Britain's 'Dinkies' head European league table

In the Eighties, it was the Yuppies – young, upwardly-mobile professionals – who dominated the social landscape, but the UK is now the European capital for Dinkies – dual income, no kids couples.

Both partners in almost three-quarters of all childless households in the UK work, a study by the European Union has found. The figure may explain Britain's economic resilience to the kind of downturns that have hit other parts of Europe in recent years. When the going gets tough, it seems, British households are better equipped to spend the country out of trouble.

Women and men reconciling work and family life, published by Eurostat, the Statistical Office of the European Communities in Luxembourg, looked at households in 12 European countries to see how working patterns had changed between 1992 and 2000. It found that the number of dual income families was rising all over Europe, even in childless families where there might have been less pressure to generate a dual income.

But it was in the UK, already home of the longest working hours in the EU, that the researchers found the highest proportion of childless couples working. Britain also has the third-highest proportion of couples who work despite having had children.

According to the researchers, 79.1 per cent of British childless couples are Dinkies, up from 76.3 per cent in 1992. Next comes the Netherlands, on 71 per cent, up from 62.4 per cent, and third is Germany, with 69.9 per cent, up 5.9 per cent.

Perhaps significantly, it was Europe's strongest Catholic countries that had fewest dual income childless couples. The lowest was Spain, 42.2 per cent, followed by Italy, 46.5 per cent, Greece, 48.6 per cent, and Ireland, 54.7 per cent.

The days when it was the norm for a husband to go to work, leaving his wife behind to look after the children are a thing of the past. In most of Europe, it is now usual for couples to work, whether or not they have youngsters to look after.

Portugal has the highest proportion of two-earner couples with children, at 73.5 per cent, followed by Belgium, 72.7 per cent, and the UK, 70.2 per cent. The other end of the scale, where women appear to be discouraged from working once children come along, is similar to the Dinkie table. Spain comes bottom, with just 43.7 per cent of couples both working, followed by Ireland, 44.5 per cent, and Italy, 46.4 per cent.

However, according to Eurostat: "Amongst the EU households surveyed with two partners of working age ... the most common situation is for both partners to have a job.

"For couples without children this share ranged in 2000 from 42 per cent in Spain to 79 per cent in the United Kingdom ... while for couples with children it ranged from 44 per cent, again in Spain, to 74 per cent in Portugal.

"In every member state for which data is available the relative importance of dual participant couples has shown an upward trend since 1992.

"The presence of children in these households does not necessarily mean fewer women in employment: in six out of 12 member states, the percentage of couples with both partners in work in 2000 was the same or higher for couples with children than for those without."

Eurostat found that the better a woman's education, the more likely it was that both partners in a relationship would have a job, regardless of whether they had children.