Family change, wellbeing and social policy

This project will explore how family living arrangements have changed over recent decades, how this affects adults’ and children’s access to resources, and the implications for policy.

Children have increasingly complex family living arrangements. In the UK, more than 2-in-5 children born in 2000 were not living with both biological parents by age 11. While some of these children lived with a single parent, others had stepparents or split their time between households because they shared care.

Increased family complexity has coincided with a greater emphasis on ‘family’ income in the welfare system, as means testing has expanded. Welfare policy is particularly likely to affect complex families but, in these families, the responsibilities of adults to one another, and to children, are often poorly defined. Despite these changes, the UK’s social security and child maintenance systems continue to view family life in binary terms, assuming children live in single-parent or two-parent homes, poorly reflecting family lives today. As a consequence, in some households, children and adults may not be receiving the financial support they need.