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Background: Lone parents and their children experience higher than average levels of adverse health and social outcomes, much of which are explained by high rates of poverty. Many high income countries have attempted to address high poverty rates by introducing employment requirements for lone parents in receipt of welfare benefits. However, there is evidence that employment may not reduce poverty or improve the health of lone parents and their children.Methods: We conducted a systematic review of qualitative studies reporting lone parents' accounts of participation in welfare to work (WtW), to identify explanations and possible mechanisms for the impacts of WtW on health and wellbeing. Twenty one bibliographic databases were searched. Two reviewers independently screened references and assessed study quality. Studies from any high income country that met the criteria of focussing on lone parents, mandatory WtW interventions, and health or wellbeing were included. Thematic synthesis was used to investigate analytic themes between studies.Results: Screening of the 4703 identified papers and quality assessment resulted in the inclusion of 16 qualitative studies of WtW in five high income countries, USA, Canada, UK, Australia, and New Zealand, covering a variety of welfare regimes. Our synthesis found that WtW requirements often conflicted with child care responsibilities. Available employment was often poorly paid and precarious. Adverse health impacts, such as increased stress, fatigue, and depression were commonly reported, though employment and appropriate training was linked to increased self-worth for some. WtW appeared to influence health through the pathways of conflict and control, analytical themes which emerged during synthesis. WtW reduced control over the nature of employment and care of children. Access to social support allowed some lone parents to manage the conflict associated with employment, and to increase control over their circumstances, with potentially beneficial health impacts.Conclusion: WtW can result in increased conflict and reduced control, which may lead to negative impacts on mental health. Availability of social support may mediate the negative health impacts of WtW. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Lone parent families are often portrayed as welfare-dependent, and social policies and social services can be hostile to and discriminating against lone parents especially in societies dominated by traditional familism, such as Hong Kong. This resentment of lone parent families has not been present throughout Hong Kong's history, but has arisen over the past decade. This paper is based on a study that traced the changing discourses of the lone parent family in Hong Kong. Adopting the Foucauldian concept of genealogy of knowledge and inspired by Nancy Fraser and Linda Gordon's work on "genealogy of dependency", we trace the discourses of the lone parent family from the 1970s to the early 21st century. The term "lone parent" did not exist before the mid-1980s, and when it first appeared it was closely associated with vulnerability and charity. In the early 21st century, the lone parent discourse developed into a problematic discourse, with lone parents associated with welfare dependency, social security fraud, juvenile delinquency, family violence, and perceived as a threat to social stability. This paper notes that the "success" of this discourse may help to rationalize the cutting back of social security benefits for lone mothers and regulate welfare recipients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we seek to put Irish poverty rates in a comparative European context. We do so in a context whereby the Irish economic boom and EU enlargement have led to increasing reservations being expressed regarding rates deriving from the EU ‘at risk of poverty’ indicator. Our comparative analysis reports findings for both overall levels of poverty and variation by household reference person characteristics for this indicator and a consistent poverty measure for Ireland, the UK and five smaller European countries spanning a range of welfare regimes. Our findings demonstrate that the distinctiveness of Ireland’s situation lies not in the overall levels of poverty per se but in the very high penalties associated with being in a household where the household reference person is a lone parent or excluded from the labour market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Abstract Background Lone parents and their children experience higher than average levels of adverse health and social outcomes, much of which are explained by high rates of poverty. Many high income countries have attempted to address high poverty rates by introducing employment requirements for lone parents in receipt of welfare benefits. However, there is evidence that employment may not reduce poverty or improve the health of lone parents and their children. Methods We conducted a systematic review of qualitative studies reporting lone parents’ accounts of participation in welfare to work (WtW), to identify explanations and possible mechanisms for the impacts of WtW on health and wellbeing. Twenty one bibliographic databases were searched. Two reviewers independently screened references and assessed study quality. Studies from any high income country that met the criteria of focussing on lone parents, mandatory WtW interventions, and health or wellbeing were included. Thematic synthesis was used to investigate analytic themes between studies. Results Screening of the 4703 identified papers and quality assessment resulted in the inclusion of 16 qualitative studies of WtW in five high income countries, USA, Canada, UK, Australia, and New Zealand, covering a variety of welfare regimes. Our synthesis found that WtW requirements often conflicted with child care responsibilities. Available employment was often poorly paid and precarious. Adverse health impacts, such as increased stress, fatigue, and depression were commonly reported, though employment and appropriate training was linked to increased self-worth for some. WtW appeared to influence health through the pathways of conflict and control, analytical themes which emerged during synthesis. WtW reduced control over the nature of employment and care of children. Access to social support allowed some lone parents to manage the conflict associated with employment, and to increase control over their circumstances, with potentially beneficial health impacts. Conclusion WtW can result in increased conflict and reduced control, which may lead to negative impacts on mental health. Availability of social support may mediate the negative health impacts of WtW.

