Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what proportion of universal credit claimants are lone parents (a) under 25 and (b) 25 and over.

The Department has a range of support on offer through Universal Credit (UC) to help claimants, including lone parents, prepare for and move into work. For example, from April 2019 we increased work allowance rates by £1,000 and they will be uprated in line with inflation in the future. This measure provides additional support in a package announced in Autumn Budget 2018, worth £1.7 billion by 2023/24, to some of the most vulnerable low paid working households.

The table below has an estimate based on households claiming UC by matching the UC household dataset (which contains information about family type), with the people on UC dataset (which contains information about age). The table gives the estimated total number of households on UC and those occupied by single parents in November 2018, split by age groups. The information in the table should be read in conjunction with the notes.

Source: Universal Credit household dataset and people on Universal Credit dataset

Notes:

1. The figures are estimates derived from unpublished information and have not been quality assured to National Statistics or Official Statistics publication standard.
2. Figures have been rounded to the nearest thousand. Individual figures may not add up to the total due to rounding.
3. A count date of the second Thursday of the month is used when calculating the statistics for the people and households on Universal Credit.
4. The figure for households occupied by single parents has been deduced where the household has a family type of ‘single with child dependent(s)’.
5. Further information on the background and methodology can be accessed here: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/739399/universal-credit-statistics-background-methodology.pdf