This study examines how earnings penalties to motherhood combine with the cost of partner absence to affect single mothers' economic well-being. Using 25-years of longitudinal data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) from 1990 to 2015 and fixed-effect models with individual-specific...

A significant literature in the social sciences addresses the impact of child-bearing and rearing on marital stability and on mothers' labour market outcomes. Much less is known about older mothers' employment and marriage patterns when the adult children leave the parental nest. This study aims...

I examine how single motherhood affects income at different quantiles of the distribution in twelve rich countries. Using harmonised data from the Luxembourg Income Study, I show how the distribution of income for single-mother headed households differs to that of coupleheaded households with...

Die Corona-bedingten Schulschließungen sowie die Schließung von Kinderbetreuungseinrichtungen im April und Mai 2020 haben viele Eltern vor eine immense Herausforderung gestellt. Plötzlich mussten Kinder ganztags Zuhause betreut und beschult werden. In diesem Beitrag beschäftigen wir uns mit...

As Korea is expected to see an increase in the share of single-parent families, this study analyzes the impact of a family transition from a two-parent to single-parent home on child development. The level of development is measured based on health, self-regulated learning, emotional disorders,...

Recent analysis has suggested that poverty rates, and their variation across rich countries, is driven much less by the prevalence of certain risks than by the poverty penaltyattached to the risks. Focusing on single motherhood as a poverty risk, it is claimed the penalty attached to it is...

Declines in the welfare caseload in the late 1990s brought significant change to the lives of many low-educated, single mothers. Many single mothers left welfare and entered the labor market and others re-arranged their lives in order to avoid going on public assistance. These changes may have...

Cash transfers to families with children are increasingly being restricted to parents who work, while families of non-working parents are receiving a progressively larger share of their benefits in kind. This paper provides an evaluation of the empirical evidence regarding the effects of in-kind...

While there has been considerable research on the disincentive effects of cash welfare under the Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) program, there is little evidence on the benefits of the program for single mothers and their children. One potential benefit of this program is that it...

We investigate how material well-being has changed over time for single mother headed families—the primary group affected by welfare reform and other policy changes of the 1990s. We focus on consumption as well as other indicators including components of consumption, measures of housing...

This paper uses data from the 1970, 1980 and 1990 Censuses to investigate the impact of welfare benefits across Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs) on the incidence of single motherhood and headship for young women. A contribution of the paper is the inclusion of both MSA fixed effects and...

The paper considers the effect on widows' poverty of changes in Social Security survivorship benefits, by a reduction in couples' benefits so that total Social Security cost is unchanged. A twenty percent increase in survivorship benefits, for example, would reduce the 1989 poverty rate of...

Widows - both child and adult in Tanzania, as in many other parts of the world, face discrimination on a regular basis. Such discrimination commonly destroys a woman's ability to live a life outside of poverty. In the face of the suffering and injustice widows endure throughout Africa, and...

We describe the enormous changes in social and tax policy in recent years that have encouraged work by single mothers. We document the changes in federal and state income taxes, AFDC and Food Stamp benefits, Medicaid, training and child care programs. We describe the quantitative importance of...

The austerity motivated reforms of the UK benefit system have had a devastating and disproportionate impact on vulnerable groups. Lone mothers are challenging these regulations as discriminatory. Their claims raise an under-theorized question: how should courts adjudicate claims for status...

We examine the labor market consequences of the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), comparing labor market behavior of eligible parents in Wisconsin, which supplements the federal EITC for families with three children, to that of similar parents in states that do not supplement the federal EITC....

Of all of the welfare reforms that were implemented during the 1990's, time limits may represent the single greatest break from past policy. This paper expands on what is known about this important welfare reform measure by exploiting the predictions from Grogger and Michalopoulos (1999) to...

We investigate the role of employment in explaining changes in the mental health of single mothers compared to partnered mothers and single childless women during the period of welfare reform in the UK. We employ a time allocation framework to explore if reductions in benefit income led to a...

As Korea is expected to see an increase in the share of single-parent families, this study analyzes the impact of a family transition from a two-parent to single-parent home on child development. The level of development is measured based on health, self-regulated learning, emotional disorders,...

The Covid-19 pandemic has brought about changes in key income support programs, reigniting a debate about the design of financial aid to low-income households with children. In this study we assess the Family Security Act-a proposal presented by Senator Mitt Romney (R-UT) on February 4, 2021 to...