Copyright of International Indigenous Policy Journal is the property of Scholarship@Western and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

in many other countries, non-traditional family types are increasing in prevalence in Australia. In 2008, over one quarter of Australian families reported a non-intact family structure; comprising over 0.8 million lone-parent families and 0.4 million stepfamilies. Prior studies consistently find poorer child outcomes associated with non-intact family type. Controlling for family characteristics decreases the negative effect; however, in most cases small but unexplained differences remain apparent. The current study examines differences in the outcomes of young adults from four family types—intact, stepfather, stepmother and never-repartnered lone-parent families—on four measures: educational attainment; being suspended from school; regular smoking; and trouble with police. The research uses information from 2,430 matched parent-youth pairs collected in a unique Australian study, the Youth in Focus Survey. This study improves our understanding of the complex interaction between family structure and adolescent well-being by exploiting the full childhood family-relationship history information available in the Survey. Although between-group variations are described, differences are predominantly due to contextual factors associated with disadvantage, more prevalent in families who separate and repartner, rather than family structure in itself. For lone-parent and stepfather families, the number of family transitions since the youth’s birth is also relevant. Parent-youth conflict explained little of the negative association between family structure and youth outcomes above the effect of contextual factors, but operated independently of family structure to affect youth outcomes. Possible reasons for unexplained differences between intact and stepmother families on some measures are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Individuals can be money poor, time poor or both. While income is the most used indicator of poverty, broader indexes including non-monetary aspects of deprivation have been proposed and measured. As one such measure, our study focuses on the element of deprivation arising from the time deficit of many working people. The usual poverty threshold is calculated as the amount of income to buy the minimum required goods and services from the market. This minimum required purchase is greater for these people since they have less time than the average person to produce some goods and services for themselves at home. So, they need money to buy these in the market in order to maintain the same consumption. The income standard must be supplemented to adequately measure actual poverty. Time use data make it possible to establish time requirements and time availability and provide a measure of time poverty. Using Canadian GSS 1998 data, and building on the work of Vickery (1977, ‚The time poor: A new look at poverty’, The Journal of Human Resources 12(1), pp. 27-48) and of Douthitt (1993, ‚The inclusion of time availability in Canadian poverty measures’, Time-Use Methodology: Toward Consensus (ISTAT, Roma), pp. 83–91), and our own previous study, we estimate time-adjusted poverty thresholds and rates for single and dual parent Canadian families. As expected, we have found high incidence of time deficit among the employed single parents with children. We make a case for the acceptance of a redefined poverty standard for such time-deprived groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Being a lone mother often implies disadvantage in terms of both socioeconomic circumstances and health. Our aim was to examine differences in mortality, severe morbidity and injury between lone mothers and mothers living with partners, on the assumption that the disadvantaged socioeconomic circumstances contribute to poor health.Methods: The odds for receipt of hospital care or death between 1991 and 1994 were estimated for 26 619 lone mothers and 379 855 partnered mothers from data collected for the Swedish Population and Housing Census of 1990. We computed odds ratios by means of logistic regression, adjusting for confounders, mediators, and factors with an indeterminate position in various models. To control for health-selection effects, we only considered initially healthy women, as measured by non-hospitalization 4 years prior to follow-up. To reduce the impact of distress following divorce on health, we only included mothers who had been either lone or partnered for a period of > or =5 years.Results: Lone mothers showed increased risks of total mortality, lung cancer, suicide/ suicide attempt, inflicted violence, traffic injury and other accident, psychiatric disease, and addiction. The main explanation for increased risks seems for most outcomes to lie in deficient household resources, as indicated here by receipt of social-welfare benefit and housing situation. For all the initially elevated outcomes, except for total mortality, significant risk increases remained unaccounted for even in the full model. Relationships varied according to subgroup. Lone motherhood was not related to accident, suicide and addiction among medium- and high-grade non-manual workers. Although lone mothers in general showed no increased risk of ischaemic heart disease, those receiving social benefit were exposed to a significantly increased risk.Conclusions: Our findings suggest that lone motherhood entails health disadvantages. Lack of household resources seems to play a major role in accounting for increased risks, but the risks are partly independent of socioeconomic circumstances, selection factors, and distress following divorce. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]