Families with stay-at-home mothers have not seen a pay rise for 15 years after successive governments focused on helping those with two parents who work, a study finds today.

The report from the Institute for Fiscal Studies found that typical families where a parent stays at home to look after the children have heavily lost out.

The IFS found that the incomes of families with two working parents are 10 per cent higher than in 2002/3. The incomes of one-earner families have not changed.

Campaigners for stay at home mothers said the figures were a “disgrace” and showed how successive governments had ignored them.

The research said households with just one male earner had not benefited from relatively large increases in women's earnings since the mid-1990s.