young children are most likely to be at risk because their parents are also likely to be young with relatively low earnings or because their mothers are not in employment bradbury and jantii strategies to alleviate child poverty vary across countries with policies either tending to promote employment in particular through welfare reform in recent years or providing generous levels of benefits to redistribute income to the poor getting lone parents into work has been a central aim of policy in a number of countries in recent years with welfare reform policies in australia canada new zealand the united kingdom and the united states all targeting employment among lone parents