The choice agenda and welfare reform

Largely eschewed during New Labour's first term in office, an emphasis on choice and marketisation subsequently featured strongly in public service reform in regard to how to encourage a more diverse range of providers and ‘empower’ service users in various policy sectors, such as health, social care and education (Greener, Reference Greener and Powell2008: 222; Needham, Reference Needham and Powell2008: 182). Choice has been presented as the means to drive efficiency and effectiveness and build support for public provision of welfare services (Brown, Reference Brown2007; Needham, Reference Needham and Powell2008: 181). As a policy mechanism, choice also holds out the promise to free politicians and the public from past frustrations and failures in public service delivery (Clarke et al., Reference Clarke, Newman and Westmarland2007: 246).

Implementing the choice agenda with respect to employment and social security, however, is somewhat problematic. It contains within it a message that is subversive of the prevailing welfare reform agenda. After all, if choice is central to empowering users and they are best placed to choose how to benefit from public services, should some claimants have the option to choose, in their self-defined interests, to not participate in the labour market or activation programmes, while maintaining their welfare entitlements?

Lone parenthood presents an interesting case for the evolving choice agenda, as does non-market care activity more generally. Benefit entitlements in the absence of job search conditionality for the ‘economically inactive’ have largely been confined to people who are assessed as presently unable to take up paid work. The right to social security support has, nonetheless, increasingly been hedged around with conditions that stipulate individual ‘acceptable’ responsibilities linked to paid work activity. Previous exemptions from the need to be actively seeking work, such as lone parents’ participation in caring activity or, in the general population, for reasons of personal sickness or disability, are thus subject to ongoing challenge and have been weakened as benefit eligibility criteria are tightened (Dwyer, Reference Dwyer2004: 268, Reference Dwyer and Powell2008).

Greener (Reference Greener2007: 259) argues that the version of choice New Labour promoted is grounded in the extension of consumer rights, standards and expectations to the delivery of public services. This is combined with the notion of individualised responsibilities, with claimants required to accept their responsibility to be independent productive members of the labour market. New Labour's approach to ‘citizenship’ concerned itself with the exercise of welfare rights and provision of state support in relation to an individual's obligations (Giddens, Reference Giddens2002: 16; Clarke, Reference Clarke2005: 451), an approach that continues to inform welfare policy under the Coalition Government (Duncan-Smith, Reference Duncan-Smith2010). Such an approach offers little space for people to define for themselves how these obligations might or should be enacted. Instead, the active responsible citizen is one chiefly defined in terms of their contribution to the labour market. Individual decisions regarding paid work are subjugated to macro-economic policy objectives concerning labour market flexibility, wage inflation and welfare expenditure containment. New Labour's employment and social security measures to bolster labour market entry by the non-employed were primarily concerned to reduce long-term labour market detachment. Detachment from the labour market risks the erosion of skill levels and employers’ willingness to hire the long-term non-employed. As a consequence, the ability of the non-employed to compete effectively for jobs and bear down on wage costs, thought necessary to promote higher levels of employment, is compromised (Grover and Stewart, Reference Grover and Stewart2002: 62). Welfare reform seeks to improve the effective supply of labour and its flexibility through reducing financial barriers to employment and tightening benefit conditionality (Grover, Reference Grover2005: 76; Grover and Piggott, Reference Grover and Piggott2007: 738).

It is from within these contexts that constraints operating on the expansion of choice in the field of welfare-to-work become visible. Yet fuller recognition of the value of non-market forms of work and the validity of choosing care could permit policy to better address the reality of life for many outside of, and marginal to, the labour market. It could also enhance the capacity people have for self-determination in the balance between paid work and family life, which low-paid individuals may experience as unpredictable and unsatisfactory (Dean, Reference Dean2007: 526; Williams, Reference Williams2001).

