five (by around 1 to 3 percentage points in the case of two or more family households with children,
and substantially more for single-parent households).
Table 8. Household structure and in-work poverty rate
In-work poverty rate
4.8%
11.6%
1.2%
Share of households
25.7%
Share of group
100%
34.0%
66.0%
Couple with child(ren)
One working
(One working + child below 5)
>1 working
(>1 working + child below 5)
6.3%
13.5%
(9.9%)
1.9%
(1.8%)
36.8%
100%
37.8%
(19.4%)
62.2%
(17.2%)
One parent with child(ren)
(child below 5)
12.3%
(21.2%)
9.6%
100%
(10.2%)
Two or more family household
One working
(One working + child below 5)
>1 working
(>1 working + child below 5)
9.6%
19.9%
(22.1%)
3.1%
(3.8%)
6.6%
100%
38.4%
(15.9%)
61.6%
(22.8%)
One-person household
6.4%
15.3%
Other multi-person household
One working
>1 working
11.6%
19.2%
6.3%
6.0%
Total
7.0%
Couple without children
One working
>1 working
100%
41.0%
59.0%
Source: IDI 2019. Notes: Working status and in-work poverty rate as defined in Section 3 (average in-work poverty rate of
7.0 percent for the sample of 725,313 working households).
As illustrated in Figure 1, we find that in-work poverty prevalence increases when increasing the
poverty threshold and that the relationship is non-linear. To further decompose this relationship, we
calculate the in-work poverty rate for different levels of poverty thresholds (again ranging from 30 to
90 percent of the median equivalised income) for each household type and also differentiate the
prevalence by accounting for all income sources and excluding WfF and AS (see Figure 7). We can see
that each household type reacts differently to a change in the poverty threshold. For example, the inwork poverty rate of couples without children and one-person households increases at a much slower
pace compared to single-parent and two or more family households. Of particular note is the key
differences in the re-distributional effect of WfF and AS across household types. In particular, WfF and
AS make a sizable impact on the prevalence of in-work poverty for single-parent households: at the
poverty threshold of 60 percent of median equivalised income, the in-work poverty rate is 12.3 and
21.6 percent (with and without WfF and AS, respectively). The comparable figures for couples with
child(ren) illustrate a smaller impact: with figures of 6.3 and 9.2 percent (with and without WfF and
AS, respectively).
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