workless households which is the highest figure in europe are some measure of thirty nine year old sondra hey has never had a job she had her first child at sixteen and went on to have three more none of the fathers is around sandra gets the equivalent of more than twenty thousand dollars a year in benefits but she says it's barely enough to stay afloat doing anything. just to stay. the course can't go anywhere that do anything with the kids growing up and well most painful well of out far past. when i was there so andrea also gets incapacity benefits because of a problem with her legs she admits that many people less able than her do go out to work but the country's generous benefits system means it's often more lucrative to stay at home than to get a job critics of that system also say the dependency culture is passed from one generation to the next saundra is a grandmother at thirty nine with the state paying for her granddaughter's nursery care while her daughter goes to college she talks of the moment she found out her daughter was pregnant at seventeen devastating. devastating because s