New research shows single mothers hit hardest by welfare changes

via Fawcett News

“Women are being forced to bear the brunt of cuts

A year on from the coalition government’s first budget, groundbreaking new research from the Fawcett Society and the Institute for Fiscal Studies on the impact of tax and benefit changes on men and women has found:

• The government could assess the different impact of its tax and benefit policies on women and men using data currently available. This runs counter to its claim that any meaningful assessment is impossible.
• Such an assessment, considering all tax and benefit reforms to be introduced between 2010-2015, shows that single women will lose more as a proportion of their income than other households as a result of the cuts.
• Single mothers can expect to lose 8.5 per cent of their net annual income by 2015 – more than a month’s income each year.”

The full report Single Mothers: Singled Out - the impact of 2010-15 tax and benefit changes on women and men (PDF 12pp) is well worth reading.

---