The health of lone parents is unlikely to improve through welfare to work schemes, according to researchers from the University of Glasgow.

Dr Marcia Gibson from the university's MRC/CSO Social and Public Health Sciences Unit led the Cochrane Review.

It showed welfare to work interventions have "little to no effect" on health, contrary to the claims of successive governments.

Researchers also found lone parents find work by themselves when jobs are available.

The review compared lone parents who were in welfare to work interventions with lone parents who were not.

The findings suggested the impact of such interventions were probably too small to be noticeable and found that effects on employment rates were small.

Dr Gibson, lead author of the review, said: "Successive British government administrations have argued that mandating employment for lone parents will increase employment, reduce poverty and improve health for lone parents and their children.

"However, the evidence from our Cochrane Review indicates that welfare to work probably does not change lone parents' health and may have negative effects in some cases.

"In conjunction with evidence from other studies, our findings also suggest that economic conditions are likely to have a stronger influence on lone parent employment."

The studies included in the Cochrane Review were large welfare to work studies, conducted in North America where welfare reform was implemented in the 1990s.

They compared what happened to lone parents who were in welfare to work interventions with lone parents who were not.

The authors argue the findings are important because North American welfare policy has had a strong influence on policy in the UK under successive UK administrations since 1997.

A review by the same author which was published in BMC Public Health last year, suggested that welfare to work could have negative impacts on health and well-being.

Dr Gibson said: "Our previous qualitative review suggests that many lone parents linked welfare to work programmes with increased stress, anxiety and depression."