The Government is committed to releasing a child poverty strategy later this year. As part of this, Ministers will want to consider how best parental employment can help boost family incomes. But the mid-2020s present a different landscape for child poverty and parental employment from when the last Labour Government crafted its child poverty strategy. Since the mid-2000s, the employment rate of lone mothers has risen from 52 to 66 per cent, and the fraction of mothers living with a partner who are doing
paid work has risen from 69 to 77 per cent. This is good news. But many of the families in poverty and not in paid work today face significant barriers to work: half have a child aged under five; three-in-ten have three or more children; just under half have an adult with a disability or long-standing limiting health condition; and just under three-in-ten have a child with a disability.
