Aging Low-Income Women Raising Minor Children: Employment, Family Structure, and Receipt of Food Stamps and Other Public Assistance

Demetra Smith Nightingale, Sarah Hutcheon and Jonathan Pollak

No 292090, Contractor and Cooperator Reports from United States Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service

Abstract: This report describes the individual and household characteristics of low-income middle-aged and older women with childrearing responsibilities and documents the extent to which they receive food stamps and other public assistance benefits. The analysis is based on 1,756 low-income women in Boston, Chicago, and San Antonio who were primary caretakers of minor children when first surveyed in 1999, and who were subsequently interviewed again in 2001 and 2005. We find that older and younger low-income women in this sample were similar in most respects but that women in the older age group were more likely than the younger women to be grandmothers caring for grandchildren and reported more health and disability issues. The analysis also indicates that food stamps were the most common public benefit received but was received more by women in the younger cohort, suggesting that greater outreach may be worth considering for older caregiver women.

Keywords: Consumer/Household Economics; Food Security and Poverty; Labor and Human Capital (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 41
Date: 2011-06
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/292090/files/ccr-68.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ags:uerscc:292090

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.292090

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Contractor and Cooperator Reports from United States Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by AgEcon Search ().