For lone parents, as for the primary carers of children (the vast majority of whom are women) more generally, decisions about whether and when to enter paid work are multi-faceted. These may reflect the deliberation of opportunities, but also structural barriers or constraints, such as childcare availability, a lack of potential labour market opportunities, issues around access to paid work and transportation or the marginal financial value of employment (for example, see Bell et al., Reference Bell, Finch, La Velle, Sainsbury and Skinner2005; Lewis, Reference Lewis2003; Hoxhallari et al., Reference Hoxhallari, Connolly and Lyon2007; Millar and Ridge, Reference Millar and Ridge2008).

Socially situated but personal notions of what constitutes responsible parenting also affect the choices people make (Duncan and Irwin, Reference Duncan and Irwin2004; Edwards et al., Reference Edwards, Duncan, Reynolds and Alldred2002). Considerable variation exists between parents in what is understood to constitute ‘good parenting’ in relation to decisions regarding the balancing of paid work and family life (for example, Duncan and Edwards, Reference Duncan and Edwards1999). Current welfare-to-work policy, in demanding lone-parent labour market activation by dependent child age, thus effectively constrains an aspect of self-determination regarding what good parenting is enacted to entail.

We do not seek to disparage ‘choice’ as an objective, but to recognise its limitations and draw a contrast between the promotion of market-orientated choice by governments and their resistance to choices around non-market-based activities. The former Secretary for State for Work and Pensions, James Purnell, was quite clear that there could be no choice not to work:

Lone parents and welfare-to-work reform post-Freud

Although policy reform following the Freud Review (Freud, Reference Freud2007) has sought to increasingly constrain the option of remaining outside of the labour market for lone parents deemed able to work, it would be unfair to suggest the New Labour Government did little other than tighten benefit eligibility conditions in order to encourage the take up of employment. A sizeable component of welfare reform, while not exclusively focused on lone parents, facilitated greater choice by making paid work, an option previously less plausible for many lone parents, more feasible (Lewis, Reference Lewis2003; Bell et al., Reference Bell, Finch, La Velle, Sainsbury and Skinner2005). Policy measures to make paid work more financially attractive have included: the National Minimum Wage, Working Tax Credit/Child Tax Credit, the National Childcare Strategy, Work Focused Interviews with Personal Advisers and active labour market programmes, such as the New Deal for Lone Parents. Where available, lone parents were able to participate voluntarily in the Employment Zones (EZs) programme (see Knijn et al., Reference Knijn, Martin and Millar2007: 645). The EZs contained the seeds of future reforms developed by New Labour's Flexible New Deal and the Coalition Government's Work Programme. Rolled out as pilots in 13 areas of the country in 2000, and largely delivered by private sector organisations, EZs enjoyed considerable flexibility over how to move clients into paid work in comparison to New Deal providers. The EZs were initially targeted at the long-term unemployed who were mandated to participate, although from 2003 the opportunity to participate was extended to lone-parent volunteers. In 2004, the EZs underwent further reform, with the introduction of Multiple Provider Employment Zones (MPEZ) in six areas. The aim here was to create greater competition between providers. The clients of the MPEZ were, initially, randomly allocated to a provider by a Jobcentre Plus adviser, but in 2007 clients were permitted to select their provider (Rafferty and Wiggan, Reference Rafferty and Wiggan2008: 31).

In the EZ programme, we see experimentation with a more expansive role for contracted return-to-work providers, together with the operation of consumerist rights and the enforcement of individual responsibilities. Many of the users were not there through choice for example. The long-term unemployed and New Deal for Young People returnees participated through direction and under the threat of sanction. As in other policy fields, the notion of choice has been collapsed into a market model of exchange, so that choice is principally concerned with operationalising (acceptable) options in response to signals concerning efficiency and effectiveness (Clarke et al., Reference Clarke, Newman and Westmarland2007: 248).

The recommendations made by the Freud Review (Freud, Reference Freud2007) show a debt to the approach taken in the EZs, as well as to the growing international emphasis on personalisation and contracting out (Finn, Reference Finn2009). The Freud Review proposed merging all New Deal schemes into a ‘Flexible New Deal’. The Review argued that, while claimants do have particular needs, they also face common obstacles to employment, irrespective of their age, disability, gender or parenthood status, and a common platform would help spread best practice. Flexible New Deal, it was proposed, would also build on previous experience of contestability to expand the use of the private and voluntary sector in the provision of welfare-to-work services, particularly for those most likely to face greater obstacles to participation in the labour market (DWP, 2007: 58; DWP, 2008a; DWP, 2008b).

