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Investment in Qualitydiscussion of childcare in Chapter 8, lone parents, however, find itmore difficult than other mothers to access employment. Childrenbeing reared by two parents neither of whom is working similarlyexperience a huge reduction in the poverty risk they face when oneparent takes employment (from 33.3 per cent to 9.7 per cent), but itis the movement of the second parent to take employment also (anoption not possible in the lone parent household) which definitivelyalters the balance of poverty risk between one and two-parenthouseholds. This secondary significance of family structure relativeto parental employment status is a pattern found in many OECDcountries (Oxley et al., 2001).TABLE 7.15Risk of Consistent Poverty (below 60% Income Threshold and BasicDeprivation) for Children by Household Type and Labour ForceStatus of Parents.1994 2000At Work Two parents, both working 4.0 1.2Lone parent, working 9.8 8.2Two parents, one working 14.5 9.7Not Working Two parents, none working 72.5 33.3Lone parent, not working 69.3 44.0Others 16.8 7.2Total 25.2 8.2Source: Table supplied by ESRI.As the extremely high child poverty rates in 1994 for ‘work poor’households in Table 7.15 suggest, the high unemployment rate ofthat period was the principal cause of child income poverty. Theemployment expansion since 1994 can be credited with havingshifted many children out of the high-risk ‘Not Working’ categoriesto the lower risk ‘At Work’ ones. The rise in real disposableearnings would account for the reduction in risk for the ‘At Work’categories, while improvements in the real value of social welfarepayments presumably explain the reduction in poverty risk for the324