I examine the relative poverty risk among single-parent households in countries that have a large share of households with dual earners. Data from the Luxembourg Income Study (LIS) Database are used ...to analyze eighteen OECD countries in the period 1984 to 2010. I find that single parents face higher relative income poverty risks in countries with a large share of dual-earner households and that this higher risk of poverty is related to higher standards of living in those countries: higher standards of living have raised poverty thresholds, and single-parent incomes are less likely to reach those higher poverty thresholds. I also find that this overall pattern varied across institutional contexts: a rise of dual-earner households puts single parents at a disadvantage only in countries that have relatively low public expenditures on childcare and relatively low income transfer policies.
The conceptualisation and measurement of benefit coverage is muddled with considerable confusion. In this forum contribution, we propose a new consolidated framework for the analysis of benefit ...coverage. Three sequential steps in measurement are suggested, involving the calculation of coverage rates, eligibility rates and take-up rates in social protection. Each step of the analysis focuses on particular aspects of programme legislation and implementation, and together the new framework will substantially improve the possibilities of research to inform policymaking. We provide an empirical illustration of our approach based on Swedish data, and highlight how our new consolidated framework for analysing benefit coverage provides a reorientation of the research agenda on benefit coverage.
We are living in challenging and uncertain times. At the time this article was edited, there were already more than 2.4 million confirmed cases of the corona virus (COVID-19) (World Health ...Organization, 2020). Nearly every country across the globe is struggling to reduce the spread of the COVID-19 virus and limit its health, societal, and economic consequences. The full impact on community, work, family, and its intersections is not yet clear. As the Editorial Board of Community, Work & Family, we share a deep concern for the potential impact of this global health pandemic. We similarly stand in awe to all the communities, workers, and families doing their utmost to combat it. In this article, we do not attempt to provide definitive answers or even recommendations to address the problems we are witnessing. We do, however, feel the need to raise a collective voice about the significant potential for increased inequality. COVID-19 is not a great leveler. In all likelihood, COVID-19 will exacerbate existing inequalities, both in its immediate consequences resulting from the drastic measures taken to contain its spread, as well as its potential long-term consequences. These inequalities may take many forms. We highlight a number of them here as they relate to this journal’s focus on community, work, and family.
This study examined to what extent family policies differently affect poverty among single-parent households and two-parent households. We distinguished between reconciliation policies (tested with ...parental leave and the proportion of unpaid leave) and financial support policies (tested with family allowances). We used data from the Luxembourg Income Study Database, covering 519,825 households in 18 OECD countries from 1978 to 2008, combined with data from the Comparative Family Policy Database. Single parents face higher poverty risks than coupled parents, and single mothers more so than single fathers. We found that employment reduces poverty, particularly for parents in professional occupations and for coupled parents who are dual earners. Longer parental leave, a smaller proportion of unpaid leave, and higher amounts of family allowances were associated with lower poverty among all households with children. Parental leave more effectively facilitated the employment of single mothers, thereby reducing their poverty more than among couples and single fathers. We found some evidence that family allowances reduced poverty most strongly among single fathers. An income decomposition showed that family allowances reduce poverty among two-parent households with up to 3 percentage points, and among single-parent households (mothers and fathers) up to 13 percentage points.
This open access handbook provides a multilevel view on family policies, combining insights on family policy outcomes at different levels of policymaking: supra-national organizations, national ...states, sub-national or regional levels, and finally smaller organizations and employers. At each of these levels, a multidisciplinary group of expert scholars assess policies and their implementation, such as child income support, childcare services, parental leave, and leave to provide care to frail and elderly family members. The chapters evaluate their impact in improving children’s development and equal opportunities, promoting gender equality, regulating fertility, productivity and economic inequality, and take an intersectional perspective related to gender, class, and family diversity. The editors conclude by presenting a new research agenda based on five major challenges pertaining to the levels of policy implementation (in particular globalization and decentralization), austerity and marketization, inequality, changing family relations, and welfare states adapting to women’s empowered roles.
This study combined demographic and institutional explanations of women's employment, describing and explaining the degree to which mothers in industrialized societies are less likely to be employed ...than women without children. A large number of cross-sectional surveys were pooled, covering 18 Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development countries, 192,484 observations, and 305 country-years between 1975 and 1999. These data were merged with measures of institutional context and analyzed with multilevel logistic regression. The results indicate that, over time, women were increasingly likely to combine motherhood and employment in many, but not all, countries. Both mothers and women without children were more likely to be employed in societies with a large service sector and low unemployment. The employment of women without children was generally unaffected by family policies. Mothers were more likely to be employed in societies with extensive reconciliation policies and limited family allowances.
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.
Comparative welfare state research as examined the outcomes of active labour market policies (ALMP) and work‐family reconciliation policies by and large been separately. As a result, potential ...complementarities between these policy areas have received scant attention empirically. Using macro‐level data, this study answers the question to what extent, and in which way, governments' efforts in ALMP and in early childhood education and care (ECEC) services are complementary to each other in promoting women's employment rates and reducing women's unemployment and inactivity rates in 30 OECD countries from 1985 to 2018. The article theorises about how the various policies that constitute a welfare state relate to each other, distinguishing between pluralism, complementarity and substitutability. These findings provide support for the notion of welfare pluralism, in the sense that ALMP and ECEC policies work together in improving women's employment rates in slightly different ways: ALMP achieve this through reducing women's unemployment rates, whereas ECEC also achieve lower inactivity rates for women. There was, however, more support for the notion of substitution rather than complementarity: the marginal benefits associated with an increase in either ALMP or ECEC were smaller in the context of large investments in the other policy. In other words, the highest rates of women's employment, and the lowest rates of unemployment and inactivity, are found in countries with large investments in both ALMP and ECEC, but such higher investments are associated with diminishing returns.
This 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. 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. This brings into focus, analogue to gender mainstreaming, the importance of mainstreaming family diversity.
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