The Flexible New Deal also incorporated greater freedom for providers to shape the services offered to clients through a ‘black box’ approach. In this model, Jobcentre Plus sets the desired outcomes, but does not prescribe the methods providers may use in order to achieve them (DWP, 2008a: 119). The Coalition's active labour market scheme, the Work Programme, to be introduced in Great Britain in 2011, replaces the Flexible New Deal, but shares many of the features of Flexible New Deal. This is not surprising given that David Freud helped inform development of the Work Programme as Shadow Minister for Welfare Reform for the Conservative Party and continues to assist its development as Minister for Welfare Reform in the Coalition Government. The Work Programme expands the market in welfare-to-work services and develops the ‘black box’ payment-by-results performance model. Contracted providers from the not-for-profit and for-profit sectors will continue to be rewarded primarily according to client job outcomes, but enjoy the freedom to tailor services to clients' perceived needs (Grayling, Reference Grayling2010).

As reforms to active labour market programmes have intended to foster the notion of the responsible citizen, independent and within the labour market, changes to the benefit system to tighten eligibility conditions have sought to buttress this. New Labour's 2006 Green Paper, A New Deal for Welfare: Empowering People to Work (DWP, 2006), proposed replacing Incapacity Benefit and IS paid on the grounds of incapacity with a new benefit: Employment and Support Allowance (ESA). Following the Welfare Reform Act (2007), the ESA was introduced in October 2008. ESA tightens eligibility for out-of-work benefits on grounds of disability or sickness. Recipients are subject to a Work Capability Assessment that examines what paid work participants may be capable of, rather than what paid work they cannot do (DWP, 2008a). Those judged to be able to move into the labour market in the medium or short term are placed in the ‘Work Related Activity Group’ (WRAG) of ESA and required to participate in employment-related activities as part of establishing a route back into the labour market. Alternatively, they are moved to Jobseekers’ Allowance to begin job-search activity immediately. Claimants deemed unable to move into employment even in the long term are placed in the ‘Support Group’ with no requirement to engage in work-related activity (DWP, 2008b: 69).

The tailoring of conditionality to employment readiness, needs and/or responsibilities and not to specific benefit category echoed the recommendations of the Gregg report, which reviewed conditonality in the benefit system for the Department of Work and Pensions (Gregg, Reference Gregg2008). Gregg also proposed that requirements for participation in work-related activity be extended to lone parents with children below three years of age (Gregg, Reference Gregg2008: 57). New Labour's agreement with the broad thrust of Gregg's (Reference Gregg2008) proposals was outlined in the White Paper, Raising Expectations and Increasing Support: Reforming Welfare for the Future (DWP, 2008b: 76). The prioritisation of labour market participation was affirmed by the Welfare Reform Act (2009), which includes the power necessary for the Secretary of State to abolish IS in the future, and move claimants to Jobseekers' Allowance or ESA. Under New Labour, the requirement to engage in work-related activity would be focused (at least initially) on lone parents with children aged between three and seven. The door was left open to the extension at a later date of a requirement to participate in work-related activity to lone parents with children aged between one and three (DWP, 2008b: 123). As noted earlier, the Coalition has already announced that from October 2011 lone parents with a youngest dependent child aged five or over are to be moved to the more ‘active’ Jobseekers’ Allowance (HM Treasury, Reference Treasury2010).

Such developments are not surprising, given what appears a cross-party consensus on welfare rights as conditional entitlements dependent on duties met and values adhered to (Dwyer, Reference Dwyer2004: 277), rather than as social rights that are ‘inalienable’. Welfare reform is permeated by the notion that paid employment will secure the independence of the individual and their family, and that encouraging participation in paid work is, and should be, the main priority for policy (Blair, Reference Blair2002; Brown, Reference Brown2007). Yet, as Grover and Stewart (Reference Grover and Stewart2002: 7) among others have pointed out, for those moving into low-paid work, the reality is often exchanging dependence on out-of-work benefits for dependence on in-work benefits in the form of the Working Tax Credit and state financial support for childcare (HM Treasury, Reference Treasury2008). Given government effectively exercises control over the minimum income of low-wage families, it is difficult to conclude that lone parents in low-paid employment achieve independence from the state.

