Working parents on lower incomes are being forced into debt, have had to reduce their hours or quit their jobs altogether due to problems affording childcare, reveals new research.
‘The Working Families Index 2023: Spotlight on lower-income families’, which based on a nationally representative survey of over 2,000 working parents with a total household income of £50,000 or less, highlights how many working parents are having to make changes to their employment to afford and/or access childcare. It also shows that parents on lower incomes are often unable to work flexibly.
Key findings include:
- 4 in 10 working parents on lower incomes have gone into debt to pay for childcare.
- Over half of working parents on lower incomes (51 per cent) have had to reduce their working hours to manage childcare needs. Women and black parents are most impacted.
- Parents on lower incomes have significantly less access to hybrid or remote working arrangements than parents on higher incomes. Instead, lower-income parents tend to work reduced hours or term-time only.
- Those who successfully requested flexible working were a third less likely to have quit their job to manage childcare, 25 per cent less likely to fall into debt and half as likely to have had their mental health negatively impacted than those who had their request turned down.
