Working-class men ‘poorer as they won’t settle down’
WORKING class men are becoming poorer because they have lost the habit of living with a partner, economists said yesterday.
The inquiry into the link between wealth and family life found that the income gap between rich and poor men had nearly doubled in just 12 years.
A key reason is that less wealthy men are increasingly unlikely to marry or form stable family partnerships. More than a third of 42-year-old men who were born into the poorest families have no wife or partner, the report said, compared with just one in seven men from the best-off families.
They do not benefit from the income a woman brings into the home – cash which is increasingly important to maintaining family living standards. They are also more likely to be out of work or living on disability benefits than men born into wealthier families.
Produced by the Institute for Fiscal Studies, the study underlines the impact on living standards of the decline of marriage, particularly among working class and lower- income people. It was based on surveys of the lives of men born in the years 1958 and 1970, who turned 42 in 2000 and 2012.
It said that the difference in marriage and partnership rates between men from rich and poor families was a major factor in slowing social mobility – the chances of people from poorer backgrounds hauling them- selves up the income and status ladder.
The study said that in 2000 the average income of 42-yearold men born into the richest fifth of homes was 47 per cent higher than that of men born
‘Inequality is widening’
into families in the bottom fifth for income. But in 2012, the earnings gap between 42-yearold men from the same backgrounds had grown to 88 per cent. By 2012 one in seven such men from wealthier families had no wife or partner, against more than one in three from the least well-off backgrounds.
Chris Belfield, who co-wrote the report, said: ‘ Focusing solely on the earnings of men in work understates the importance of family background in determining living standards.
‘Those from richer families are more likely to be in work, more likely to have a partner and more likely to have a higherearning partner than those from less well-off backgrounds. And all these inequalities have been widening over time.’
The report noted that the importance of a woman’s income was a ‘ new phenomenon’. It said ‘ Female earnings are an increasingly important component of household income and so these trends significantly reduce the household incomes of men who grew up in poor families compared with those of men who grew up in rich families.’
Official figures gathered in the 2011 census showed that 52 per cent of business executives, lawyers, doctors and similar professionals were married. That was true for just 29 per cent of people in semi- skilled and unskilled jobs.