Fewer kids than ever in homes where no one works
THE number of children living in homes where nobody works is now the lowest since records began.
Figures released yesterday showed just over one in ten youths are looked after by parents who rely on state benefits – half the rate seen in the 1990s.
The total of 1,264,000 children under the age of 16 who are in workless households has dropped by 600,000 since the spring of 2010.
The share of children whose lives are blighted by unemployment began to fall in the late-1990s after Gordon Brown introduced the tax credit system to encourage single mothers into jobs.
The rate of improvement accelerated after 2010 when Iain Duncan Smith, then Work and Pensions Secretary, brought in benefit changes to make work pay better than state handouts.
Yesterday’s figures from the Office for National Statistics said there were three million homes where noone was in employment in the first three months of this year, and only 2.9 million after student households were discounted. The total was down by nearly 100,000 in a year.
Work and Pensions Secretary Esther McVey said: ‘I welcome the figures out today showing the number of workless households has fallen to its lowest level since records began in 1997.
‘At the heart of our welfare reform has been the ambition to help people break a cycle of worklessness. We now have the highest employment rate on record.’
This month estimates of the effects of the benefits cap indicated more than 48,000 families have found work after their benefits were restricted, meaning 170,000 children are no longer in workless homes.
However, the number of homes in which no one has ever been employed is up by more than a fifth in a year. Yesterday’s figures, from January to March, showed the total has hit 349,000. It peaked at over 400,000 in 2008.