Single childless people more likely to be poor, report finds

SINGLE IRISH people without children are over three times more likely than the rest of the population to experience persistent poverty, according to a new report.

Households headed by a single adult, with or without children, are more exposed to poverty risks than people living in couples, but the probability of persistent poverty for singles without children is even higher, according to the report, Growing Unequal? Income Distribution and Poverty in OECD Countries.

It finds that persistent poverty is “much more widespread” in Ireland than in other developed countries and is on a par with the US.

It also says that general poverty rates are above average in Ireland when compared to other states.

The report ranks Ireland seventh worst in an international comparison of child poverty rates. It said 16 per cent of children were living in poverty in Ireland in the mid-2000s.

Denmark had the lowest child poverty rate of 30 countries at 3 per cent and Turkey the highest at 25 per cent.

The report also examined poverty among the elderly. It noted “sizeable increases” in income poverty were recorded in some countries, “particularly in Ireland”.

Across all OECD countries, single-adult households with and without children were more exposed to poverty risks than people living in couples, especially when considering the risk of having long periods with low income. On average, single adults with children faced a risk of persistent poverty that was twice as high as for the whole population.

The probability of persistent poverty for singles without children was even higher, being on average three times larger than for the entire population, “and much more . . . in Ireland”.

However, the report said the risk of falling into poverty could also depend on the number of children in the household.

Poverty rates increased when three children or more were present in the family, especially in Ireland, Mexico, Poland, the UK and the US.

The poverty rate of households with no workers was above 50 per cent in Ireland, although Ireland was one of the few countries in which household income inequality fell in the decade from the mid-1980s until the mid-1990s.

The report found the importance of non-standard jobs had increased in recent years, although with different intensity across countries. Similarly, the incidence of temporary workers (temporary agency workers, on-call workers, seasonal workers, workers on fixed-term contracts of one year or less) had risen only marginally on average (from little more than 10 per cent in 1985 to around 12 per cent in 2000) but had risen by much more in Ireland, Spain and Italy.

In the 10 years to the mid- 2000s, non-employment rates fell on average in most of the OECD countries, especially in Ireland and Spain. Since the mid-1990s, benefits had fallen as a share of household income in a majority of these countries, most strongly in Finland and Sweden, following the recovery from the deep recession in the early 1990s, but also in Ireland, due to strong rates of growth.

Ireland’s data was provided by the Central Statistics Office.