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.

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.

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.

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!

The reasoning by Jaehrling et al. is quite similar to that in a pair of papers I published last year with Laurie C. Maldonado. In Community, Work & Family we showed how paid leave facilitates the employment of particularly single parents. Yet, despite their employment, single-parent families faced higher poverty risks compared to two-parent families. In the Belgian Review of Social Security we argued that the increased emphasis in policies ‘preparing’ individuals for economic independence through activation may come at the expense of redistributive policies ‘repairing’ adverse economic outcomes such as poverty. We raised the concern that it remains to be seen whether employment is a sufficient strategy against poverty, particularly for single parents.

Jaehrling et al. seem to empirically confirm our concern, discussing the decreased adequacy of social assistance, among other redistributive policies. Moreover, they add several very interesting explanations to how it is possible that single-parents’ employment growth did not reduce their poverty risks. I conclude by mentioning three:

• Selection: It could be that single parents represent an increasingly disadvantaged group in terms of employment and poverty. This would be the case, for instance, of single parenthood would become increasingly concentrated among the lower educated, who have less earnings potential to stay out of poverty by means of employment. However, this explanation found little support. It was found that in Sweden an increasing percentage of single-parents has multiple young children in the household.
• Precarious Employment: With single parent families being overrepresented among jobs with little stability, fixed-term contracts, and lower wages, they find more difficulties in making ends meet based on employment alone.
• Competition with dual-earner families: while single parents families, mostly headed by mothers, were front-runners in terms of maternal / women’s employment, this is no longer the case. With the overall trends towards higher female labour force participation rates, this means that single-parent families increasingly have to compete with dual-earner families. With their double incomes, these dual earners drive up the median incomes, and therefore the income-levels that are regarded necessary to stay out of (relative) poverty. Income levels that are increasingly difficult to reach for single earners.

References

Jaehrling, K., Kalina, T., & Mesaros, L. (2015). A Paradox of Activation Strategies: Why Increasing Labour Market Participation among Single Mothers Failed to Bring Down Poverty Rates. Social Politics: International Studies in Gender, State and Society, 22(1), 86–110.

Maldonado, L. C., & Nieuwenhuis, R. (2015). Family policies and single parent poverty in 18 OECD countries, 1978–2008. Community, Work and Family, 18(4), 395–415.

Nieuwenhuis, R., & Maldonado, L. C. (2015). Prepare Versus Repair? Combining Parental Leave and Family Allowances for Social Investment Against Single-Parent Poverty. Belgian Review of Social Security, (1), 1–10.

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.