23 September 2004 - Publication of DWP research report: Lone parents cycling between work and benefits
Research published today by the Department of Work and Pensions sets out findings from a research project designed to study the phenomenon of lone parents who have repeated claims for out of work benefits accompanied by intervening periods in work. This is sometimes referred to as ‘cycling’. Such a profile has been observed in unemployed/jobseeker benefit populations but to date little attention has so far been paid to how it affects lone parents.
The project involved secondary analysis of the Family and Children Study (FACS) and the Labour Force Survey (LFS).
The main findings are:
Employment rates
- Over the observation period 1993-2003, the lone parent employment rate grew to around 53 per cent. This comprises four dynamic elements of: persistent employment; job entry; job exit; and persistent non-employment.
- Over the same period, the probability of job entries for lone parents has risen from around 12.5 to 15 per cent and the probability of exiting a job fell from 13 per cent to 9.5 per cent.
- By 2003, lone parent job entry probabilities had converged with those of non-lone parents (at around 15 per cent) but exit rates were still higher for lone parents relative to non-lone parents when characteristics were controlled for. For example, lone parents were twice as likely to leave a job relative to all non-lone parents.
Lone parents entering and leaving work
- The probability of entering work of 16 hours or more a week a year after a period of non-employment was significantly associated with working ‘mini jobs’ of under 16 hours. Factors such as having fewer children, looking for work, receiving maintenance and having higher qualifications were also influential. Ill-health and having 3 or more children worsened the probability of job entry.
- The probability of exiting work in the year after job entry was associated with being under 30, not being a home owner and not having savings or a driving licence [1]. The experience of non-employment in a previous year more than doubled the likelihood of leaving a job the following year when compared to persistently employed lone parents.
Job characteristics
- Between 1999 and 2003, the average hours worked per week by lone parents were highest for the persistently employed at 29-30 hours and lowest for job entrants and job exiters 25 and 23 respectively.
Low pay/no pay cycle
- Previous work [2] focusing largely on men has showed that low pay and non-employment have similar ‘scarring’ effects or equal chances of leading to low-paid work in subsequent years. Evidence over the short-medium term for lone parents suggests that evidence of ‘scarring’ is not as strong. There is some albeit tentative evidence of lone parents progressing to non-low paid employment among the group who had been non-employed two years prior to job entry. However, there was a higher probability that low paid work resulted in cycling between low pay and no pay.
- Analysis of trajectories in and out of work and benefit is limited by only four years of observations and small sample sizes. Between 1999 and 2003, 60 per cent of lone parents had worked- 30 per cent had persistently worked, 40 per cent were persistently non-working, and 30 per cent had worked during at least one Wave of FACS. Not all of these were ‘cyclers’.
1. The latter two in particular are considered to act as proxies for unobserved variables.
2. Stewart, M (1999) “Low Pay in Britain", in The State of Working Britain, ed. by Paul Gregg and Jonathan Wadsworth, Manchester University Press, 1999.
Notes for editors
- The research was conducted by Martin Evans, Susan Harkness and Ramon Arigoni Ortiz at the Centre for Analysis of Social Policy at the University of Bath. The research was based on the secondary analysis of existing data from the Labour Force Survey and the Families and Children Study (FACS).
- Lone parents cycling in and out of work and benefits (report series number 217) is published on 23rd September 2004. A summary and a copy of the report is available on the DWP website: http://www.dwp.gov.uk/asd/asd5
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