About the project

General overview

The Nuffield funded Family Change, Wellbeing and Social Policy project will explore how family living arrangements have changed over recent decades, how this affects adults’ and children’s access to resources, and the implications for policy.

Why this project is important

Children have increasingly complex family living arrangements. In the UK, more than 2-in-5 children born in 2000 were not living with both biological parents by age 11. While some of these children lived with a single parent, others had stepparents or split their time between households because they shared care.

Toddler looking up at one of two adults with whom she is holding hands

Increased family complexity has coincided with a greater emphasis on ‘family’ income in the welfare system, as means testing has expanded. Welfare policy is particularly likely to affect complex families but, in these families, the responsibilities of adults to one another, and to children, are often poorly defined.

Despite these changes, the UK’s social security and child maintenance systems continue to view family life in binary terms, assuming children live in single-parent or two-parent homes, poorly reflecting family lives today. As a consequence, in some households, children and adults may not be receiving the financial support they need.

Project flow

One-in-four children in the UK live with a single parent. There is an assumption that, because the share of single parent families has not changed since the late 1990’s, that family structures are unchanged. However, there have been other changes in family life. 

Describe family change:
  • produce new descriptive evidence on family composition and family dynamics, and their relationship to income and welfare receipt
Analyse linked between family structure, sources of family income, and spending:
  • examine how family change affects household income and its composition
  • analyse how family structure and income composition affects spending on children
Draw together international policy lessons:
  • review developments in the treatment of families in social security and child maintenance systems
Model alternative policy processes:
  • assess how policy change would affect individual and family income among those in vulnerable households
Inform key policy debates:
  • on the appropriateness of the ‘benefit unit’ for delivering means-tested support
  • on the treatment of ‘shared care’ in social security and child maintenance systems

Datasets used