this suggests that helping singleparents get better jobs andor ensuring better compensation for the cost of children for single parent households is likely to significantly reduce the poverty rate in these countries by contrast denmark and finland have higher child poverty rates when both the single parent poverty rate is the same as a single without children and when the twoparent poverty rate is the same as for childless couples while ireland and norway just have higher poverty rates in the former case and new zealand just in the latter case this suggests that these countries already effectively compensate parents for the cost of having children meaning the poverty rates of those with children were originally close to those of childless households