The policy note highlights contemporary research on single parents, and reflects on its implications for social policy developments in the European Union. Three directions of thought are developed regarding single parents’ resources, employment and social policies. The aim is to expand the scope of choice among policy alternatives for policy makers. Three main points are addressed:

• The rise of shared residence urges us to reconsider the gendered nature of single parenthood, considering how to support separated fathers to be involved in their children’s life.
• Employment can come with all kinds of advantages, but earnings are often inadequate for single parents to guarantee a poverty-free existence.
• With respect to redistributive social policies, single parents’ economic position can be heavily affected by policies that are not specifically designed for single parents, or even for families with children.

Taken together, these point bring into focus, analogue to gender mainstreaming, the importance of mainstreaming family diversity.

I have enjoyed two trips with Manfred. The first was to Rennes. We developed statistical software (in R) and we were to present it at a conference. It was a great adventure for me, as I was still a student who had attended few conferences before. I remember the midnight sessions, frantically working to program new features, and to improve performance. Making it the best we could. But I also remember the open conversations we had, about family, about mental illness. About unconventional paths into university.

The second trip it was only Manfred travelling, as he came to visit me in Stockholm. Again, we were to work on a statistical software project and this time we thought it would be easy. How wrong we were. We worked days on end without getting any closer. Long days trying all kinds of angles, but everything we tried failed. At the end of another long weekend-day of relentlessly failing to solve our puzzle, and just in time before our frustration reached a boiling point, we decided to take a break and go for dinner. And just like that, over a steak, we had our breakthrough. Manfred matched my vague intuition with the expertise to come to a formal solution. It’s the moment captured in this photo. The excitement! We raced home to do more testing, and early in the next morning Manfred confirmed: We nailed it!

This is how I will remember Manfred. I enjoyed working with him so much, and he was a fantastic teacher. Driven to be the best, energetic to get everything right. A very friendly guy, into good music. He loved his job and continued teaching even when he got sick. He had the unique ability to talk about statistics to very different audiences: complex scientific debates on statistical methods, motivating reluctant students to learn statistics, and entertaining a crowd at a music festival with a lesson on probability theory (‘This can’t be a coincidence!’). He could be stubborn and short-tempered when things didn’t work out. And Manfred was very involved when it came to personal matters. At my graduation, he spoke about what my family was going through, how death comes ‘unexpectedly and deviously’.

His e-mail, this summer, came as a shock. Braintumor. I’m grateful that we still had the chance to exchange a few emails, and share some memories. Manfred approached his death without remorse, and lived his final days in the moment. He enjoyed these days, undertaking adventures with a group of friends, and even gave a hashtag to the whole process, in Dutch and untranslatable: #derannn.

This week, Laurie Maldonado and myself are very proud to be guests on the podcast, to talk about our book The Triple Bind of Single-Parent Families. I don’t often find myself in a radio studio in Washington DC, and it was a great experience. The host Rebecca Vallas was smart, witty and so well prepared. She was very supportive, and I love what she wrote on the Triple Bind:

The U.S. has long demonized single parents – and especially single moms – like nowhere else in the western world. A new global anthology of research on treatment of families and single parents called The Triple Bind of Single-Parent Families offers a damning critique not of single moms, but of how the U.S. is hanging them, and their families, out to dry.

You can listen to our interview on Off Kilter (and subscribe to the always excellent podcast!) everywhere good podcasts are served, including:

• Itunes
• Soundcloud

Or simply listen to it here:

I love you, and you are broken.

Sitting in Lafayette Square, overlooking the White House, I started writing this letter. I spent about 10 days on the East Coast, and enjoyed my friends, brilliant minds at the conference I came here to attend, the activism, ambition and resilience, museums, venues and vistas. Yet, more than before, I am weary of my impressions.

