Women, Poverty, and Social Policy Regimes: A Cross-National Analysis

This paper assesses women’s poverty in 26 diverse LIS countries – five Anglophone countries, six Continental European countries, four Nordic countries, two Eastern European countries, three Southern European countries, and six Latin American countries. Our analyses are organized around four questions: (1) What is the probability that prime-age women, compared to their male counterparts, live in poor households? (2) How does the overall pattern differ when we consider pre-transfer as well as post-transfer income, and when we consider absolute as well as relative poverty? (3) How do women’s poverty rates, compared to men’s, vary by family type, by educational attainment, and by labour market status? (4) How does our cross-national portrait of gender and poverty shift when we consider person-level income as well as household-level income? We conclude that: women’s market income lags men’s everywhere; public income transfers matter for reducing poverty disparities by gender; families are crucial venues for income support for partnered women, especially women with weak labor market attachment; single mothers remain extremely economically vulnerable in many countries; and institutional contexts matter.