Launched today, Gingerbread’s latest report finds that most single parent families are financially fragile, and despite frugality, such families regularly struggle to meet their financial commitments.

Paying the Price is the first report in a three-year project investigating the effect of the ‘age of austerity’ in single parent families. With data collected from an online survey and in-depth interviews, the current report turns its attention to how single parents’ household budgets have been affected by austerity measures.

More than half of (55%) of single parents stated that they ran out of money before the end of almost every month. Almost nine in ten (87%) had borrowed money for sought emergency welfare support in the last year. Gingerbread also found that 40 per cent of single parents are behind on their bills.

Between 2010/2011 and 2011/2012, the incomes of single parent families have fallen by  six per cent whilst the incomes of couple families have, for the most part, remained static.

A significant source of financial trouble for single parent families was the rise in living costs; single parents are more affected by the costs of housing, utility bills and foods as they take up a larger portion of their income. Additionally, single parent families are significantly affected by tax and benefit reforms.

This can also hinder single parent families’ financial resilience with three quarters of single parent saying they were rarely able to save, leaving them unprepared to cope with unexpected financial costs.

Although many single parents have adopted a number of ways of coping with austerity, such as careful budget management and finding cheap substitutes for some products, many single parents are trapped in a difficult-to-escape cycle of financial fragility.

Read the full report here.