Fact-sheet: what’s happening to the number of sole parents on benefit?

Over the past 20 years, there has been a general decline in the number of sole parents on benefit. However, since 2019, we saw slight growth in this population, and with the impact of COVID-19, the number of sole parents supported by benefit grew more rapidly.

MSD has done more work to understand the drivers for these changing trends and have produced a fact-sheet, which describes the influence of COVID-19 and what we expect to happen to the number of sole parents supported by a benefit in the future.

This work recognises that sole parents are more likely on average to experience high disadvantage and may be less resilient to economic shocks.

Key findings

• The number of sole parents on benefit is generally influenced by long-term societal and economic factors, like the decreasing number of sole parent families, the high employment rate of sole parents (which is now comparable to the overall employment rate for women) and the decreasing number of teenage parents.
• Recent growth in the number of sole parents on benefit is associated with weaker labour market conditions throughout the COVID-19 period, with fewer people leaving the benefit rather than more new entrants.
• We have not seen fundamental changes in the underlying drivers for the number of sole parents on benefit, so expect recent growth in this population to be temporary. Recent data shows growth in our Sole Parent Support population has already slowed, with the number decreasing month on month since the beginning of the year.