Search

Poverty in the United States today disproportionately affects the young. The most important determinant of youth poverty is family structure, with poverty rates for single-parent families several times those of two-parent families. Never-married mothers constitute an especially impoverished group of single-parent families. Although never-married mother families have been faring better in recent years, the reasons why have not been established. The goal of this research is to explore the changing determinants of poverty for never-married mothers since 1980; the initial results presented here contrast the changing incomes of never-married mothers with their divorced and intact-family counterparts. We examine income trends by analyzing data from the 1980-2001 March Demographic Supplements of the Current Population Survey (CPS). Our study will ascertain whether all families headed by never-married mothers have gained economically, or only a select few, and to adjudicate between competing explanations for economic progress. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We utilize variation across the U.S. states to examine determinants of poverty during the 1980s and 1990s. We attempt to investigate causal mechanisms more carefully than is often the case in poverty analyses, and we consider both absolute and relative measures of poverty. Our results suggest that economic growth, inequality, education, female-headed households, and government redistribution each played a role in influencing poverty. We find considerable overlap but also some noteworthy differences in the determinants of absolute poverty and those of relative poverty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]