Malta has the highest rate of jobless single parents in Europe, a situation that drastically affects their happiness, according to the latest study.
The island has 54 per cent of lone-parent families – defined as a parent living without a partner and children younger than 18 – out of the labour market, compared to 49 per cent in Ireland and 36 per cent in the UK.
“Employment plays an important role in parents’ subjective well-being and lone parents who are not working have the lowest life satisfaction and are the least happy,” Eurofound’s third Quality of Life Survey found.
Having a job is important for lone parents’ mental well-being, even in countries where generous benefits are provided and where staying at home is often voluntary.
The survey, carried out among 36,000 households in the 28 member states, zooms in on the living conditions and social situation of Europeans in the light of how the economic crisis has affected families with children.
The aim of the report is to help policymakers identify the types of families that need to be targeted across the EU after the crisis led to deteriorating living and working conditions and increased inequalities.
Overall, European lone parents who were not working encountered difficulties in paying their rent or mortgage (29 per cent), utility bills (42 per cent), consumer loans (20 per cent) and informal loans (18 per cent).
Jobless lone-parent households are the most likely to face a high level of deprivation that is measured by whether they can afford to keep their house warm; pay for a week’s holiday; replace worn-out furniture; have a meal with meat, chicken or fish every second day; to buy new, as opposed to second-hand clothes; and have friends or family over for a drink or meal at least once a month.
Looking at working hour preferences, an overwhelming majority of lone mothers and coupled mothers said they would be willing to work if given the chance to choose working hours, with more than 50 per cent of inactive mothers in the EU preferring to work part-time.
Giving her initial reaction to the report, Anna Borg from the University’s Centre for Labour Studies, said this research suggested that much more attention had to be given to single mothers as a category if Malta wanted to improve their participation rates in the labour market.
“Single mothers face particular problems which need to be tackled in a holistic manner,” she said.
The study split families into four groups. Malta was in the mixed, mainly traditional classification, where there was usually low female employment rate, low rate of part-time work, few children in childcare and long parental leave.
Malta was placed in this category together with the Czech Republic, Hungary, Latvia, Poland, Romania and Slovakia. Luckily, contrary to other situations in Europe, Maltese do not face the same housing insecurities jobless households with children encounter.
Single mothers face particular problems
The most traditional group – Bulgaria, Estonia, Greece, Spain, Croatia, Italy and Lithuania – saw an increase in housing insecurity, probably another reflection of increased unemployment in these countries since the crisis.
However, in the mixed, mainly traditional group, which Malta is in, little change was recorded in housing insecurity. This is probably because these countries have a high rate of owner-occupancy (without a mortgage), ranging from 63 per cent of the population in Malta to 96 per cent in Romania.
The survey recommends that member states take targeted action to help lone parents into work, since families in which nobody works face high levels of deprivation.
“Getting people who have been recently made redundant back into work as soon as possible must be a policy priority to avoid the risk of disadvantage becoming entrenched.”