THE emotional and human costs of parental divorce or separation may be immeasurable, but the financial costs are clearer. The average couple with two children will cost the State £80,000 over ten years if they split up, researchers say.
Enabling single parents to raise children alone could be even more expensive, costing the State between £71,000 and £123,000 over the same period.
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The figures are published today by the Centre for Policy Studies, the right-of-centre think-tank, with the intention of demonstrating the impact of family breakdown on the tax and welfare system.
Bob Rowthorn, Professor of Economics at Cambridge University, said that with one in three children expected to experience parental divorce or separation, the potential cost to the Exchequer could run into billions of pounds.
“The long-term cost of subsidising family break-up is unsustainable,” he said. “It is time to switch resources towards a system that encourages and supports two-parent families to ensure their survival.”
Professor Rowthorn’s research, based on government tax benefit model tables and including tax credits, found that a couple consisting of a man on average earnings (£460 per week) with a wife earning £250 per week pay £76,000 in tax (net of benefits) over ten years. If they split up and continue to earn the same amounts, they pay only £4,000 in tax (net of benefits) and end up costing the Exchequer £80,000.
An unemployed couple living together in social housing typically receive benefits (net of tax) of £128,000 over ten years. If they split up they get £148,000, costing the Exchequer £20,000.
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Lone parents with two children can receive benefits (net of tax) of between £71,000 and £123,000, depending on whether they continue to work and whether they receive child maintenance.
Kate Green, director of the Child Poverty Action Group, said that the centre’s findings were misleading.
“We are not seeing shed-loads of taxpayers’ money going on extravagant benefits for lone parents,” she said.
“Children growing up in lone-parent households, despite all the investment that the Government has made, still face the highest poverty levels in the country.”