We also differentiate the household structure according to the gender of the main earner. Main
earner is identified as the adult with the highest income from wages and salaries in March 2013. Since
the definition of an in-work household only requires that at least one adult household member was
working a minimum of seven months in the time period April 2012 to March 2013, there are some
working households where no adult received income from wages and salaries in the month of
March 2013. This shrinks the sample to 715,713 working households and produces an in-work
poverty rate of 6.2 percent. 23 Table 9 shows gender-related in-work poverty rates for different
household types. Independent of the household structure, it can be seen that working households
with a female main earner face an elevated in-work poverty rate compared to working households
with a male main earner. The difference becomes most apparent for couple with child(ren)
households, where this household type experiences an in-work poverty rate of 12.3 percent if a
female is the main earner, compared to 3 percent if a male is the main earner. However, it is also
worth noting from Table 9 that only one fourth (24.2 percent) of couple households with child(ren)
has a female main earner.
Table 9. Gender of main earner and in-work poverty rate
Couple without children
Couple with child(ren)
One parent with child(ren)
Two or more family
household
One-person household
Other multi-person
household
Total
Main earner: male
In-work poverty rate
2.0%
3.0%
7.8%
Main earner: female
In-work poverty rate
6.6%
12.3%
13.3%
Share of households with
female main earner
37.1%
24.2%
73.3%
5.9%
11.2%
46.8%
5.7%
7.1%
52.6%
8.6%
13.7%
44.3%
3.7%
10.0%
39.4%
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).
4.7 Job characteristics
Occupation
Next, we examine the in-work poverty rate based on occupation. Identification is based on whether at
least one adult member of the working household states their respective occupation type. The sample
size of working households defined by occupation is 1,141,926 and the corresponding average inwork poverty rate is 4.3 percent. 24 The triangular markers in Figure 8 shows the occupation-related
relative distance in percentage points to this mean household in-work poverty rate.
Households with professionals (-1.8 percentage points) and managers (-1.5 percentage points) face a
below-average in-work poverty rate. The occupational groups with the highest likelihood of belonging
We excluded households where both adults were earning the exact same amount.
Note that households are counted according to their number of working adults and therefore over represents households
with more than one adult worker compared to households with only one working adult. Consequently, this lowers the inwork poverty rate.
23
24
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