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Lone parents, poverty and work: policy approaches and lessons from aboard

The UK government has set two ambitious targets: one to increase lone-parent employment and the other to eradicate child poverty. This article focuses on policy approaches and recent reforms relating to lone-parent employment in five countries (Australia, France, the Netherlands, Norway, and the US) in order to place UK policy development in a wider context. It then focuses on two countries with different approaches to the issue of combining paid work and care work. Both the US and Norway can be described as countries with ‘adult-worker’ orientations but implemented in different ways, and with different outcomes for lone parents. We argue that if the UK government wishes to achieve both aims – increasing lone-parent employment and eliminating child poverty – it should look to the Norwegian rather than the North American model. This means that it will be necessary to consider the broader issues of gender and income inequality, as well as the specific policies related to lone-parent employment.