Characteristics

Our principal concern is to explore the above outcome measures in relation to age of youngest dependent child, grouped to reflect current and proposed policies on compulsory job search activity. In our multivariate analysis, using logistic regression, we examine whether differences by youngest dependent child age in our outcome measures persist after controlling for other characteristics. The factors considered are levels of educational attainment, respondent's age, ‘category’ of lone parenthood (that is, single/never married, divorced/separated or widowed), whether respondents have ever had a job in the past and self-reported incapacity. Government Office Region and ethnicityFootnote ⁴ are also included in the models, although not reported here.

Findings

Overall, around eight out of ten lone parents (women and men grouped together) claiming IS for reasons of lone parenthood had not looked for work in the last four weeks (83.9 per cent) (Table 1). Of these, nearly two-thirds (63.9 per cent) stated that they would currently not like either a part-time or full-time job. Notable differences were apparent by age of youngest dependent child, with this number being highest for those with younger children: at around two-thirds (67.3 per cent) for lone parents whose youngest dependent child was aged between zero and seven years. This fell to around a half (55.4 per cent) for those whose youngest dependent child was between seven and 12 years of age, and to slightly more (59 per cent) for lone parents whose youngest dependent child was older (12+ years). Given that the majority of lone parents are women, the equivalent figures for lone mothers were similar to those for all lone parents. These findings suggest that the vast majority of people claiming IS on grounds of their lone-parent status were currently not looking for paid work, and that around half to two-thirds of this group, depending on age of youngest dependent child, stated that they presently would not like a job.

TABLE 1.

Self-reported job search activity: ILO economically inactive lone parents

Note: Column percentages, aged 18–60 yrs, excluding students (QLFS October–December, 2006 and 2007, weighted).

Table 2 goes on to break down the main reported reasons lone parents give for not seeking employment, presented for all economically inactive lone parents.Footnote ⁵ Differences in levels of economic inactivity and the main reasons reported for not looking for paid work were again notable by age of youngest dependent child. Over half (56.4 per cent) of economically inactive lone mothers, whose youngest dependent child was below seven years of age, stated that they were not seeking paid work, they would not like paid work and the (main) reason for not seeking employment was that they were looking after their children. The equivalent figure for those whose youngest dependent child was between seven and 12 years of age was lower, at around one-third (35.2 per cent). This compared to around 69.3 per cent and 42.2 per cent of coupled mothers respectively. There is thus nothing particularly unique about our findings for lone mothers. Economically inactive coupled mothers with younger children were more likely than lone parents to state that they currently would not like a job and their main reason for not seeking paid work was that they were looking after their children.

TABLE 2.

Economic activity and main reasons for not seeking paid work by youngest dependent child

Note: Column percentages, aged 18–60 yrs, excluding students (QLFS October–December, 2006 and 2007, weighted).

Although, compared to those with younger dependent children, lone mothers outside the labour market with older children were less likely to report looking after their children as the main reason for not seeking paid work, a greater number reported personal sickness or disability as their main reason. This was the case for 45 per cent of economically inactive lone mothers whose youngest dependent child was 12 years old or above. At the same time, the employment rates for those with older dependent children were higher than for those with younger dependent children (Table 1). As barriers relating to childrearing reduce with child age, more lone parents move into the labour market, although for those who remain outside of paid work, other forms of labour market barriers appear to come to the fore or concentrate. Notably, coupled mothers with similar aged children were less likely to report sickness, illness or disability as their main reason for not looking for work (Table 2). The comparatively poorer health of lone parents is evidenced in other research (for example, Benzeval, Reference Benzeval1998).

