Smash hit

By contrast the southern European countries had benefits systems where there was an implicit understanding that family networks should provide assistance.

“The correlation across countries is quite striking,” said Gonzalez. “The countries with the highest incidence of single mothers are also the countries with more generous benefit, and vice versa . . . Spain, Greece and Portugal with small numbers of single mothers also have lower benefit levels. The UK and Ireland are both generous with benefits and have a higher incidence of these families.

“Benefit changes explain some but not all. Wages, the labour market and marriage market conditions may also have an effect.”

Many single mothers, however, dismiss any suggestion that women decide to have babies simply to gain benefit money or jump the queue for council housing, for which single mothers are given priority.

Alarrisa Nicholas, 21, lives in a council flat in Exeter with her sons Harlan, three, and Caleb, two. “I used protection when having sex but it didn’t work. I used the morning-after pill, and that didn’t work either,” she said.

Nicholas was studying for a diploma in performing arts but gave up when she became pregnant. Now she has a part-time job as a telephone operator and receives tax credit for being a single mother which, with her job, brings her more than £120 a week. She says receiving benefits as a single mother has made her life bearable.

“Obviously it did make it easier, but it’s difficult to get by on what they give you,” she said. “It’s always been a struggle.”

Her friend Abigail Banner, 21, is also a single mother in a council flat in Exeter. She has an 18-month-old son called Cody and is unemployed. She receives more than £100 a week in benefits. Banner said she became pregnant accidentally and decided on moral grounds not to have an abortion.

However, she believes that some girls get pregnant because they will get more money. “Lots of young girls think that it’s going to be an easy ride, just have a kid and we’ll get lots of money, and we’ll even get a new flat.”

Rebecca Greamslady, 20, a single mother from Hartcliffe, Bristol, with a two-year-old son, did not plan to become pregnant, but said she found the benefits helpful. “I live in a nice two-bedroom flat and I don’t pay any rent or council tax. The council gives you free driving lessons if you say you want a job — I love freebies.”

However, Anastasia de Waal of Civitas, the think tank, said: “In Britain we’ve witnessed the worst possible scenario: disenfranchised young women taking up what appears to be a viable ‘choice’ in subsidised lone parenthood. The effect is to perpetuate a cycle of deprivation. Never mind the taxpayer, the outcomes for these women in the long-term — and, crucially, for their children — are overwhelmingly negative.”

Critics said the report gave a simplistic explanation of the increase in single mothers in Britain. “There is still a myth that single parents choose to raise children on their own. It’s just not the case,” said a spokeswoman for the National Council for One Parent Families. “Who would choose to be in poverty? And by the way, most single parents work — about 57%. Many factors have led to the rise of single mothers in Britain.”

Philip Hammond, the Tories’ work and pensions spokesman, said: “We have to be careful with this claim of a causal link. When we are giving benefit to the single mother, we are not giving it to her, it’s to the child. So if you want to end child poverty, then you have to give benefit. Single motherhood is a huge burden. Our approach is looking at how to get single parents back into the workplace.”

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