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Poverty and Single Mothers In this paper I plan to talk a little about our organisation and its history and purpose before moving on to look at single mothers and poverty, with a specific focus on Family Tax Benefit payments and child support. I argue that the effects of July 1 changes to FTB and the current child support legislation amendment bill no. 2, announced in last year�s Budget, can only increase poverty in single mother households. Single Parent Support Australia was formed in the early 1970s to campaign for single mothers� rights to raise their children. There were no commonwealth payments for single mothers and women who were pregnant without a husband were expected to relinquish their children for adoption. The pain and suffering adoption policies created for relinquishing mothers are documented in the NSW Parliamentary Inquiry (2000). Mothers came together to lobby for a Pension payment so they could raise their own children, even if this meant living in poverty. This leads me to the next issue, which is often raised, and that is why do we focus on mothers. There are four main reasons. Firstly, it is mothers who give birth and who therefore do not have a discretionary relationship to children wherein they may choose whether or not they are interested in them. Mothers bear the physical costs of pregnancy, birth and lactation and maternal and child welfare is therefore an important issue for women, in a way that is irrelevant for men. Secondly, nine out of ten children of separated families live with their mothers. This has nothing to do with court decisions, as only five percent of custody applications ever go to court judgements, and most commonly reflects the division of labour in the household before the couple separated. That is, where mothers had left the workforce to bear and raise the children, while their partner earned the family income. After separation, this division of labour often continues. A third reason to focus on mothers� needs is their greater economic vulnerability. Women�s jobs are typically less secure than those available to men. Women�s pay is typically lower and women�s training and skill development is interrupted by their withdrawal from the workforce to give birth. Male sole parents are more likely to have fewer children, who are older and they are also more likely to be employed. Single mothers are more likely to be living on income support - therefore poverty is a more pressing issue for women. The fourth difference lies in the issue of gendered violence. Four out of five intimate partner homicides involve women as victims and men as perpetrators. Some people like to argue that men suffer from domestic violence too, and undoubtedly that is the case, however the gendered pattern of the domestic violence body count gives a clear picture of women�s exposure to men�s violence. These four differences - maternity, the division of post-separation care responsibilities, women�s relationship to the workforce and to gendered violence clearly point to a need to begin from the position of single mothers in dealing with issues for sole parent families. We argue that by the time we have met single mothers� needs, issues for single fathers are also likely to have been addressed. I would now like to turn to the issue of poverty. What does poverty mean for single parent families - Living in poverty means
Homelessness is an increasing issue for single parents as public housing stocks decline and more families are forced into the higher costs of the private rental market. Single parents are less likely than other families to be buying their own home -70% of wider population are buying their home compared to 40% of SPS. 42% of single parents spent more than a quarter of their income on housing, compared to 21% of couple families with children (ABS 2000). Single mothers� housing status is exacerbated by domestic violence. Mothers fleeing domestic violence face high rates of homelessness and reliance on public housing (Chung et al 2000). A recent study by the AIFS found that women cited violence as the reason for marriage breakdown in 40% of cases. In my own research 50 percent of women leaving marriages or de facto partnerships gave violence as the reason the relationship ended. Single mothers� poverty after separation has been a well-documented feature of social policy for more than two decades. Research by NATSEM (Harding and Szukalska 1999), found that the combination of the child support scheme and increased family payments had started to reduce the incidence of child poverty in single parent families by the mid 1990�s. However since that time there have been reductions in child support and we also now, from July 1 2000, have reductions in family payments for single parent families, arising from distributing family payments to the other parent, once they have a court order to see their child for 37 nights or more. The losses in family payment to single parent households were concealed within the raw increases in the amount of payment when the GST was introduced. Robert is currently assessed on a child support income amount (CSIA) of $25 000 in respect of Natasha, aged 6, and Jack, aged 9, who are living with their mother, Karen. Robert picks the children up from school every second Friday and drops them back to Karen late Sunday afternoon. The children also spend half of every school holidays in Robert�s care (a total of 92 nights a year or 25 per cent). The figures below indicate that Robert will have his child support assessment reduced by $418, or $8 per week, while Karen will receive $209 a year less to support the children, or $4 a week.
The research paper Financial Living Standards After Divorce: A Recent Snapshot by Bruce Smyth and Ruth Weston looked at a subset of the Australian Divorce Transitions Project data of separated men and women. All the men in the sample were payers and all the women were payees. Ten percent of men had dependent children of a new relationship. 62 percent of women were not re-partnered. All the payers were employed. In the 'impact of child support' they report that three percent of payers had incomes below the Henderson Poverty Line before child support was deducted. After paying child support, this figure increased to seven percent. In contrast, 24 percent of women wage and salary earners had incomes below the Henderson Poverty Line before child support was paid. After child support was received, this figure reduced to ten percent. Seventy-eight percent of women who were dependent on income support had incomes below the Henderson Poverty Line before child support was paid. After child support was received, this figure reduced to fifty percent. This data confirms that non-custodial fathers are not plunged into poverty by paying child support. Despite the research evidence, current child support legislation seeks to reduce the amount of child support payable. The Bill would only increase the proportion of single mothers living in poverty and increase the deprivation experienced by their children. Bibliography Australian Bureau of Statistics (2000) Australian Housing Survey Catalogue 4182.0 Chung, D., Kennedy, R., O�Brien, B. and Wendt, S., (2000), Home Safe Home: The link between domestic and family violence and women�s homelessness, Adelaide, Partnerships Against Domestic Violence, Social Policy Research Group, University of South Australia. Harding, A., and Szukalska, A., (1999), Trends in Child Poverty in Australia: 1982 to 1995-96, Discussion Paper 42, Canberra, NATSEM. New South Wales Parliament Legislative Council Standing Committee on Social Issues, (2000), Releasing the Past: Adoption Practices 1950-1998 Final Report, Sydney, NSW Parliament. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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