The poverty experience of lone mothers and their children

ABSTRACT

Lone mothers, as sole caregivers and women, face unique challenges to guaranteeing the economic well-being of their children compared to lone fathers. While all lone parents face a trade-off in time spent earning wages and time spent caring for children, mothers are likely to earn wages lower than fathers, thus increasing their chances of falling into poverty. Using data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2013 Current Population Survey, we estimate the size of the gender poverty gap among lone-parent families. We apply the Oaxaca–Blinder decomposition to assess whether this gap can be solely attributed to parent and family demographics. Much of the poverty gap, however, is attributed to unobservables, suggesting the increased likelihood of being in poverty for lone-mothered families may be, in part, due to gender-based discrimination in labour markets.

KEYWORDS:

• Single mothers
• lone parenthood
• poverty
• Oaxaca–Blinder decomposition

JEL CLASSIFICATION:

• I32
• I30
• B54

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

¹ Families with foster children are removed from the sample because we assume the parent can readily discontinue foster care, either by choice or force, if faced with financial hardship.

² Hamilton, Martin, and Ventura (2013) found the majority of women in the United States had their first child between the ages of 20 and 24 in 2012.