Recent policy initiatives have focused on facilitating employment for parents as a mean of lifting children out of poverty. But to what extent does entry into formal paid employment raise family income above the poverty threshold? And for families who do not immediately escape poverty, does progression within work enable earnings growth to gradually lift the family out of poverty or do families simply move from out-of-work poverty to a long-term in-work poverty trap?

A new report, "Parents' work entry, progression and retention, and child poverty" written by IFS researchers James Browne and Gillian Paull and due to be published by the Department for Work and Pensions, explores the dynamics between parents entering work and the immediate and longer term impacts on child poverty.

Key questions considered include:

• What proportion of families escape poverty when a parent moves into work? How does the likelihood of poverty exit differ between fathers and mothers entering work? What types of work are associated with a higher probability of moving out of poverty?
• If there is no immediate exit from poverty, do many families escape poverty in the three years following work entry ? Do many families fall into poverty during this period? Are movements out of or into poverty associated with particular work characteristics?
• Following work entry, to what extent do parents benefit from work progression such as rising hourly earnings or working longer hours? To what extent do they undertake job-related training following work entry? Is such work progression and training associated with a greater likelihood of a movement out of poverty?
• How long do parents remain in formal paid employment? Is work progression or job-related training associated with longer work retention?

The study uses data for families with children for the years 2001 to 2006 from the Families and Children Study (FACS).