This year marks the 20th year of Australia dedicating a week to act on poverty and Anti-Poverty Week 2022, 16-22 October (@AntiPovertyWeek) is calling on our Parliamentarians to legislate a plan to halve child poverty in Australia by 2030. To achieve real change, Life Course Centre (@lifecourseAust) researchers Dr Alice Campbell (@ColtonCambo) and Professor Janeen Baxter (@JaneenBaxter7) highlight the prevalence of single parent families in poverty and the need for targeted supports.

Single parent families and poverty

The issue of single parent families and poverty is crucial to addressing child poverty in Australia.

According to the Australian Council of Social Service, children in sole parent families, with a poverty rate of 44%, are more than three times as likely to live in poverty as children in couple families, who have a poverty rate of 13%.

Life Course Centre researchers at the Melbourne Institute: Applied Economic & Social Research have also shown that the risk of entering poverty increases immediately and substantially for women with children following relationship separation.

“In the first year after separation, poverty risk increases dramatically. Women with children below school age are 16 percentage points more likely to be poor in the year after separation, than otherwise similar women with pre-school-aged children who remained partnered—this represents a more than doubled baseline risk. Among women with older children, the increase in poverty risk is 13 percentage points,” states the From Partnered to Single: Financial Security Over a Lifetime report.

We have previously undertaken research analysis on the strong associations between experiences of violence and financial hardship for young Australian women, and how violence and multidimensional disadvantage intersect and accumulate for women over the life course.

Single mothers and their children have been the most poverty-stricken household type for far too long. Photo by Bethany Beck on Unsplash

These findings were reinforced in a high-profile report, The Choice: Violence or Poverty, released this year by Professor Anne Summers AO. It showed 185,700 Australian women with children aged under 18 were living as single mothers after leaving violent relationships. This equates to 60% of all single mothers having experienced intimate partner violence—a far higher rate than any other group of Australian women (the average rate is 17.3%). These women were married or in de facto relationships when the violence occurred and became single because of the violence.

The report further showed that the economic impact of violence and separation is significant. Although most of the mothers who left violent relationships were employed, 50% relied on government payments as their main source of income because their earnings were insufficient to support their families. Approximately half of these single mothers had a household income in the lowest quintile (i.e., $460 per week or less). Many could not pay their bills, heat their houses or register their cars, and more than 17,000 women went without meals.

An episode of Four Corners early this month, No Place To Call Home, also shone a light on the growing number of working, single mothers who cannot find affordable housing and are effectively homeless—living in tents, caravans, garages or motels—as a result.

What has changed in the past 20 years?

We have undertaken new research for the 20th year of Anti-Poverty Week in Australia that examines data from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) survey from 2001 to 2020.

We specifically looked at the risk of being in financial hardship over the past 20 years among parents who were single or partnered. Our analyses compared single mothers to partnered mothers and fathers. Unfortunately, we were unable to examine single fathers as a separate group as there were too few of them in the sample.

To measure financial hardship, participants were asked if any of the following had happened to them since the start of the year due to a shortage of money: could not pay their bills on time, could not pay their rent or mortgage on time, pawned or sold something, went without meals, were unable to heat their home, asked for financial help from friends or family, asked for help from welfare or charity. We considered an individual to be in financial hardship if they answered ‘yes’ to two or more of these.

The below graph illustrates our findings that single mothers are at a significantly greater risk of being in financial hardship than partnered mothers and fathers. Indeed, the risk of financial hardship for single mothers is more than double that of partnered mothers.

This has been the case for the past 20 years. The risk of being in financial hardship decreased for single mothers between 2001 and 2006. However, it began to increase again from 2008 onwards. The proportion of single mothers in financial hardship has not dropped below approximately 30% in the past 10 years.

In 2020, there appeared to be a small decrease in the proportion of single mothers in financial hardship. This may be due to the government’s introduction of the (temporary) COVID income support supplement. The positive impact that this additional $550 a fortnight payment had on single parents has been well documented.

What needs to change now?

Here are six practical actions that the Australian Government can take to better support single parents and their children, to disrupt the cycle of poverty in sole parent families:

· Raise the rate of income support for single parents.

· Stop violence against women. Violence negatively impacts women across multiple domains over the life course, including education, health and wellbeing, and financial security.

· Increase access to affordable and high-quality childcare. This is a problem that impacts all women, but single mothers most of all.

· Address the problem of unpaid child support.

· Fix the housing crisis.

· Reform the tax and transfer system. Reducing the cumulative impacts of tax rates, family and income support to enhance employment opportunities for single parents.

If we want all Australian children to grow up free from poverty, we need to support the people raising them. Our current Prime Minister was raised by a single mother, something he has spoken about openly, frequently and with pride. It remains to be seen if his government will take the necessary steps to help families like the one that he grew up in.

This post is part of the Women's Policy Action Tank initiative to analyse government policy using a gendered lens. View our other policy analysis pieces here.

Posted by @LifeCourseAust

If we want Australian children to grow up free from poverty, we must support those raising them – especially sole parents