The amount of income from both the interviewees’ wages and their partner’s was explicitly asked in the interview. Some interviewees answered this question to the pound, some to the nearest ten pounds, and a couple more vaguely. Most gave a weekly figure, some monthly, and some reported an annual income. Some respondents gave a figure before the deduction of Income Tax, and some gave take home pay. In the case of Karen, her partner’s income had to be imputed as
she did not know it. Adapting these figures into the comparable form of post-tax weekly income was therefore not straightforward and figures are unlikely to be accurate to the exact pound. However, the creation of an Excel spreadsheet allowed the income from wages to be calculated for all seventeen households with a fair degree of accuracy, using a procedure set out in Appendix One.
Interviewees had to have someone in their household employed thirty hours a week or more to be selected for the sample. In fourteen of the seventeen households, the man worked over thirty hours. In five of these households the woman was also employed, but for fewer hours, and in nine the woman was not working. In only one household was the woman working over thirty hours, and in this case her partner was working part time. In one case both partners were working for less than thirty hours. These figures are summarised in Table 7.1.
Table 7.1 Analysis of Working Hours
Household type Number of
households
% of
households
Man working thirty hours or more, woman less than thirty
5 29%
Man working thirty hours or more, woman not working
9 53%
Woman working thirty hours or more, man less than thirty
2 12%
Woman working thirty hours or more, man not working
0 0%
Both working less than thirty hours 1 6%
Total 17 100%
The dominance of male working that this suggests does not reflect national trends; 68% of partnered women with children are in work (ONS 2010). Two reasons explain this. Firstly, any household which had two full time earners, or two well-paid part timers, would exceed the income ceiling of £25,000 used in selecting the sample. Secondly, thirteen of the interviewees still had children of pre-school age; women with children of this age are less likely to be in work, especially in low-income areas such as the East End of Newcastle (Duncan and
Smith 2002, Wiggan 2005). All of the interviewees with young children stated a desire to return to paid employment in the future, and if these aspirations were achieved the sample would contain more than the national average percentage of working mothers (attitudes to paid work are discussed in section 10.2).
Another way of categorising the households is by earning type; male sole earner, male primary earner, equal earner, female primary earner and female sole earner. Nine households are male sole earners, three male primary earners, three equal earners, and two female primary earners, as shown in Table 7.2.
Table 7.2 Analysis of Income Types
Income type Number of
households
% of
households
Male sole earner 9 53%
Male primary earner 3 17.5%
Equal earner 3 17.5%
Female primary earner 2 12%
Female sole earner 0 0%
Total 17 100%
The type of work done by both men and women in the sample group was surprisingly varied. It can roughly be characterised by type: low skill, low pay; moderate skill, moderate pay; high skill, (potentially) high pay.
Much of the work was low skilled and low paid. Full time jobs undertaken by the male partners included security guard, warehouse supervisor, leisure attendant, motor mechanic and taxi driver (two). Among the women, there were two part- time school cooks. For the six families in the low skill/low pay group working hours were generally long, pay and conditions fairly poor, and the interviewees described work as hard and exhausting. Work was also insecure; several women expressed fears that their partners might lose their jobs or have their hours reduced due to the prevailing economic climate. Two also said their partners had been out of work in the recent past. This was the least likely group to have more than one income, and even when the female partner was working part- time, total family income remained in the lower half of the sample.
A number of moderately skilled, moderately paid jobs also featured: for the men, community outreach worker, PA to a director, kitchen designer, data analyst, and painter and decorator, and for the women administrator, community development officer and nursery nurse. Six families fell into this group. Several of the interviewees gave some account of improving pay and conditions over time; they or their partner had often started out in ‘low-skill, low-pay’ jobs and worked their way up, often through getting qualifications. However, these positive career trajectories were disrupted by the high
likelihood of recent unemployment; four out of six men in this group had been unemployed in the last three years. They were also the most likely to have experienced periods of serious mental or physical illness; three of the families in the group had one partner with a long-term medical condition, and clearly this had held back their career development. If the full-time workers in this group were able to secure the right promotions, or if these families were able to become ‘one-and-half-earner households’ with both partners receiving a decent wage, these families would no longer be lower income households. However, it seemed most likely that this would take several years to achieve and would rely on individual hard work, continuing good health, and an up-turn in the economy.