I’ve been to the national mall, I’ve seen the memorials. Writings on the wall about the price of freedom, paid in Korea and Vietnam. Lincoln on bringing together the nation “with malice toward none, with charity for all”. Beautiful! My company and I were interviewed by a father who was making a documentary for his children, asking passer-by’s questions about the state of his country. I told him that the memorials surrounded us with lessons that seem lost. Interesting guy, but when we started asking him questions about the current role of his country in the world, I was disappointed. Mistaking, in my view, power for leadership, he maintained that the world’s nations unequivocally looked up to America’s leadership. So little self-awareness, so close to the reflection pond.

There was so much stress and inequality on the streets. A driver getting out of his car to threaten a pedestrian. Traffic controllers working in the middle of a crossroads, yelling at cars. On top of their lungs, all day. The constant haggling for tips. I really don’t mind paying well for good service but prefer companies that pay their workers generously. Here restaurants and hotels were actively campaigning against legislation to improve the pay for service workers. So here I was, a comparatively rich white man tipping predominantly people of color.

Jason Isbell sang the theme song to my visit: TVA (the Tennessee Valley Authority). It is just him and his guitar, with a song about social policy. And about life. The American people are often thought to care little about social policy, but his American audience responds strongly when Jason Isbell sings about Roosevelt, public employment programs, and an honest day’s pay.

But oh, how you are dismantling your policies and institutions. I was interviewed by Off Kilter, together with Laurie Maldonado, on our new edited book “The triple bind of single-parent families”. With lack of support to work, a massively unequal and precarious labor market, and a safety net that is inadequate and stigmatizing (looking at you, food stamps), single parents are worst off in the US. The interview was intelligent, informed and progressive. It also had to bring up marriage promotion and marriage training programs, which are widely popular in public debate, and considered solutions to reduce poverty. This obsession with marriage, particularly in the form of government issued programs, continue to distress and confuse me. I went on record saying it’s “just weird”. We know that these programs are ineffective, costing loads of money to achieve exactly nothing. But more importantly, if your nation is so vehemently against all forms of government interference, why call upon the government to interfere in one of the most intimate parts of life: how and whom to love and live with? Why would this be considered an acceptable policy for single parents? Is it because they are poor? Is it because they are women? Is it because they are black?

Unaffordable healthcare affects everyone, not just the poor. Friends shared their experiences with health care, and health insurance. It just seems impossible! These are very smart friends (like, PhD smart), yet all struggled in getting, or holding on to, a good insurance. Yes, there’s also plenty of bad insurance, not even covering basic needs. The healthcare bills are staggering, reimbursement incredibly complex, and coverage very haphazard. I even learned a new word: co-insurance. It’s when your insurance covers only a percentage of your healthcare expenses. With the price of healthcare in America, this easily results in insurmountable bills. With one friend, we walked across a man who thought he broke his ankle (it certainly looked bad and painful). He asked for advice where he could have it checked out. First response? “Are you insured, and how well are you covered?” As healthcare insurance is tied to jobs, not having a job means putting your health at risk (this is painfully clear in the Medicaid work requirements). This creates inequality on the workplace, with workers (colleagues!) having different access to healthcare. These conditions mean that our friends cannot accept otherwise desirable jobs, makes temporary contracts even more risky, and finding a new job even more pressing – particularly when it can easily take over 200 applications.

Before going home, we visited the “Evicted” exhibition. It tells a tale that is familiar by now: poverty and inequality, stagnating and inadequate wages, rising rents, insecurity, terrible housing conditions, landlords only out to make a profit: all resulting in high and rising numbers of predominantly black women and their children being evicted. Their belongings on the street. Overcrowded courts literally spending only seconds on each case, and tenants without guaranteed rights to legal representation. It brought together so many of the impressions of my visit to America: poverty and inequality, racial disparities, lack of social protection. The small incidents of life having such dire consequences. So many people under pressure and at peril, except perhaps for a few hoarders of opportunity at the top. Yet, there was also a message of hope. In the words of Matthew Desmond, whose work is behind the exhibition: “All this suffering is shameful and unnecessary. Because it is unnecessary, there is hope. The problems are neither intractable nor eternal. A different kind of society is possible, and powerful solutions are within our collective reach.”

