Lone parents and activation - towards a typology of approaches

There has been an international trend towards activating lone parents, with the United Kingdom being the most recent example. It has been argued that the most common criterion for deciding which lone parents should have to be available for work is the age of the youngest child. However, by examining the activation policies in the OECD countries more closely, a number of criteria used in conjunction with age of the child have been identified, such as the availability of childcare and the employability of lone parents. It is therefore argued that a typology can be developed consisting of three main approaches: general activation, age of child and no activation, with three sub-categories for the age of child approach. The different (sub-)categories will be illustrated using country case studies as examples.