Finally, a surprising number of those in the sample had high skill jobs; for the men, web designer, art therapist, PhD student, language translator and artist, and for the women solicitor (on maternity leave), PR manager and magazine journalist. These last three were all part-time; working full time would have lifted their families above the income ceiling for the sample. All had chosen to go part-time to spend more time with their pre-school children. The men in this group were either starting on a new career or working in areas which paid little but which they loved: all five of these families had ‘chosen’ to live on a lower income, albeit for a relatively short time. Almost all in this group, men and women, were university graduates, and several had post-graduate qualifications.
Overall the group was surprisingly divergent and varied. Only a minority reflected the stereotypical picture of lower income households working long hours for low pay. While this variety seems to have had little effect on interviewees’ discussions of day-to-day money management (Chapter Eight),
there were clear differences in attitudes to gender, work and money (Chapters Nine and Ten). The ‘highly skilled’ women tended to have more egalitarian financial arrangements and clearly articulated expectations of gender equality in marriage, (section 10.3.6). Clearly the long term financial prospects for the women in the three groups were also rather different, and this emerged in the way the women talked about their future careers and money earning aspirations.
Table 7.3 shows the income from wages in each of the study households, both before and after Income Tax and National Insurance. To maintain confidentiality interviewees have been identified only by income, not profession.
Table 7.3 Income from Wages
Name His wage (£s, weekly) Her wage (£s, weekly) Total wages (£s, weekly) After tax/NI (£s, weekly) Anna 225 0 225 192 Bridget 240 230 470 398 Claire 240 0 240 203 Debbie 346 0 346 276 Elizabeth 250 0 250 210 Fiona 255 86 341 298 Gabrielle 300 106 406 350 Hazel 350 0 350 279 Isobel 110 173 283 283* Jill 337 0 337 337* Karen 385** 0 385 302 Lisa 77 269 346 346* Marie 190 212 402 373 Nikki 260 0 260 216 Pauline 250 78 328 288 Ruth 63 307 370 312 Steph 250 0 250 210
*These families had un-taxed incomes (maternity pay or student grants). **Karen did not know her partner’s salary. This figure was based on a typical salary for his job.
Table 7.3 show a great variety in earnings, both of individuals and of couples. Pay ranged from self-employment generating £63 a week to good full time wages of over £385 a week (£20,000 pa). Hours worked ranged from 12 to 40. Most of the jobs being done fell into one of two groups: full time (35 hours a week or more), and limited hours (fewer than 16 hours a week and always earning below £7 an hour). Only four of the twenty five employees in the sample worked
between 16 and 34 hours a week; all were professional women who had returned to established jobs after maternity leave and reduced their hours. This raises the question of the availability of part time work for the less highly qualified women in the sample. Opportunities to find reasonably paid jobs with a decent number of flexible hours seemed limited. Low-skilled working mothers often have to choose between full time work with little flexibility and poorly paid part time work that fits around childcare responsibilities (Wiggan 2005).
Where there were two workers in the household, in five out of eight cases the combination was a male full timer and a female part timer. In two of these cases, those of Bridget and Marie, the woman was earning as much working part time as her male partner was working full time. The five households with very low earnings (£260 or less before tax) were all families with only one worker, earning less than £7 an hour. Conversely, the three households with the highest earnings in the group (over £400 before tax) had two workers. Even where a second wage was part time and small it made a considerable difference to the finances of two earner households, typically adding between seventy and a hundred pounds a week, around a quarter of total household earnings.
One notable point is the way the Income Tax and National Insurance system penalises households with only one worker. For example, Karen’s household had one worker and a pre-tax income from wages of £385 whereas Ruth’s household had two workers and a pre-tax income from wages of £370. But post-tax incomes are £302 and £312 respectively. Karen’s household was paying twenty two pence tax in the pound, Ruth’s only sixteen pence, costing Karen’s household an extra twenty five pounds a week. This differential is explained by the fact that Ruth’s household could make use of two tax-free allowances, Karen’s only one. The households of Fiona and Hazel show a similar differential.
Looking at the total wages that paid work generated, there is a considerable range, although the criteria for the study group (working over thirty hours but earning less than £25,000) naturally circumscribes both ends of the range. The lowest before-tax income from wages was £225 (£11,700 pa), only marginally higher than the full-time minimum wage, the highest more than double that, £470 (£24,400 pa). Average before-tax household earnings were £329, with a median of £288.