instead they argue that differences in family employment patterns and welfare state provision are of much greater importance espingandersen and myles recent decades have seen not only a change in family structure but also a radical shift in the role of men and women within the household with a substantial fall in the numbers of women who are homemakers and large increases in the numbers of women working either full or parttime this has lead to a significant change in the employment structure of families some of which have become increasingly dependent on female earnings to avoid poverty this section looks at the influence of family employment patterns and earnings on poverty and focuses on the workingage population a lack of work among young people and lone parents is particularly strongly linked to poverty forster forster and ercole