Not all lone mothers who stated they were not looking for work, because they were looking after their family or home, did not currently want a job. Around a quarter of economically inactive lone parents whose youngest dependent child was below seven years old, and an equivalent figure for those whose youngest dependent was between seven and 12 years of age, stated that although they were not seeking paid work, and the main reason was because they were looking after the family/home, they would currently like a job (27 per cent and 26.5 per cent respectively) (Table 2). Closer inspection, however, indicated that these people were more likely to be those with children towards the top end of each of dependent child age categories.

Other surveys include similar question items to those used in the current study, but with different response categories. The Families and Children Study (FACS), for example, offers the response ‘do not want to spend more time apart from my children’ as a reason for not looking for paid work, alongside other reasons, such as the availability or affordability of childcare. Using the 2005 FACS, Hoxhallari et al. (Reference Hoxhallari, Connolly and Lyon2007) found that 44 per cent of lone parents who were not in paid work stated not wanting to spend more time apart from their children as a reason for not undertaking paid work of 16 or more hours per week. The corresponding percentages for people who reported childcare availability (15 per cent) or affordability (7 per cent) were considerably lower. These figures, however, were not broken down by dependent child age.

Multivariate analysis

The multivariate analysis considers whether differences by dependent child age persist after controlling for other factors. Comparisons again are drawn to economically inactive coupled mothers. For this task, three separate logistic regression models were estimated (Table 3). The outcome variable for the first model (Model I) predicts members of the working-age lone-mother population who are claiming IS on grounds of lone parenthood, have not looked for work in the last four weeks and state they presently would not like a job (1 = yes). The second model estimated (Model II) predicts members of the working-age lone-mother population who are economically inactive (including IS claimants), not looking for paid work, who say they presently would not like a job and who state the main reason they are not looking for work is they are looking after their children. In the third model (Model III), an equivalent model to model II is estimated for coupled mothers.

TABLE 3.

Logistic regression: reasons for ILO economic inactivity, lone and coupled mothers

Notes: ** p <0.01, * p <0.05. Odds ratios. Aged 18–60 yrs, excluding students (QLFS October–December 2006 and 2007, not weighted). Outcome variables: Model I: 1 = IS claimant on grounds of lone parenthood, not looking for work, who presently would not like a job; Model II: 1 = ‘ILO economically inactive lone mother, not looking for work, presently would not like a job, (main) stated reason: looking after the family; Model III: 1 = ‘ILO economically inactive coupled mother, not looking for work, presently would not like a job, (main) stated reason: looking after the family. Base category: Youngest child 5–11 yrs; divorced lone parent (variable excluded from coupled mother model); NVQ Level 4/5; No reported health problem that affects kind/amount of work; North East; ‘White’ (2001 Census ethnic group definition). Ethnic Group and Government Office Region control variables are not reported.

All three models indicate that age of youngest dependent child remains a significant predictor of both outcome measures after controlling for other considered factors. At the same time, the findings demonstrate how low qualification levels are particularly important predictors of these forms of economic inactivity, especially for lone mothers. Compared to those with a degree level or above certificate (NVQ Key Skills Level 4/5), lone mothers with no qualifications were over six times more likely to be claiming IS, and state that they were not looking for a job and would currently not like a job (Model I, Odds ratio (OR) = 6.80, p< 0.01). Having no formal qualifications similarly predicted economically inactive lone mothers who were not looking for a job, currently not wanting paid work and who stated looking after their children as their main reason (Model II, OR = 6.31, p<0.01). Although having no formal qualifications similarly predicted economically inactive coupled mothers who reported they did not want a job and the main reason for this was looking after their children, the difference between those with no qualifications and those with NVQ level 4/5 certificates was not as large (Model III, OR = 3.47, p< 0.01). Levels of educational attainment therefore appear to be a bigger predictor of such forms of economic inactivity for lone mothers than for coupled mothers.

Other findings indicated that lone mothers who had never had a job in the past were around two and a half times more likely to be found in our two considered economic inactivity categories. Those with ill-health that restricted the amount or type of work they could undertake were also more likely to claim IS on grounds of lone parenthood, and say they currently would not like a job. After controlling for other factors, no significant differences were found, however, between the different categories of lone motherhood (never married, divorced/separated and widowed).