IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ese/iserwp/2022-06.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Single mothers’ income in twelve rich nations: differences in disadvantage across the distribution

Author

Listed:
  • Harkness, Susan

Abstract

I examine how single motherhood affects income at different quantiles of the distribution in twelve rich countries. Using harmonised data from the Luxembourg Income Study, I show how the distribution of income for single-mother headed households differs to that of coupleheaded households with children. Using unconditional quantile treatment effect models, I assess the influence of single motherhood on income at different points of the distribution. There are striking variations across countries in how single motherhood affects income at different points of the distribution. In some countries, such as the United Kingdom, single motherhood has a greater effect on income at the top of the distribution than the bottom. In others, such as the United States, effects are largest at the bottom of the distribution. I discuss the role of employment and social policies in driving differences in the income gradient associated with single motherhood across the distribution across countries.

Suggested Citation

  • Harkness, Susan, 2022. "Single mothers’ income in twelve rich nations: differences in disadvantage across the distribution," ISER Working Paper Series 2022-06, Institute for Social and Economic Research.
    • Handle: RePEc:ese:iserwp:2022-06
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.iser.essex.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/files/working-papers/iser/2022-06.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Sergio Firpo, 2007. "Efficient Semiparametric Estimation of Quantile Treatment Effects," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 75(1), pages 259-276, January.
    2. Anthony B. Atkinson & Thomas Piketty & Emmanuel Saez, 2011. "Top Incomes in the Long Run of History," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 49(1), pages 3-71, March.
    3. Wim Van Lancker & Joris Ghysels & Bea Cantillon, 2012. "An international comparison of the impact of child benefits on poverty outcomes for single mothers," Working Papers 1203, Herman Deleeck Centre for Social Policy, University of Antwerp.
    4. Zachary Parolin, 2019. "The Effect of Benefit Underreporting on Estimates of Poverty in the United States," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 144(2), pages 869-898, July.
    5. Sophie Moullin & Susan Harkness, 2021. "The Single Motherhood Penalty as a Gender Penalty," LIS Working papers 817, LIS Cross-National Data Center in Luxembourg.
    6. González, Libertad, 2004. "Single Mothers and Work," IZA Discussion Papers 1097, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    7. Natasha V. Pilkauskas & Christina Cross, 2018. "Beyond the Nuclear Family: Trends in Children Living in Shared Households," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 55(6), pages 2283-2297, December.
    8. Zagel, Hannah & Van Lancker, Wim, 2022. "Family policies’ long-term effects on poverty: a comparative analysis of single and partnered mothers," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 32(2), pages 166-181.
    9. David Brady & Ryan Finnigan & Sabine Hübgen, 2017. "Rethinking the risks of poverty: a framework for analyzing prevalences and penalties," LIS Working papers 693, LIS Cross-National Data Center in Luxembourg.
    10. David Brady & Rebekah Burroway, 2012. "Targeting, Universalism, and Single-Mother Poverty: A Multilevel Analysis Across 18 Affluent Democracies," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 49(2), pages 719-746, May.
    11. Sergio P. Firpo & Nicole M. Fortin & Thomas Lemieux, 2018. "Decomposing Wage Distributions Using Recentered Influence Function Regressions," Econometrics, MDPI, vol. 6(2), pages 1-40, May.
    12. Lane Kenworthy, 2015. "Do employment-conditional earnings subsidies work?," ImPRovE Working Papers 15/10, Herman Deleeck Centre for Social Policy, University of Antwerp.
    13. Fernando Rios-Avila, 2020. "Recentered influence functions (RIFs) in Stata: RIF regression and RIF decomposition," Stata Journal, StataCorp LP, vol. 20(1), pages 51-94, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Susan Harkness, 2022. "Single Mothers’ Income in Twelve Rich Nations: Differences in Disadvantage across the Distribution," LIS Working papers 835, LIS Cross-National Data Center in Luxembourg.
