U.S. women, men, and children experience significantly higher levels ofeconomic hardship than their counterparts in other affluent Western nations. Forexample, a common cross-national measure of poverty considers households poorwhen their family income falls below 50 percent of their country's medianincome. By this measure, according to the Luxembourg Income Study (LIS), in themid-1990s more than 45 percent of U.S. single mothers were poor; by comparison,single mothers' poverty rates were 13 percent in France and around 5 percent inSweden and Finland. Overall, U.S. women's poverty rates were 15 percent -- about 4to 5 percentage points higher than those of Canadian, Australian, and Britishwomen, 8 to 9 percentage points higher than in France or the Netherlands, and 12to 13 percentage points higher than in Sweden and Finland.
Because single mothers have higher poverty rates compared with other women, ahigher percentage of single motherhood, all else being equal, would raise povertyrates among women generally. Yet recent research using the LIS shows that even ifU.S. women had extremely low rates of single motherhood, their poverty rateswould still be higher than those of women in other affluent Western nations.Marriage, therefore, is no panacea. Rather, the high poverty rate of U.S. womenis due to two main factors: the prevalence of poverty-wage jobs and the failureof the government's welfare programs to pull its citizens out of poverty.
As the table on page 61 shows, compared with their Western counterparts, U.S.women and single mothers are among the most likely to earn poverty-level wages.When working full-time (at least 35 hours a week), about one-third of U.S. womenand more than 40 percent of U.S. single mothers earn wages too low to free theirfamilies from poverty. In other Western nations, particularly Sweden, theNetherlands, and the United Kingdom, working full time pulls the vast majority ofwomen (including single mothers) and their families above the poverty line.
Social Transfers and Employment Supports
But wages are only part of the story. In many countries, citizens receivegenerous subsidies from the government to help pay the costs of raising childrenand to protect workers from labor-market vicissitudes. The United States isnotorious for its paltry welfare state, which is by far the least effectiveamong industrialized democracies in reducing poverty rates. In the mid-1990s,the U.S. system of social transfers and tax credits reduced women's povertyrates by about 15 percent, while comparable welfare programs in other affluentWestern nations reduced women's poverty by anywhere from 40 percent (in Canada)to 88 percent (in Sweden).
Although the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) is increasingly effectivein reducing poverty among low-income families in this country, totalsocial-assistance payments in the United States have decreased over time. Themain social-aid program for single parents, Temporary Assistance for NeedyFamilies (TANF), provides monthly payments that often fail to cover even the costof rent and utilities. In 2000 the majority of states provided maximum paymentsbetween $50 and $150 per month for a family of three.
If the United States is to take seriously the taskof reducingeconomic hardship among single-parent families, we must stop focusing onmarriage and instead rethink our existing labor-market and welfare-stateprograms. Other affluent nations provide us with several viable alternatives.
The countries most successful in reducing poverty among single mothersencourage them to pool income from a variety of sources. Examples of various"policy packages" that accomplish this include employment supports, such as child care, that provide single mothers with access to paid work; welfarebenefits, such as child allowances, that all parents receive; and cash andnear-cash subsidies. U.S. welfare policy gives lip service to the goal ofenabling mothers to work but often fails to provide the supports to do itproperly.
Employment supports like subsidized child care are essential in increasingmothers' employment rates. Research by social scientists Janet Gornick, MarciaMeyers, and Katherin Ross shows that countries with more-comprehensive child-careand paid-leave programs significantly increase the employment of mothers withyoung children. In Sweden and France, 80 percent to 95 percent of children agesthree to five are in publicly supported day care. In sharp contrast, only 14percent of U.S. children in the same age group are in publicly subsidized childcare. The U.S. figure is more than 25 percentage points lower than any Europeannation. The lack of affordable child care is an important reason why the majorityof U.S. mothers reduce their work hours after having children -- particularlywhile their children are young. This difficulty in sustaining full-timeemployment, in turn, contributes to their low income.
Paid-leave policies are also important in raising single mothers' income, fortwo reasons: They provide a source of income for mothers caring for newborns andthey keep mothers attached to the labor force. Again, the United States is alaggard. The U.S. Family and Medical Leave Act offers 12 weeks of unpaidleave to women who work in companies with more than 50 employees. Other affluentnations provide at least 12 weeks of paid leave, with most granting closerto 20 weeks. Some nations, like Finland and Sweden, allow up to almost one yearof paid leave, at 80 percent to 90 percent of one's former wage rate.
Beyond Poverty Wages
In addition to making employment more accessible for mothers, other affluentnations truly "make work pay." Among the stark differences between the UnitedStates and other industrialized nations (particularly Scandinavian nations) arethe stronger presence of social-democratic parties and a much higher rate ofunionization in the latter countries -- two factors that foster more-egalitarianwage structures than exist in the United States. (As the table indicates, thewages of single mothers employed full time in other industrialized nations moreoften prove sufficient to pull families out of poverty than they do in thiscountry.)
It should not be surprising, then, that Finnish and Swedish single mothershave the highest employment rates and lowest poverty rates worldwide. Yet it isnot only employment that keeps their poverty rates low: Single mothers in thesenations receive benefits that other parents and workers get, such as childallowances and guaranteed pensions later in life. They also receive child-supportpayments from the government when absent fathers cannot or do not pay them.
