The IFS introduces us to the blindingly obvious

We're told that children in single earner families are more likely to be in poverty than those in dual earner families:

Families who rely on a fathers’ earnings alone are at greater risk of poverty than other households, with average incomes stagnant for the past 15 years, according to analysis by the Institute for Fiscal Studies.

The IFS said that because the father works in most single breadwinner households, those families have not benefited from the relatively large increases in women’s earnings since the mid-1990s.

That all seems blindingly obvious, doesn't it? 

No? Allow us to explain. The modal couple household arrangement is both working full time, 66 % of couple households have both working at least part time.

Poverty is being measured as relative poverty, less than 60% of median household income adjusted for household size (and possible variations like disposable income after taxes, after or before housing costs etc).

The norm, therefore, is for one and a bit to two earners in a household. Those with only the one earner are going to earn relatively less, we measure poverty as being relative income, who is surprised at this finding?

Note that this is what is driving this finding. The connection with fathers is just because we Brits are so traditional, where only one works it tends to be the man.

It's also worth noting that as long as we measure poverty both by household income and in relative terms there's no real cure for this. Unless we want to go back to those bad old days of fathers being given a pay rise just because, well, you know, they're fathers you see, they have to provide?