Dear America. I continue to love you, for now, for what you can be, for who some of my exceptional friends are. A land of opportunity you once were. Now, more so than in a long time, and more so than elsewhere, Americans’ opportunities are determined by who their parents are, their gender, who they marry, and the color of their skin. But you can do better. You paid the price for freedom from tyranny, now you need to make the effort for all Americans to have the freedom to opportunity. You’ll have to.

Peer Reviews in social protection and social inclusion foster open discussion and mutual learning. Each Peer Review meeting is hosted by one country, in this case Belgium, which presents a selected good practice (e.g. a programme, policy reform, institutional arrangement). The practice in focus here was the < href="https://www.mi-is.be/nl/miriam">MIRIAM project (website in Dutch). Peer reviews are attended by experts from the European Commission, peer countries and relevant stakeholders who provide feedback.

The impact of the Triple Bind on the outcomes of this peer review is clearly visible in the key learnings messages, as formulated on the EU Commission’s website:

• Single parents disproportionally face a ‘triple bind’, including the combination of inadequate resources, inadequate employment and inadequate policies to secure well-being. However, although there are clearly challenges that are unique to single-parent families, much of their needs are common to other types of families as well. Thus, policies and institutions that support families with children and those in the labour force were also found to be of particular importance to prevent poverty faced by single parents.
• Measures targeting (poor) single parents result in the most effective poverty reduction as long as adequate levels of redistribution are ensured. Targeted (means-tested) benefits need to address the issue of inadequate take-up, and avoid stigma/shame around accessing benefits/support.
• Social inclusion of mothers beyond monetary support is essential, including employment and social connections. However, employment does not protect single mothers from poverty, as there are a number of risk factors related to precarious employment, low wages and less favourable employment conditions that may affect them. Thus, employment policies and policies that ensure work-life balance, are an inherent part of a desirable policy mix.

The book will be available early March this year, from Policy Press. Stay tuned for more exciting news soon!

We invite scholars to submit papers that examine the interplay of both policies that provide services (‘care’) and policies that provide financial support (‘cash’). Details are below:

Welfare states are in constant transition, with policy makers seeking solutions to address old and new social risks, while facing budget constraints. A useful distinction can be made between policies supporting well-being by providing ‘care’ in the form of public services, and policies providing ‘cash’ in the form of transfers. This distinction and changing balance between care and cash policies raises important new questions. To what extent may cash and care policies promote virtuous circles in welfare state reform? Are care policies adequately designed to compensate for reduced cash transfers? To what extent do cash and care policies depend on each other for maximum effectiveness and efficiency?

The general questions pertain to a wide range of policy areas. For instance, in labor market policy, the question can be raised whether active labor market programs (Bonoli, 2013) support employment adequately in order to compensate for reduced cash transfers in areas of unemployment and social assistance. In family policies, maternal employment are found to be higher in relation to work-family reconciliation policies such as childcare, but lower in relation to financial support policies as child benefits (Nieuwenhuis, Need, & Van Der Kolk, 2012). Yet, to reduce child poverty, both work-family (care) policies and financial transfers such as child benefits are thought essential and complementary (Maldonado & Nieuwenhuis, 2015). Policies can be distinguished that ensure care for the elderly through professional social services, and cash-for-care payments paying children to provide care for their elderly parents (Schmid, Brandt, & Haberkern, 2011). Publically funded education may have more equal outcomes when students can receive student grants to cover living expenses. Health and mortality are found not only to be affected by healthcare services, but also by minimum income benefits (Nelson & Fritzell, 2014). The effectiveness of public healthcare services may further depend on the presence of sickness benefits to allow patients to recover before having to go back to work.


This stream invites empirical papers that explicitly analyze the intersection of cash and care in welfare states, in any area of social policy. Contributions that examine policy developments, including the shift from cash to care, are welcome as well as contributions examining various types of policy outcomes.

Full details of all conference streams can be found at: http://espanetlisbon2017.eu/streams/

Deadline: March 15, 2017

• carries out policy-relevant analysis and research on the current socio-economic situation in the EU on the basis of the most recent available data
• examines major issues which are features of the situation or affect it with the aim of providing evidence on which to base policy-making across the EU.

