The average household income for families with single mothers is about 40 percent that of households with two parents and eight out of 10 single mothers say they have trouble making ends meet, according to a government report released Tuesday.

The Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry surveyed the state of single mothers in its 2003 white paper, the first survey of its kind since a law was enacted last July to help single mothers support themselves.

The report contains various government statistics on single mothers and self-reliance incentives offered by national and municipal authorities.

According to the 2002 Basic Survey on the National Livelihood by the welfare ministry, the average annual income of a single-mother household totaled 2.43 million yen, or about 60 percent less than that of a two-parent household with an average income of 6.02 million yen.

Asked what they thought about how they were getting by, 81.7 percent of single mothers said their lives were either "very difficult" or "somewhat difficult," the report says.

According to a labor force survey by the Public Management, Home Affairs, Posts and Telecommunications Ministry, the jobless rate for single-mother households stood at 8.9 percent, compared with 5.3 percent for two-parent households.

The government set up self-supporting centers for single mothers in 58 municipalities in fiscal 2003. While some centers succeeded in finding work for more than 100 single mothers in one year, others were unable to find them any jobs, pointing to the existence of a regional gap.