Gender inequality in poverty in affluent nations: the role of single motherhood and the state

Introduction Women have higher poverty rates than men in almost all societies (Casper et al, 1994). In this chapter, we compare modern nations on this dimension. We use the Luxembourg Income Study (LIS) to compare women’s and men’s poverty rates in eight Western industrialised countries circa the early 1990s: the United States, Australia, Canada, France, West Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. We define individuals to be in poverty if they live in households with incomes below half the median for their nation. We examine, for each country, the ratio of women’s to men’s poverty rate. We then use simple demographic simulation methods to estimate how this gender disparity is affected by how prevalent single motherhood is, and by state tax and transfer programmes that may particularly help households headed by women. Our guiding framework emphasises a web of interdependencies. Individuals rely on others (family members, employers, or the state) to obtain money and what it can buy. In addition, we have relationships with other people – as friends, spouses, employees, fellow citizens or neighbours – and in this we are reliant on the labour of those who reared these people. In this second emphasis, our analysis is inspired by feminist interrogation of who pays the costs of children (England and Folbre, 1999; Folbre, 1994a; 1994b). In this view, an important reason why more women than men are in poor households is because women are paying more of the costs of children than men. Folbre (1994a) argues that many members of society share in the benefits of children being brought up well. Most of us are dependent upon those who rear children for our ability to find caring friends, a spouse, trustworthy neighbours or employees. But we seldom recognise this dependency, and market mechanisms don’t get all the beneficiaries to pay the parents or others who reared children. Often when services have this ‘public good’ aspect, as for example with national defence or highways, the state steps in to socialise the costs. Many social welfare programmes, in effect, socialise some of the costs of rearing children. But states differ in how much they do this, and this may affect how much individual mothers bear the costs of children relative to individual fathers, and relative to male and female taxpayers.

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