Read the full publication in the Journal of European Social Policy (JESP).

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

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.

Read more in our new open access publication!

Alm, S., Nelson, K., & Nieuwenhuis, R. (2019). The Diminishing Power of One? Welfare State Retrenchment and Rising Poverty of Single-Adult Households in Sweden 1988–2011. European Sociological Review, 0(0), 20.

This discussion paper provides an updated analysis of gendered economic inequality in high- and middle-income countries. A review of the literature demonstrates that such an analysis needs to explicitly recognize that gender, poverty, and (economic) inequality are intrinsically linked. Specifically, the paper addresses two sets of questions:

• First, how do intra-family resource allocation and distribution patterns both reflect and shape gender inequalities in power and well-being, and what factors—including policy-related ones—can mitigate these inequalities?
• Second, how do families as gendered institutions contribute to broader socio-economic inequalities, and what can be done to reduce/reverse these inequalities?

Using data from the LIS Database, this paper shows considerable differences among 42 countries with respect to how likely women were to have their own income. The period from 2000 to 2010/2014 saw increasing rates of own incomes as well as women’s incomes constituting larger shares in total household income. A key finding is that, in countries where many women have an income of their own, relative poverty rates are lower.

The comparative analyses, combined with a review of the literature, suggest that welfare state arrangements that support working women not only improve the overall employment rates of women but also help to prevent particularly women in low-income households from living in dependence and instead to have an income of their own—thus reinforcing the potential for poverty reduction. Moreover, institutional contexts that are generally conducive to women’s employment tend to be effective across family forms.

I was a great pleasure to work with the excellent LIS team on this project, and an honour to prepare this report commissioned by UN Women (the United Nations organization dedicated to gender equality and the empowerment of women). This paper was produced for UN Women’s flagship report, “Progress of the World’s Women 2019”.

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.

The triple bind of single-parent families is available for free/open access download.

What kind of barriers and risks do single parents face? In their new book, The Triple Bind of Single-Parent Families: Resources, Employment and Policies to Improve Well-Being (Policy Press, 2018), editors Rense Nieuwenhuis and Laurie C. Maldonado argue that understanding inadequate resources, employment, and policies matter for understanding single-parent families. They refer to these as the “Triple Bind.” Part One explores resources, including exploring education, wealth gaps, and school settings. Other chapters in this section also explore how single-parenthood is often a transitory phase and the importance of co-parenting. Part Two explored inadequate employment and starts with an important chapter about taking a life course perspective when researching single-parents. The chapters in this section also tackle income transfers, paid parental leave, and other workplace characteristics. Part Three focuses on redistributive policies, including cash benefits, universal vs. targeted polices, daycare, and minimum income. Part Four concludes the book with important discussions around framing single-parents in a “deficit model” way, the importance of gender in the discussion of single-parents, and ideas for future research.

This book is free to download in its entirety online and therefore is made accessible to anyone who may be interested in one or all of the topics contained within! Overall, this book tackles important topics around single-parents around the world and would be useful for an upper level undergraduate course in the Sociology of Family or Family Studies. It would also be the perfect addition to a graduate level course that focus on families.

Single parents face a triple bind of inadequate resources, employment, and policies, which in combination further complicate their lives.

This book – multi-disciplinary and comparative in design – shows evidence from over 40 countries, along with detailed case studies of Sweden, Iceland, Scotland, and the UK. It covers aspects of well-being that include poverty, good quality jobs, the middle class, wealth, health, children’s development and performance in school, and reflects on social justice.

Leading international scholars challenge our current understanding of what works and draw policy lessons on how to improve the well-being of single parents and their children.

Don’t buy our book!

Well, you can. There is a beautiful hardback version available. But you don’t have to. The open access .PDF of the book is free to download, thanks to generous support of Knowledge Unlatched.

Free download: http://oapen.org/search?identifier=643492
Policy Press website: http://policypress.co.uk/the-triple-bind-of-single-parent-families