SINGE PARENT families are at high risk of finding themselves below the poverty line, the Cyprus Association for Single Parent Families and Friends said yesterday.
“We believe single parent families are at high risk because automatically they have a lower income than a two parent family,” Elena Soteriou, the association’s president said.
Soteriou said single parent families – often made up of women – suffered from the lack of a stable income and often struggled to make ends meet.
She said: “If you consider that women often earn less than men, or some have never even worked in their entire lives and then suddenly find themselves in the position of needing to earn a living, it’s very difficult. They are a group more vulnerable to living below the poverty line and are also vulnerable to social exclusion.”
Soteriou told the Cyprus Mail the only state aid single parent families received was from the Social Welfare Services, and then only if they fulfilled certain criteria including the income of the single parent, property in his or her name, his or her marital status (single, divorced, widowed), whether he or she has to make rent payments, pay back interest on loans, and how many children the single parent had.
“Depending on all these criteria the social welfare services decides the amount of benefits the family should receive. The sum is never fixed and depends on a calculation of each family’s basic needs,” she said.
Nevertheless Soteriou said the money still wasn’t enough to make ends meet and called for the law’s re-amendment.
According to a Eurostat report, 35 per cent of single parent families in Cyprus lived below the poverty line in 2005 up from 22 per cent in 2003.
According to the same report the problem is greatest for women who live alone. It said more than half of single women in Cyprus (59 per cent) lived below the poverty line, up from 57 per cent in 2003, and higher than the EU-25 average of 27 per cent.
For men who live alone the situation is less dire with only 29 per cent living below the poverty line, down from 31 per cent in 2003. Nevertheless the percentage of Cypriot males also exceeds the EU average of 23 per cent.
Thankfully the problem does not really affect families with only one child, with only nine per cent of the population affected. The same percentage applies for families with two children. However according to the report the more children a family had, the more risk it had of falling below the poverty line. In fact families with three or more children had a 14 per cent of falling below the poverty line.
Households with three adults also run an 11 per cent risk of living below the poverty line, while homes with three or more adults and children do not appear to have any particular problem with a percentage of eight per cent, up from six per cent in 2003.
Meanwhile 16 per cent of all the adult population is at risk for falling below the risk-of-poverty threshold, which is set at 60 per cent of the national median disposable income.
Specifically for the age group 25-49, the percentage of Cypriots at risk is 10 per cent. For the age group 50-64 this increases to 14 per cent and over the age of 65 this jumps to 51 per cent.
Forty eight per cent of all households with only one adult risk living below the poverty line, with 27 per cent under the age of 64 and 70 per cent over the age of 65. Households with two pensioners are in a much better position only at 14 per cent risk in 2005.
Meanwhile according to Eurostat compared to other European pensioners, Cypriots over 65 are 2.6 times more likely to find themselves below the poverty line.
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