Poorer men more likely to live alone, says new research

Men face a ‘new divide’ as those from poorer families earn less and are less likely to be in a relationship

Happily ever after – unless you're a man from a poor background (Getty)

At a time when the state of women’s finances occupies the thoughts of the country’s leading financial institutions, charities and politicians, one long-running study has unearthed evidence that not only points to major differences in the personal lives of men based on their own incomes, but also the wealth of their families.

Earlier this month research into the way money filters through different generations found that the richer you and your family are, the less likely you are to be single. At least if you’re male.

More specifically while only one in seven men from rich backgrounds was living without a partner by their early 40s, the figure rose to more than one in three men from disadvantaged ones.

That’s according to a study by academics from some of the UK’s leading universities which has found that the social, economic and financial experiences of men in particular are becoming increasingly divergent based on the wealth of the men’s parents as well as the men themselves.

“It is well known that the sons of richer parents tend to go on to have higher earnings,” the Institute for Fiscal Studies said in a statement announcing the data. “However, new research shows that they also benefit from being more likely to have a partner.”

The difference is the result of both lower rates of marriage and of higher rates of relationship breakdown among men from low-income families.

In fact, men from low-income households were more than twice as likely to be divorced as those from high-income backgrounds and almost twice as likely never to have been married.

But don’t make the mistake of interpreting all this as somehow evidence of gold-digging, because the partners of better off men are also more likely to have higher earnings than those of poorer men – significantly higher.

Whether male or female, the partners of men from richer backgrounds earn 73 per cent more than the partners of men from poorer families.

As female earnings in particular become an increasingly important component of household income, the difference in partner income only serves to accentuate the divide between the haves and the have-nots over multiple generations.

Crucially, the research suggests this is a problem for Generation X. Among men born around 10 years earlier, now in their mid-to-late 50s, the study found differences in partnership status and partner earnings by family background were considerably smaller.

Such a change in household composition has strengthened the link between the incomes of parents and children. The result is a dramatic reduction in social mobility throughout the country, not least because marital status and the benefits of a second, high income are only some of the differences separating the experiences of men on either side of the wealth divide.

In 2000 for example, employed 40-something men whose parents were among the richest fifth of households in the UK earned 47 per cent more than those from the poorest families. By 2012, when the study was last correlated, the difference had increased to a staggering 88 per cent.

At the same time, men from poorer backgrounds are twice as likely to be out of work as those from richer backgrounds.

“Only 7 per cent of men growing up in the richest fifth of households were out of work at age 42 in 2012, while more than 15 per cent of men from the poorest fifth of households were out of work.

“Men from poorer backgrounds are also more than twice as likely to receive disability benefits as those from better-off families (11 per cent rather than 4 per cent). As men in work typically have more income than those not in paid work, this accentuates the level of intergenerational income persistence,” the IFS reports.

The study follows recent news from think tank the Resolution Foundation that the UK is likely to have failed to meet a new international Sustainable Development Goal which attempts to focus efforts among policymakers towards pushing up incomes among the bottom 40 per cent of earners of either gender faster than for those on higher incomes.

The organisation’s Living Standards Audit for 2017 found that by 2015-16, the top 1 per cent of earners were receiving 8.5 per cent of the total UK income, marking a return to pre-financial crisis levels.