ford R, Marsh A, McKay S and Mukherjee A (December 2000) “The British Lone Parent Cohort 1991 to 1998” (DSS Research Report Number 128) Leeds: CDS (£34.00).
Other relevant publications
Bradshaw, J. and Millar, J. (1991) “Lone Parent Families in the UK”, London: HMSO.
Bryson, A., Ford, R. and White, M. (1997) “Making Work Pay: lone mothers, employment and well-being”, York: JRF.
Bryson, A. and Marsh, A. (1996) “Leaving Family Credit”, London: HMSO.
Burghes, L. (1994) “Lone parenthood and family disruption: the outcomes for children”, London: Family Policy Studies Centre.
Finlayson, L and Marsh, A. (1998), “Lone Parents on the Margins of Work”, (DSS Research Report No. 80), Leeds: CDS.
Ford, R. (1996) “Childcare in the balance: how lone parents make decisions about work”, London: PSI.
Ford, R., Marsh, A. and Finlayson, L. (1997) “What Happens to lone parents: a Cohort Study 1991 to 1995,” London: The Stationery Office.
Ford, R., Marsh, A. and McKay, S. (1995) “Changes in Lone Parenthood”, HMSO: London.
McKay, S. and Marsh, A. (1994) “Lone parents and work”, London: HMSO.
Marsh, A., Ford R. and Finlayson, L. (1997) “Lone Parents, Work and Benefits”, London: PSI.
Marsh, A. and McKay, S. (1993) “Families, Work and Benefits”, London: PSI.
Payne, J. and Range, M (1998) “Lone Parents’ Lives”, (DSS, Research Report No. 88), Leeds: CDS