Single parents struggle more than most families, research says

Stuff co.nz 13 July 2015
Single parents still face more challenges than any other type of family, new research has found.

The 2015 Families and Whanau Status Report, released by the Social Policy Evaluation and Research Unit (Superu), showed while most families were doing reasonably well when it came to measures such as income, housing and health, single-parent families were the exception.

Of 140,000 single-parent families with at least one child under 18, 54 per cent had an income below 60 per cent of the median family income, the report found.

More than two-thirds lived in the less well-off neighbourhoods as measured by the Deprivation Index, and one in five lived in the most deprived neighbourhoods.

Members of single-parent families were more likely to suffer from mental health issues, with 56 per cent rated as having worse mental health than the median for the population as a whole.

Of teenagers from two-parent families, 72 per cent reported that their family often had fun together, compared to 62 per cent from single-parent families.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/life-style/parenting/family-life/70186781/Single-parents-struggle-more-than-most-families-research-says