Single Parents Competing in a Dual-Earner Society: Social Policy to Level the Playing Field

Rense Nieuwenhuis

The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 2022, vol. 702, issue 1, 114-128

Abstract: I examine the relative poverty risk among single-parent households in countries that have a large share of households with dual earners. Data from the Luxembourg Income Study (LIS) Database are used to analyze eighteen OECD countries in the period 1984 to 2010. I find that single parents face higher relative income poverty risks in countries with a large share of dual-earner households and that this higher risk of poverty is related to higher standards of living in those countries: higher standards of living have raised poverty thresholds, and single-parent incomes are less likely to reach those higher poverty thresholds. I also find that this overall pattern varied across institutional contexts: a rise of dual-earner households puts single parents at a disadvantage only in countries that have relatively low public expenditures on childcare and relatively low income transfer policies.

Keywords: single parents; poverty; dual earners; gender revolution; ECEC; decommodification; defamilization (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:anname:v:702:y:2022:i:1:p:114-128

DOI: 10.1177/00027162221122686

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