To what extent can increasing parental employment and/or supporting parents to progress in work reduce child poverty and how might this vary across different family configurations?

Background

Tackling child poverty and hardship is central to DWP’s work to ensure financial security for all. This group of questions covers evidence on how the benefits system, employment, family circumstances and wider support shape child poverty, hardship and financial security over time. This includes the drivers and impacts of poverty, housing costs and quality, emergency food need, child maintenance and support for families in crisis. External research can help assess the effectiveness, sustainability, and value for money of interventions, including those delivered with local government, housing, education, health, voluntary and community organisations.

Next steps

Send correspondence and further questions to [email protected]

Related UKRI funded projects

  • The effect of free childcare on maternal labour supply and child development

    The UK government spends billions of pounds a year to ensure that all 3 and 4 year olds have access to childcare and early education for 15 hours a week, 38 weeks a year. There is ongoing debate about whether (and by how...

    Funded by: ESRC

    Lead research organisation: University of Essex

    Why might this be relevant?

    The project specifically focuses on the impact of free childcare provision on maternal and childhood outcomes, which directly relates to increasing parental employment and reducing child poverty.

  • Poverty, benefit policy, and child outcomes

    Child poverty is never far from the top of the policy agenda, and the new government has established a taskforce to develop a strategy to reduce the child poverty rate, which stands at 30%. The issue receives so much att...

    Funded by: ESRC

    Lead research organisation: Institute for Fiscal Studies

    Why might this be relevant?

    While the project focuses on the impact of benefit policy on child outcomes, it does not directly address the relationship between parental employment, child poverty, and different family configurations.

  • Intergenerational transmission of human capital: implications for poverty, inequality and policy

    Family circumstances changed significantly over the past 50 years on key dimensions such as mother's education, employment and earnings, father's involvement in raising children, and the prevalence of lone-motherhood. Th...

    Funded by: ESRC

    Lead research organisation: Institute for Fiscal Studies

    Why might this be relevant?

    The project explores the intergenerational transmission of human capital and its implications for poverty and inequality, which is related to the question but does not directly address the impact of increasing parental employment on child poverty.

  • Parental time investments in children across countries and over time: What are the implications for inequality?

    This project will use high quality diary data on individual's activities matched to country-level institutional data for several industrialized countries to explore the relationship between parental education and parenta...

    Funded by: ESRC

    Lead research organisation: Queen Mary University of London

  • Reducing poverty in the first 18 years of life: the importance of measurement for getting it right

    In line with the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), MDGs and formulation of national Children's Acts, child poverty has moved up the policy agendas of many countries. A concurrent potential increase in resource...

    Funded by: ESRC

    Lead research organisation: Institute of Development Studies

  • Welfare integration, labour supply and take-up

    Context Benefits systems are crucial in protecting families and individuals from deprivation, supporting those with health conditions, and reducing inequality, as the covid-19 crisis underlines. As in many other countri...

    Funded by: ESRC

    Lead research organisation: Institute for Fiscal Studies

  • Harnessing growth sectors for poverty reduction: what works to reduce poverty through sustainable employment with opportunities for progression

    Traditionally employment has been seen as a key route out of poverty. People in employment are less likely to be in poverty than those without paid work but the benefits of entry into employment where pay is low are ques...

    Funded by: ESRC

    Lead research organisation: University of Warwick