Lone parents in jobs double up in less than a decade

The longest-term study of lone-parent families shows the number in work has
almost doubled in a decade.

The British Lone Parent Cohort and their Children 1991 to 2001, just
published by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), shows that of a sample
of 940 lone parents, just 29 per cent were in employment in 1991. Ten years
later, that figure had risen to 56 per cent.

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The report’s authors, Alan Marsh and Sandra Vegeris, said: "Two-thirds
of the families we followed had done well. They had entered or remained in
employment, or they had settled with a partner who worked, or both.

"Fears in the early 1990s that they heralded a large body of
lone-parent families bound for long-term dependence on the state have not been
realised.