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Estimates suggest that more than 6 million children live with at least one grandparent. Despite evidence establishing the growing prevalence of this arrangement, limited research has focused on estimating the implications of coresidence for the economic well-being of grandchildren. Using data from the 2001 panel of the Survey of Income and Program Participation, this article examines levels of financial hardship among a particularly vulnerable group of children--those living in mother-only families. Findings suggest that children living in mother-only families that include a grandparent are substantially less likely to be living below or near the poverty level, compared with children living in mother-only families without a grandparent present. The financial security of children in these three-generation households is enhanced through significant economic contributions of the grandparents and from household receipt of a wide range of financial resources, including means-tested cash transfers and other income such as Social Security. Keywords: grandparents; grandparenting; three-generation families; economic well-being of children 10.1177/0192513X09340527

Using data from the National Longitudinal Surveys of Youth 1997 (NLSY-97), this research provides a descriptive portrait of the relationship between poverty and parenting among single mothers of adolescent children. This research contributes to our understanding of how strongly and consistently poverty status relates to various parenting dimensions, including parenting style, monitoring, relationship quality, and limit-setting. This study extends prior work by focusing on within group variation of parenting of single-mother family structures, and including non-poor single mothers in the analyses. Using multinomial logistic and OLS regression, results indicate poverty status is unrelated to the style, relationship quality, and monitoring of single mothers, but it is moderately related to greater involvement in limit-setting. Overall, the experience of poverty does not appear negatively related to the parenting of single mothers. These results indicate poor single mothers appear to manage their parental strategies equally well compared to non-poor single mothers. doi: 10.1300/J002v42n04_04 KEYWORDS. Parenting, poverty, single mothers

Children in the United States are more likely than ever before to spend part of their lives in single-mother families. However, researchers usually ignore the complexity of household living arrangements, [...]

A study conducted to investigate the relationships of single mothers' assets and their human capital development to their upward economic mobility is presented. The data can be used by social workers to recommend investment strategies for single mothers' long-term well-being.

A study was conducted to analyze the life course transitions into and from families headed by unmarried cohabiting couples for a cohort of American children. Data from the merged child-supplements of the 1979-1992 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth was utilized to carry out the analysis. Results indicated that nearly all children in cohabiting-couple families will experience rapid subsequent changes in family status.

A large proportion of the poor in the United States is composed of single mothers and their children. Many of these women receive partial child support payment or none at all. Welfare reform legislation has, therefore, focused on child support payment enforcement. However, the economic well-being of single-parent families can be improved only if child support payments are paid on a regular basis and reflect the cost of raising children. Comparing USDA estimates of expenditures on children with average full child support payments, which represent average child support awards, shows that these full payments cover a small proportion of the total cost of raising children. Therefore, to improve the economic well-being of single-mother families, child support enforcement plus child support awards that reflect the cost of raising children are needed., A dramatic change in American family life during the past 30 years has been the growth in the number of single-parent families. In 1970, 13 percent of all families with [...]