    2. Susan Harkness, 2022. "Single Mothers’ Income in Twelve Rich Countries: Differences in Disadvantage across the Distribution," The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, , vol. 702(1), pages 164-187, July.
    3. Bruch, Sarah K. & van der Naald, Joseph & Gornick, Janet C., 2022. "Poverty Reduction through Federal and State Policy Mechanisms: Variation Over Time and Across the U.S. States," SocArXiv jz5xp, Center for Open Science.
    4. Thomas Biegert & David Brady & Lena Hipp, 2022. "Cross-National Variation in the Relationship between Welfare Generosity and Single Mother Employment," The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, , vol. 702(1), pages 37-54, July.
    5. Biegert, Thomas & Brady, David & Hipp, Lena, 2022. "Cross-National Variation in the Relationship between Welfare Generosity and Single Mother Employment," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 702(1), pages 37-54.
    6. Bruch, Sarah K. & van der Naald, Joseph & Gornick, Janet C., 2022. "Poverty Reduction through Federal and State Policy Mechanisms: Variation Over Time and Across the U.S. States," SocArXiv jz5xp_v1, Center for Open Science.
    7. Zachary Van Winkle & Emanuela Struffolino, 2018. "When working isn’t enough: Family demographic processes and in-work poverty across the life course in the United States," Demographic Research, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany, vol. 39(12), pages 365-380.
    8. Boris Hirsch & Philipp Lentge, 2021. "Non-Base Compensation and the Gender Pay Gap," Working Paper Series in Economics 404, University of Lüneburg, Institute of Economics.
    9. Juho Härkönen & Marika Jalovaara & Eevi Lappalainen & Anneli Miettinen, 2023. "Double Disadvantage in a Nordic Welfare State: A Demographic Analysis of the Single-Parent Employment Gap in Finland, 1987–2018," European Journal of Population, Springer;European Association for Population Studies, vol. 39(1), pages 1-27, December.
    10. Christopher F. Baum & Hans Lööf & Andreas Stephan & Klaus F. Zimmermann, 2024. "Estimating the Wage Premia of Refugee Immigrants: Lessons from Sweden," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 77(4), pages 562-597, August.
    11. Ojah, Kalu & Kodongo, Odongo, 2024. "Effective financial inclusion and the need to put the horse before the cart: Saving!," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 96(PB).
    12. Phan, Van & Singleton, Carl & Bryson, Alex & Forth, John & Ritchie, Felix & Stokes, Lucy & Whittard, Damian, 2022. "Accounting for Firms in Ethnicity Wage Gaps throughout the Earnings Distribution," IZA Discussion Papers 15284, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    13. Khadija Bchi & Paul Makdissi & Myra Yazbeck, 2024. "A modeling approach to decomposing changes in health concentration curves," Working Papers 2403E, University of Ottawa, Department of Economics.
    14. Melanie Jones & Ezgi Kaya, 2024. "Performance‐related pay and the UK gender pay gap," Industrial Relations: A Journal of Economy and Society, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 63(4), pages 512-529, October.
    15. Bram Hogendoorn & Juho Härkönen, 2023. "Single Motherhood and Multigenerational Coresidence in Europe," Population and Development Review, The Population Council, Inc., vol. 49(1), pages 105-133, March.
    16. Zagel, Hannah & Hübgen, Sabine & Nieuwenhuis, Rense, 2021. "Diverging Trends in Single-Mother Poverty across Germany, Sweden, and the United Kingdom: Toward a Comprehensive Explanatory Framework," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, issue Advance A, pages 1-1.
    17. Carlos J Gil-Hernández & Guillem Vidal & Sergio Torrejón Perez, 2024. "Technological Change, Tasks and Class Inequality in Europe," Work, Employment & Society, British Sociological Association, vol. 38(3), pages 826-851, June.
    18. Rense Nieuwenhuis, 2022. "Single Parents Competing in a Dual-Earner Society: Social Policy to Level the Playing Field," The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, , vol. 702(1), pages 114-128, July.
    19. Xiaobo Xu & Martin Young & Liping Zou & Jiali Fang, 2023. "Retirement Income Sufficiency: A Comparison Study in Australia and New Zealand," JRFM, MDPI, vol. 16(2), pages 1-38, February.
    20. Hirsch, Boris & Lentge, Philipp, 2021. "Non-Base Compensation and the Gender Pay Gap," IZA Discussion Papers 14551, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ese:iserwp:2022-06. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Jonathan Nears (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/rcessuk.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.