[faith]

Found this article which i thought would be worth discussing,me and my husband have been saying this for years. what does everyone else think?

A new report published today claims that parents are financially better off separated and claiming benefits.

The report from the Centre for Policy Studies (CPS) says that current tax and benefit legislations mean that lone mothers on benefits have the same standard of living as hard-working families.

The study claims married or co-habiting couples on average weekly earnings are better off by only £1 per person compared to a single parent who has never worked. It also says that the state would increase their income by between 35 and 65 per cent if they were to split up.

Jill Kirby, author of 'The price of parenting', reports that the financial penalties on couples who bring up children together have been growing at the same time as the birth rate has fallen and the biggest drop in birth rate has been among families of around average income.

Ms Kirby, a policy analyst who writes and broadcasts on family issues, also says that the level of public subsidy to households with children has doubled since 1997, and now stands at £22 billion a year. Yet for many ordinary families, the price of parenthood is too high.

The report calls for the benefit system to be remodelled along the lines of President Clinton's reforms of the 1990s, which have cut US welfare dependency by half and teenage pregnancies by nearly a third.

Cambridge economics professor Robert Rowthorn found, "Britain will soon be the lone-parent capital of the world. The percentage of children who are living in a one-parent household is now much higher in Britain than elsewhere in Western Europe and we are about to overtake the United States."