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Using the 2001 Survey of Income and Program Participation, the current study examines poverty and material hardship among children living in 3-generation (n = 486), skipped-generation (n = 238), single-parent (n = 2,076), and 2-parent (n = 6,061) households. Multinomial and logistic regression models indicated that children living in grandparent-headed households experience elevated risk of health insecurity (as measured by receipt of public insurance and uninsurance)--a disproportionate risk given rates of poverty within those households. Children living with single parents did not share this substantial risk. Risk of food and housing insecurity did not differ significantly from 2-parent households once characteristics of the household and caregivers were taken into account.

This analysis examines living arrangements and transitions within the household population of nonmarried individuals aged 55 and over. A household choice model of living arrangements is tested at the cross-sectional and longitudinal levels of analysis in order to contrast the correlates of living arrangements in later life to the predictors of change in living arrangements. While each type of resource is related to living alone at a given point in time, only economic resources are important in the transition to living alone, while only kinship resources are significant in the transition to not living alone.