Universal Credit
(asked on 24th February 2025) - View Source
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask His Majesty's Government, further to the Written Answer by Baroness Sherlock on 10 February (HL4426), what are the numbers and proportions of lead carers in couples with children broken down by (1) gender of lead carer, and (2) whether employed, according to whether the couple has (a) one earner, broken down by gender; or (a) two earners.
Table below provides the breakdown of the number of lead carers in couples with children receiving Universal Credit by gender of the lead carer and whether the couple has no earners, one earner or two earners.
| Gender of lead carer | Volumes (October 2024) |
No earners | Female | 108,000 |
Male | 23,000 | |
One earner | Female | 320,000 |
Male | 47,000 | |
Two earners | Female | 190,000 |
Male | 21,000 | |
| Total | 709,000 |
Note: the data above is from Universal Credit administrative data from October 2024 and subject to retrospective changes. The volumes are of people who were in payment of UC in October 2024. The figures have been rounded to 2 significant figures. We have defined single status and couple status according to their standard allowance amount. 2-3% of households did not have a match between Universal Credit data and the Lead Carer data - those with missing values have been excluded from the figures above.