Thanks for Nothing: The Economics of Single Motherhood since 1980
Available at: Amazon |
In 1980, single mother families were five times more likely than two-parent families to be poor. Forty years later, single-mother families are still five times more likely to be poor. How can this be given the vast increases in education and employment achieved by American women over this time period? This book makes sense of this conundrum.
Wolfinger and McKeever undertake a deep dive into the economics of single motherhood with almost 40 years of data from two large national surveys, the Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey and the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth’s 1979 cohort. They find that the mystery of single mother’s economic stagnation can be explained by changes in the kind of women most likely to become single mothers. In 1980, most single mothers were divorced women; 40 years later, the majority are mothers who gave birth out of wedlock. On paper, divorced women look a lot like their married contemporaries, but with one income instead of two. Never-married mothers are a completely different population. They have less education, work less, and receive lower economic returns to their educational credentials when they do work. They’re also far more likely to themselves have grown up in underprivileged families.
These findings accord with a scholarly tradition dating from the publication of the Moynihan Report in 1965 and continuing through the research of Sara McLanahan and others. These scholars raised public awareness of single parenthood as a matter of public interest, and pointed the way towards how public policy should respond.
Release date: December 13, 2024
