[go: up one dir, main page]

IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/lev/wrkpap/wp_59.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Health, Earnings Capacity, and Poverty of Single-Mother Families

Author

Listed:
  • Barbara Wolfe
  • Steven Hill
Abstract
Approximately 1.4 million single mothers have substantial health problems. Even if they were to work full time, they would be unlikely to earn enough to adequately provide for themselves and their children. Many of these women are not likely to find employment that offers health insurance coverage for themselves or their children. Employment is thus not an option that would provide sufficient resources--in terms of income or insurance--for them to live at or above the poverty line. Those single mothers who have a disabled child are at additional disadvantage. These children may require increased time from an adult and are likely to have considerable medical care needs and expenditures. For these families, employment of the mother may not provide adequate resources in terms of either time available to meet the disabled child's special needs, income, or adequate health insurance. We explore these issues, first examining the health status of single mothers compared to other women. We next estimate their earnings capacity--the amount they would earn were they to join the work force on a full-time basis, taking into account their health status and that of their children. We then investigate the percentage of single mothers and their children who would be poor if they had to rely on the earnings capacity of the women (working 40 hours per week, adjusting for health). Finally, we explore the policy implications of our findings, which seem particularly timely in the face of the new work requirements of the 1988 Family Support Act. The act requires most single mothers currently receiving or applying for Aid to Families with DependentChildren (AFDC) to enroll in training or register to work.

Suggested Citation

  • Barbara Wolfe & Steven Hill, 1991. "The Health, Earnings Capacity, and Poverty of Single-Mother Families," Economics Working Paper Archive wp_59, Levy Economics Institute.
  • Handle: RePEc:lev:wrkpap:wp_59
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.levyinstitute.org/pubs/wp59.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Lori Curtis & Shelley Phipps, 2001. "Social Transfers and the Health Status and Health-Care Utilization of Mothers in Norway and Canada," LIS Working papers 313, LIS Cross-National Data Center in Luxembourg.
    2. Lori J. Curtis, 2001. "Lone Motherhood and Health Status," Canadian Public Policy, University of Toronto Press, vol. 27(3), pages 335-356, September.
    3. R. Haveman & B. Wolfe, "undated". "Welfare to Work in the U.S.: A Model for Other Nations?," Institute for Research on Poverty Discussion Papers 1159-98, University of Wisconsin Institute for Research on Poverty.
    4. Ann E. Horvath-Rose & H. Elizabeth Peters, 2000. "Welfare Waivers and Non-Marital Childbearing," JCPR Working Papers 128, Northwestern University/University of Chicago Joint Center for Poverty Research.
    5. Robert Haveman & Barbara Wolfe, 2000. "Errata," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 7(3), pages 369-371, May.

    More about this item

    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:lev:wrkpap:wp_59. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Elizabeth Dunn (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.levyinstitute.org .

    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.