Has anyone seen the Centre For Policy Studies report mentioned in the more holier than thou press today (and I think on Radio 4 as well) saying that 'hard working' families are hardly any better off than lone parents?

I'd love to see their calculations. They say that a lone parent with 2 kids on benefits costs the state £11K pa, I make it around £8.2k ignoring housing costs and assuming no disabilities. They then go on to say that a 2 parent family with 2 kids on average earnings of £24k WITH A MORTGAGE is only £1per wk per head ie £208pa better off than a lone parent household dependent on the state.

Even assuming that their £11k figure is correct this means that the 2 parent family must be spending £9544 on housing costs. Assuming that they have Council Tax of £1k (by the way I didn't do a CTB check but did work out net wages and Tax Credits) this equates to a mortgage of £142,400 assuming an interest rate of 6%. I can therefore only assume that they have put this 'average' family in house with an average mortgage. Unfortunately, a family on this income would not get a mortgage of this size so its hardly a valid comparison.

Putting the correct figure for the lone parent's benefits means a total of £12344 housing costs so again assuming £1k CT the 2 parent family would be looking at a mortgage of nearly £190k for the comparison to be correct.

You know, it makes my blood boil, I may even write to the Guardian about it...

Did you include free school meals, milk, NHS costs etc in your calculations for the lone parent.My friend and I, both lone parents, had a similar income for quite some time even though I work full time and she claims benefits- - - it made me think!!

Come on now Andy. I hope you are not implying that just because the CPS was set up by Margaret Thatcher and champions economic liberalism that it would in any way be biased or lack objectivety!

I think you should write to the Guardian but it would be useful to look at the full report and see if it shows how they get the figures. Has anyone got it or know how to get it ?(i do not think the full report is on the CPC website)

Fri 21-Jan-05 08:03 PM by shawn

press release @ http://www.cps.org.uk/pdf/pub/396-pr.pdf

report @ http://www.cps.org.uk/pdf/pub/396.pdf

oops .. thanks to andy below ... report @ http://www.cps.org.uk/pdf/pub/395.pdf

I hadn't included school meals etc but I don't think these costs would come to nearly £3k per year. Mind you, the 2 parent family would be entitled to quite a lot of NHS costs etc with mortgage payments that high and not all children take school meals. Milk tolkens are generally only available to young children as well.

A lot of these costs are hard to quantify so of course it is a simplification. I also did not take into account that the lone parent could possibly be in private rented accommodation and therefore extremely unlikely to get all of their rent paid by Housing Benefit. I wonder if CPS took into account that the 2 parent family would be entitled to around £28 per week CTC?

No, unfortunately their full report is not on the website, only the summary. I'm not prepared to give them my money so I might try and email them.

I'm trying to find out figures for average Council tax and mortgage so if anyone knows where to find them I can work out a better comparison. If anyone wants to give me their estimated figures for costs of school meals etc that would be useful as well.

As a rough rule of thumb cost of school meals for 2 children would be about £1000 per year so if I do take things any further I will take that into account.

Now had a copy of the full report, above link I think was a summary.

http://www.cps.org.uk/pdf/pub/395.pdf

In fact their calculations are all correct as far as I can see but in their £11k cost of a lone parent they ionclude HB and CTB which I think is a little misleading. Also, the 2 parent family has a £90k mortgage but this means they are paying £140/wk housing costs, much higher than the lone parent's £53/wk in their example.

Its also relevant that their headline finding is that the 2 parent family would only be £1 per week per head better off. However this implies that family expenditure rises directly in proportion with the number of family members which isn't really the case. If it was the couple applicable amount would be twice as much as the single person amount wouldn't it?

Andy

Like you, stuff like this makes my blood boil also. There are a number of things with this report that I could go on about but I may come back to that.

Personally, I would be extremely wary or reports like these which draw a number of conclusions on inconclusive evidence.

For example, the report attemts to link the curtailing of benefit dependence in the USA in the 1990's with the lowering of teenage pregnancy rates, without providing a shred of evidence to show any link between the two, other than abstinence education programmes, which may or may not have been widely adopted, widely attended or widely followed.

Indeed, there may have been a number of factors for the lowering of teenage pregnancy rates such as better contraception and pregancy advice and information, better and more sex education in the education system, increased use of contraception, partucularly at a time when aids became a major social problem, to name but a few.

The fact that the report has been commissioned by a right wing think tank has, of course, no relationship with the tenor of its conclusions! Yeah ok!

Regards
Paul