The recent economic recession triggered by the global pandemic has renewed scholarly interest in the role of social welfare systems in supporting economically vulnerable families when they experience employment instability. This article unpacks the patterns of the cash and in-kind components of...

Single mothers often experience precarious financial conditions. However, it is not fully understood to what extent separation is the cause of these conditions versus being their consequence. Estimating an endogenous switching regression model based on a sample of 626 separated and 5,525...

Recent analysis has suggested that poverty rates, and their variation across rich countries, is driven much less by the prevalence of certain risks than by the poverty penaltyattached to the risks. Focusing on single motherhood as a poverty risk, it is claimed the penalty attached to it is...

The Income Maintenance Experiments have received renewed attention due to growing international interest in a Basic Income. Proponents viewed a Negative Income Tax as a replacement for traditional welfare with stronger work incentives and reduced poverty. However, existing labor supply estimates...

Families with children receive support from the tax-benefit system to a different extent across countries. In Spain, child poverty remains high as compared to other EU countries, possibly pointing to a weaker role of the public sector in providing income support to families with children. In...

We estimate the effect of poor child health on the labor supply of mothers and fathers post welfare reform, using a national sample of mostly unwed parents and their children-a group at high risk of living in poverty. We account for the potential endogeneity of child health and find that having...

High risk of poverty and low employment rates are widespread among low-skilled groups, especially in the case of some household compositions (e.g. single mothers). "Making-work-pay" policies have been advocated for and implemented to address these issues. They alleviate the above-mentioned...

A large literature evaluating the welfare effects of taxation has examined the role of the labor supply elasticity, and has shown that the estimated welfare effects are highly sensitive to its size. A common feature of this literature is its exclusive focus on hours worked and the associated...

I estimate the fraction of widows that will be in poverty by projecting the economic status, as measured in 1979, of a cohort of the elderly. The projections are based on an economic model of consumption behavior. I define and estimate a consumption-based measure of poverty status that, I...

This paper examines the impact of actual subsidy receipt of single mothers on their joint employment and child care mode decisions in the post-welfare reform environment, which places a high priority on parental choice with the quality and type of care chosen. Results indicate that single...

Using a data set from the post welfare reform environment (the 1999 National Survey of America's Families), this paper investigates the impact of child care subsidies on the standard work (i.e., work performed during the traditional work hours of 8 a.m. and 6 p.m. through Monday and Friday)...

During 1984-96, welfare and tax policy changed dramatically. The Earned Income Tax Credit was expanded, welfare benefits were cut, welfare time limits were added and cases were terminated, Medicaid for the working poor was expanded, training programs were redirected, and subsidized or free child...

Alleinerziehende gehören in Deutschland konstant zu den am meisten von Armut betroffenen Bevölkerungsgruppen: Während die Armutsrate der gesamten Bevölkerung im Jahr 2016 bei 16,5% und die von Paarhaushalten mit Kindern bei ‚nur‘ 10% lag, waren doppelt bzw. dreimal so viele (32,5%)...

Traditional gender stereotypes interact with material deprivation to trap women into poverty. Throughout their lives women disproportionately experience poverty. Due to a complex web of interlocking factors, becoming a mother can trigger or exacerbate poverty. The human rights framework with its...

Using a mixed-method design, this study explores the heterogeneity in employment trajectories before and after the transition to lone parenthood in Switzerland. First, we perform sequence and cluster analysis on data from the Swiss Household panel to identify typical employment trajectories...

Das Buch untersucht die Ursachen für das hohe Armutsrisiko alleinerziehender Mütter in Deutschland. Handelt es sich primär um Selektionseffekte von benachteiligten Frauen ins Alleinerziehen oder werden Frauen durch das Alleinerziehen arm? Welche Rolle spielt dabei der institutionelle Kontext...

This paper is the first to examine changes in poverty over time using a comprehensive set of linked survey and administrative data, implementing recommendations of the Interagency Technical Working Group on Evaluating Alternative Measures of Poverty. Using the Comprehensive Income Dataset (CID),...

Background: Poverty in Korea is not gender neutral. Both male headed and female headed households experience poverty in distinct ways. This research discusses poverty and how it has evolved in Korea from a gender perspective. Methods: It describes the characteristics of poverty among the working...

In many developed countries lone parent families face high rates of child poverty. Among those lone parents who do get child maintenance there is a hidden problem. States may retain all, or a proportion, of the maintenance that is paid in order to offset other fiscal costs. Thus, the potential...