I demonstrate that single parents in dual-earner societies have more difficulties to keep up with typical incomes, increasing their poverty risks. Extensive #ECEC and #income #protection help to level this playing field.

The Figure above shows the a key finding. In countries with low defamilization (childcare, left panel), a rise of dual-earner households is associated with an increase in poverty among single parents, but not among #couples with children. With more childcare, these associations disappear (right panel).

The same findings are reported for decommodification (income protection).

I think that the relevance of this paper for theory and policy is twofold.

In terms of #theory, the findings are in line with the work challenging that poverty is mostly related to the individual characteristics of the poor. Instead, poverty is relational.

Poverty cannot be solely explained by reference to individuals’ own “socioeconomic background, family composition, and “policy context, but also requires reference to the #economic activity and composition of other households in society.

In terms of policy, supporting high employment rates has long been seen as an effective strategy against poverty. However, the findings show rising employment also represents a displacement in who benefits from employment and who is disadvantaged by the increase in employment of others.

Thus, policies for work-family reconciliation and income protection are particularly important in a dual-earner society, to keep groups that are not—or cannot be—in a dual-earner household from poverty.

The paper is part of a special issue (open access untill the end of the year!), with a great group of authors all focus on single parents.

This Thursday, on 1 December, the launch of this special issue will be underscored with a public event hosted by the Brookings institute, on “A comparative perspective on policies to support single-parent families”

Sign up here: https://www.brookings.edu/events/a-comparative-perspective-on-policies-to-support-single-parent-families

Abstract

It is demonstrated that family policies are an important aspect of the institutional context of earnings inequality among coupled households. Although seldom integrated into prominent analyses of economic inequality, women’s earnings are consistently found to reduce relative inequality among households. This means that family policies, as well-known determinants of women’s employment and earnings, are important contextual determinants of economic inequality. Using Luxembourg Income Study data from 18 OECD countries in the period 1981–2008, this study demonstrates that women have higher earnings, and that their earnings reduce inequality among coupled households more in institutional contexts with generous paid leave and public childcare. We found no sizeable association between financial support policies, such as family allowances and tax benefits to families with children, and the degree to which women’s earnings contribute to inequality among coupled households. Family policy arrangements that facilitate women’s employment and earnings are associated with less economic inequality among coupled households.

Nieuwenhuis, R., Need, A. & Van der Kolk, H. (2018). Family policy as an institutional context of economic inequality. Acta Sociologica. Forthcoming, online first: http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0001699318760125

Family policies are those public policies that directly affect families with children. Given the fact that definitions of what constitutes a family are constantly changing, and with changing goals of governments, the nature of family policies has been changing since their early inception (in their modern form) at the time of industrialization. Family policies are understood as having a variety of goals, including 1) poverty reduction and income maintenance, 2) direct compensation for the financial cost of raising children, 3) fostering employment, 4) improving gender equity, 5) support for early childhood development, and 6) raising birth rates (see Thévenon 2011 in Origin and Variety of Family Policies).

The available research on family policies is vast, and naturally difficult decisions had to be made to end up with the selection of studies presented here. Important works and topics had to be left out, although many of the topics that are not explicitly discussed emerge in one form or another in our selection of research. Although our selection seeks to cover a broad range of perspectives, we have focused on 1) empirical research, often (but not exclusively) quantitative in nature, 2) research on outcomes of family policies, 3) research on family policy outcomes that include employment, wages, poverty, and fertility, and 4) in addition to some classics, some recent works that point to current frontiers in family policy research.

The references are organized in six major categories, which necessarily show some overlap. We begin with several General subsections that cover the Origin and Variety of Family Policies, selected Classics, concepts, Research Overviews, discussions on Gender in Welfare State Regimes, and recent perspectives on family policies such as social investment. Next, we detail studies that examined various forms of family Policies as their object of study, covering parental leave, childcare, and cash support for families, including child support and alimonies. Third, we selected studies on Outcomes pertaining to employment, unpaid work, occupations and earnings, poverty, and fertility. Fourth, we highlight several Debates that are ongoing in the literature, including on the Matthew Effect and on using aggregated data to study the link between fertility and (women’s) employment. Fifth, we highlight several research Frontiers: areas of more recently developed topics that include the role of fathers, family policies outside the EU or OECD, company-level (rather than public) family policies, and the use of experimental approaches. We conclude by listing a range of Data Sources that are relevant for the continued study of family policies and their outcomes.

The chapter is available online

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.

Friday, I watched “Katja en Sophie”, a Dutch talkshow hosted by Katja Schuurman and Sophie Hilbrand. The topic of the evening was the difficulties (Dutch) women have when combining a career with having children. Femke Halsema, political leader of Groenlinks, was one of the guests. She rightfully criticized an expert, but missed out on some of the more interesting arguments.

One of the elements of the talkshow was a video in which an ‘expert’ (Henk Noort) explained some scientific thoughts on why women still have lower career possibilities, compared with men. He mentioned two causes for the low labour market participation: women get physically ‘addicted’ to their children, thereby increasing the incentive for women to quit working after having had a child. The second reason was a comparison with the United States, where due to the shortage of men during the First World War men were forced to make way for working women.

Femke Halsema exploded when hearing these arguments. I think she was right to explode. Indeed, it remains just a little unclear how exactly a world war, 90 years ago, could bring differences between women labour participation about. I would say that that is not an explanation, but the labelling of an observed correlation. However right Halsema was to object to this ‘explanation’, she missed out on what I think is the more interesting statements made by Henk Noort: the argument that there is a biological basis for the low labour participation of women.

I think this argument fails on two accounts. Firstly, it is unclear why this biological explanation doesn’t apply in the United States (referring to the WWI argument), or at least how these two explanations relate to each other. But the more important criticism is that this explanation does not take into account the social structure, thereby failing to aggregate to the level of society. This is generally referred to as the micro-macro problem in social science.

What does that mean? Let’s suppose that indeed women after childbirth become physically ‘addicted’ to their baby and therefor have more difficulties than men to return to the labour market. We could interpret this as an individual level ‘preference’ of women. But behaviour is not formed by single preferences, but also by the beliefs (what is `good’ to do) and opportunities (what is ‘possible’ to do) of people. Beliefs in this case can be formed by social contacts (friend who work), opportunities to work is formed by propoer day-care. This alone can lead to the situation where the macro-level outcome of individual preferences seems counter-intuitive. In normal language, this means that despite the (supposed) biological preference of women not the re-enter the labour market is not a sufficient explanation for the low labour market participation of women.

It is nice when science is taken into account in a public debate, but it is almost never done properly. The few short minutes available to Henk Noort were not sufficient to give a detailed explanation of research findings. Additionally, science is characterized by debate, but in this broadcast no criticism was expressed. And criticism would have been justified, for when the social structure is not taken into account, a psychological mechanism is not enough to explain societal outcomes.