Income Support Policies for Single Parents in Europe and the United States: What Works Best?

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/00027162221120448
• Published date: 01 July 2022
• Date: 01 July 2022
• Subject Matter: Poverty, Employment, Income, and Income-Support Policies

ANNALS, AAPSS, 702, July 2022 55

DOI: 10.1177/00027162221120448

Income Support

Policies for

Single Parents

in Europe and

the United

States: What

Works Best?

By

ELISE AERTS,

IVE MARX,

and

ZACHARY PAROLIN

1120448ANN THE ANNALS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMYINCOME SUPPORT POLICIES FOR SINGLE PARENTS

research-article2022

Poverty rates among single parents vary considerably

across countries, in part reflecting differences in the

generosity and design of minimum income protections.

We ask what the optimal ways are to target income sup-

port to single parents, if the prime objective of policy is

to shelter those households from poverty. We map

minimum income provisions for working and nonwork-

ing single-parent households across Europe and the

United States, showing that three things matter for

adequate minimum income protection. First, mini-

mum wage levels matter, obviously for working single

parents, but also for jobless ones since they effectively

set the ‘glass ceiling’ for out-of-work benefits. Second,

the overall generosity of the child benefit package is

crucial to shelter both working and jobless single par-

ents from poverty. Third, countries that employ a strat-

egy of “targeting within universalism” (that is directing

extra support to vulnerable groups such as single par-

ents within the context of a universal benefit program)

tend to do best.

Keywords: minimum income protection; targeting,

minimum wages; child benefits; single

parents

Single parents face particular challenges. Even in

the most developed welfare states, they are con-

fronted with high poverty risks. Nieuwenhuis and

Maldonado (2018) point out that single parents are

caught in a triple bind of not having adequate

resources to find employment that is adequate to

Elise Aerts holds an MSc in social and economic sci-

ences at the University of Antwerp. Currently, she is a

PhD researcher at the Centre for Social Policy Herman

Deleeck. Her research focuses mainly on social policy,

income inequality, and micro-simulation.

Ive Marx is a Professor of social policy at the University of

Antwerp and director of the Centre for Social Policy

Herman Deleeck. He has published extensively on the

issues of minimum income protection, including the vol-

umes Minimum Income Protection in Flux (Palgrave) and

Handbook on In-Work Poverty Research (Edward Elgar).

Correspondence: elise.aerts@uantwerpen.be

56 THE ANNALS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY

provide economic well-being, while benefit levels are inadequate as well. Altogether,

single parents face difficulties in combining the roles of sole breadwinner and sole care

provider. They obviously lack the options that couples have to share these tasks.

Because of the particularly challenging circumstances that single-parent

households face, there is a relatively easy case to be made for providing those

households with extra public income support. Just as welfare states already redis-

tribute from childless individuals to families with children to minimize the wel-

fare loss associated with childrearing, the state could also, as it were, step in as a

substitute for the income from an absent partner. Extra income through social

transfers, for example, can enable them to outsource some caregiving. Or the

extra money may allow them to work less and devote more time to parenting.

On top of the inherent challenges single parents face, they are also more likely

to be in a weaker economic position. Most single-parent families are headed by

women (Chzhen and Bradshaw 2012). They are thus at a disadvantage in terms

of labor market opportunities and earnings, especially when they have lower

levels of education (Gornick 2004; Härkönen, Manzoni, and Bihagen 2016).

Moreover, the lower skilled among them are often reliant on jobs in sectors like

retail, hospitality, or social services that require childcare at the most irregular

hours, exacerbating work-care struggles that are hard enough as they are.

In short, single parents are in an inherently disadvantaged economic position

in societies where double-earner households set the norm. And the less skilled

the working parent is, the more the disadvantage compounds, not just because of

their lower earnings capacity, but also because of their reliance on jobs with

irregular hours that generally cannot be worked remotely. All of this warrants a

degree of preferential treatment, especially if a child’s well-being is the principal

concern. Poverty has detrimental effects for children for the entirety of their life

course, especially in terms of educational and cognitive outcomes (Najman etal.

2009; Lacour and Tissington 2011).

There is thus a multifold and well-documented rationale for providing single

parents with extra state support—“targeting” in social policy terminology. This

begs the core question in this paper: what is the optimal degree of targeting when

it comes to providing income support to single parents, especially if the prime

objective is to shelter them from financial poverty?

The Complexities of Targeting Public Income Support

The debate on targeting essentially comes down to the allocation of resources:

who should get what degree of social protection? Benefits are targeted if there is

Zachary Parolin is an Assistant Professor of social policy 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.

NOTE: This research was cofinanced by the Research Foundation – Flanders, PhD Fellowship

11C7522N.