Economic Precarity among Single Parents in the United States during the COVID-19 Pandemic

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/00027162221122682
• Published date: 01 July 2022
• Date: 01 July 2022
• Subject Matter: Single-Parent Families in the U.S. during COVID-19

206 ANNALS, AAPSS, 702, July 2022

DOI: 10.1177/00027162221122682

Economic

Precarity among

Single Parents

in the United

States during

the COVID-19

Pandemic

By

ZACHARY PAROLIN

and

EMMA K. LEE

1122682ANN THE ANNALS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMYECONOMIC PRECARITY OF U.S. SINGLE PARENTS DURING COVID-19

research-article2022

Single-parent families have historically faced greater

economic precarity relative to other family types in the

United States. We investigate how and whether those

disparities widened after the onset of the COVID-19

pandemic. Using data on exposure to school and child-

care center closures, unemployment, poverty, food

hardship, and frequent worrying among single-parent

families versus two-parent families throughout 2020

and 2021, we find that the challenges that single par-

ents faced prior to the pandemic generally magnified

after the arrival of COVID-19. In April 2020, one in

four single parents was unemployed, and unemploy-

ment rates recovered more slowly for single parents

throughout 2021, perhaps in part due to their unequal

exposure to school and childcare closures. The expan-

sion of income transfers largely buffered against poten-

tial increases in poverty and hardship, but levels of

worrying among single parents continued to worsen

throughout 2021.

Keywords: poverty; hardship; COVID-19; single

parents; economic insecurity

Single-parent families have historically faced

greater economic precarity relative to other

family types in the United States. Studies have

demonstrated that this is in part due to the

United States providing less generous income

support for single parents (or families with

children more broadly) compared to many

other high-income countries (Maldonado and

Zachary Parolin is an Assistant Professor of social pol-

icy at Bocconi University in Milan and a senior

research fellow with Columbia University’s Center on

Poverty and Social Policy. His recent work on poverty,

inequality, and social policy has been published in the

American Sociological Review, Demography, Nature

Human Behaviour, and elsewhere.

Emma K. Lee is a research assistant at Columbia

University’s Center on Poverty and Social Policy. Her

research on school and childcare closures in the United

States during the COVID-19 pandemic appeared in

Nature Human Behaviour and Socius.

Correspondence: Zachary.parolin@unibocconi.it

ECONOMIC PRECARITY OF U.S. SINGLE PARENTS DURING COVID-19 207

Nieuwenhuis 2015; Aerts, Marx, and Parolin, this volume). Moreover, from the

early 1990s through 2019, the American welfare state increasingly targeted

income transfers at working parents, leaving jobless parents with few opportuni-

ties to access cash-based social assistance. In 2019, this work-oriented welfare

state, combined with high levels of employment (including among single par-

ents), contributed to a record-low poverty rate. In 2020, however, the COVID-19

pandemic sent the U.S. unemployment rate to a record high, rapidly exposing the

limitations of the country’s employment-centered welfare state.

In April 2020, the same month in which unemployment climbed to 19 percent

in the United States, childcare centers across the country closed, most schools

turned to distance learning, and levels of poverty and hardship threatened to rise.

However, the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic were not shared equally

across family types. This study documents how trends in economic and social

insecurity varied for single-parent families relative to two-parent families

throughout 2020 and 2021. Specifically, we use data from several different

sources to investigate trends in five measures related to economic precarity:

exposure to school and childcare center closures, unemployment, poverty, food

hardship, and subjective well-being.

These five indicators are closely intertwined, and they can offer a multidimen-

sional perspective of the challenges facing families with children: school and

childcare centers may contribute to declines in employment for parents with care

responsibilities, a task that is already more challenging for single-parent families

relative to two-parent families. In turn, school and care closures may contribute

to higher rates of joblessness (or both employment and closures may simply be

endogenous to the spread of COVID-19 and government-enforced mobility

restrictions). Regardless, declining employment may affect poverty and food

hardship. Meanwhile, frequent worrying, one dimension of subjective well-

being, may be associated with poverty and food hardship; conversely, in the con-

text of the global health crisis, frequent worrying may be detached from current

economic conditions. Investigating each of these dimensions offers a broad

account of the economic precarity of single parents throughout the pandemic.

Our findings lead to three broad takeaways. First, the neighborhoods with the

highest shares of single parents faced greater exposure to school and childcare

closures during the 2020–2021 school year. Additionally, single parents consistently

faced higher rates of unemployment, poverty, food insufficiency, and frequent wor-

rying relative to two-parent families throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.

Second, we find that the strongest reductions in poverty and food hardship for

single-parent families occurred after the expansion of the Child Tax Credit

(CTC) in July 2021, which provided monthly and unconditional cash support for

most families with children. Specifically, the CTC payments provided monthly

cash payments of $300 per child under 6, and $250 per child between 6 and 18,

from July through December 2021. Thus, while single-parent families generally

faced more challenges throughout the pandemic relative to other family types,

the trends observed after the introduction of the CTC suggest that a sustained

distribution of unconditional cash support for lower-income families could

reduce economic insecurity for single parents moving forward.