Contrary to the warnings of opponents, there is noevidence thatsuch policies per se increase out-of-wedlock births. For one, single motherhoodin the United States has grown in the past few decades, while social-assistancepayments to single mothers declined. So it seems that social assistance alonedoes not increase single motherhood. In addition, European countries with themost generous social programs for single mothers (such as the Netherlands) havehigh rates of children growing up in families with two parents.
It is important to note that in some European countries with generouswelfare states, such as the Nordic countries and France, parents increasinglycohabit as singles rather than get married. While such cohabiting relationships are generally less stable than marriages, social scientists Lawrence Lu andBarbara Wolfe note that the dissolution of such unions is much less common inEurope than in the United States. So in the most generous welfare states found inNorthern Europe, most children grow up with two parents -- though many formlong-term cohabiting unions rather than marriages.
In addition, like all their fellow citizens, mothers in the most generousEuropean welfare states qualify for social assistance if their incomes fallbelow a certain level. But according to Diane Sainsbury, an expert oncross-national social policies for women, most single mothers in Sweden andFinland support themselves via employment and universal social programs, sothere is little need for social-assistance programs explicitly targeted towardthem. When welfare states make it easier for mothers to combine parenting andpaid work, the vast majority of mothers also choose to work for pay.
Many U.S. social scientists who point to marriage's benefits for children alsoacknowledge the importance of income and other social supports. In their bookGrowing Up with a Single Parent: What Helps, What Hurts, Sara McLanahanand Irwin Garfinkel show that, on average, children of single-parent householdsdoindeed fare worse than children of two-parent households on a host of issues,such as high-school and college dropout rates. But they add that single-parentfamilies typically have low income, which accounts for "a substantial portion" ofthe differences between children of single- and two-parent families.
What Can the United States Learn?
Though the United States is not likely to adopt the employment and welfarepolicies that exist in other nations, we could modify our government's currentsocial policy to substantially reduce economic disadvantage among single-motherfamilies.
First, single mothers need more access to subsidized or low-cost child care.Low-income families spend as much as 35 percent of their incomes on childcare -- much more than higher-income families. In an article published in theProspect ["Support for WorkingFamilies," January 1-15, 2001], JanetGornick and Marcia Meyers suggest that if the United States were to spend thesame share of gross domestic product on subsidized child care and paid leave asFrance does, we would need to increase expenditures by at most $85 billionyearly. This seems a huge outlay, but it is only about 3 percent of PresidentGeorge W. Bush's recently proposed $2.1 trillion budget for 2002 and far lessthan the annual cost of his tax cut. States could also bear part of this cost:Given the precipitous declines in welfare caseloads over the past few years, somestates have redirected leftover funds to child-care programs, and many more coulddo so. Further, paid-leave policies are currently on the agenda in many states.
The fact remains, however, that increasing employment rates of single mothersis not enough to ensure their families' escape from poverty. As President Bushemphasized in his State of the Union Address, "good jobs" are essential. Butmost single mothers in our country have bad jobs. According to a 2000 report bythe U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the median income of peopleleaving welfare is between $8,000 and $12,000 a year. Recent research by PamelaLoprest of the Urban Institute shows that only 23 percent of those who leavewelfare have health care provided by their employer. [For a comprehensivediscussion of welfare reauthorization and suggestions for future policydirections, including the EITC and child-support policies, see Jared Bernsteinand Mark Greenberg, "Reforming Welfare Reform," TAP, January 1-15, 2001.]Clearly, low-income single mothers need better jobs.
Gornick's cross-national research on labor-market inequality finds that U.S.women earn low wages largely because of the U.S. wage structure's inequality. Shesuggests that employment policies that could help women are those that could helpall low-income workers: increases in minimum wages, higher rates ofunionization and other institutional wage-setting mechanisms, and increasedregulation of the international-trade policies that are pushing wages downward. While opponents claim that wage increases will lead to job losses, the EconomicPolicy Institute reports that neither the 1990-1991 nor the 1996-1997minimum-wage increases resulted in significant job losses. Macroeconomic factorswere far more important influences on the unemployment rate.
Such policies are also attractive because they are universal: All parents orall citizens could receive them. Politically, universal policies generate broadconstituencies rather than leaving the poor isolated, because voters generallysupport policies that benefit them. However, this does not mean that we shoulddismantle social-assistance programs targeted toward single mothers. A recentstudy by the Urban Institute found that about one-third of mothers on welfarehave children with chronic health or developmental problems. It will bedifficult for many of these women to work outside the home, and low-income single mothersshould not be impoverished while tending to caregiving responsibilities in thehome.
Overall, we need policy packages that make it easier for allparents to combine caregiving with employment -- or when employment is untenable,that provide economic support for caregiving. Funding these policies would, ofcourse, require reallocating government taxing and spending, such as a rejectionof the tax-cut extensions recently enacted by the Bush camp (with the support ofsome Democrats). But providing single mothers with policy packages that allowmore of them to be employed, and at better jobs, will reduce spending onmeans-tested social assistance.
Most important, comprehensive policy packages for single mothers couldvastly reduce economic hardship among children. In the United States, growing upin a single-parent family can significantly reduce children's life chances. Butexperience in other industrialized nations shows that it doesn't have to be thisway. To advocate marriage as the panacea for low-income families' economicproblems is to avoid the real reasons why so many U.S. mothers and their childrenare poor: bad jobs, an inequitable wage structure, and a shoddy welfare state. Ifwe truly want "no child left behind" in this country, we must back our politicalrhetoric with policy packages that address the true sources of economicdisadvantage among single-parent families.