It will be interesting to see what kind of questions and comments the paper attracts at this stage, which is much more policy-oriented compared to last week’s academic seminar. For those who missed it, the abstract of our paper reads:

Although employment growth is propagated as being crucial to reduce poverty across OECD countries, the actual impact of employment growth on poverty rates is still unclear. [Results show that] the increase in women’s employment has had a significant impact on poverty trends. […] However, in the Nordic countries no such poverty reducing effect was found, as in these countries womens employment rates were very high and stable throughout the observation period. In countries that initially showed marked increases in women’s employment, such as the Netherlands, Germany, Spain, Canada, and the United States, the initial increases in women’s employment rates were typically followed by a period in which these trends levelled off.

Hence, our findings suggest that the potential of following an employment strategy to reduce poverty in OECD countries has, to a large extent, been depleted.

The paper is available here and isjoint work with Wim van Lancker, Diego Collado and Bea Cantillon. The program of the seminar is available online.

The title of my talk will be “Has the potential for compensating poverty by women’s employment growth been depleted?”, which is based on joint work with Wim van Lancker, Diego Collado, and Bea Cantillon. It answers the question whether trends in women’s employment in recent decades have affected trends in household poverty in OECD countries. We find that women’s employment growth is negatively associated with poverty but perhaps not strongly enough to make further employment growth into an instrument against poverty. Policy implications are discussed.

A list of previous seminars is available online.

References

Nieuwenhuis, R., Van Lancker, W., Collado, D., & Cantillon, B. (2016). Has the potential for compensating poverty by women’s employment growth been depleted? LIS Working Paper Series #644. Available Online

The call for papers and full description of the stream can be found online.

From the stream description:

Who benefits most from family policies?

Family policies have received ample attention in the (comparative) study of welfare state outcomes. The attention now seems to turn to the question whether these family policy outcomes are homogenous across the population, or varies across people with different social backgrounds. Examples of such studies show that uptake of public childcare is biased against lower educated parents (Ghysels & Van Lancker, 2011), and that both paid leave and family allowances reduce poverty more strongly among single-parent families compared to two-parent families (Maldonado & Nieuwenhuis, 2015).

This stream seeks to bring together theory-driven, empirical studies on the question who benefits most from family policies. We welcome comparative papers as well as case studies, preferably using quantitative approaches to these questions.

Examples of possible contributions include, but are not limited to:

• Fathers or mothers: with fathers taking up leave becoming (somewhat) more common in various countries, the time seems right to address the question whether and how it affects their careers differently than is the case for mothers, how it impacts on household financial resources, and which kind of fathers actually make use of these leave schemes.
• Children from high or low SES parents. Does early childhood education and care level the playing field, or does it exacerbate existing differences in children’s outcomes? What are the redistributive effects of ECEC policies?
• The ‘institutional design of family policy’: Does universal coverage lead to universal use or take up? What kind of policy design yields the most equal outcomes? How do complementarities between policies come in to play to achieve more equal outcomes?
  The whole of society: in addition to papers examining specific sub-groups, we also invite papers addressing outcomes at the societal level, such as economic growth, inequality, and trends in poverty.
• Other options include differences in family policy outcomes across families with different levels of education, changing family structures, migrant histories, children with special needs etc.

The Research Brief is available for download on the website of the LIS Research Center.

Our key findings include:

• Poverty rates of single-parent families based on market in- come are high in most countries.
• Redistribution is an effective strategy to reduce poverty among single-parent families.
• Single-parent employment rates are high.
• Single-parent employment rates are higher in countries with policies that facilitate parental employment.
• Employment significantly reduces the poverty rate among single-parent families.
• The Working Poor: even with employment, many single- parent families are poor.
• Many countries have child-related transfers that significantly reduce poverty among single-parent families.

Bottomline: Our findings suggest that, to reduce poverty among single-parent families, policy solutions should aim to both bolster their market income and to increase the effectiveness of redistribution.