Department of Sociology, Duke University, Box 90088, Durham, NC 27708, USA.
Demography. 2012 May;49(2):719-46. doi: 10.1007/s13524-012-0094-z.
We examine the influence of individual characteristics and targeted and universal social policy on single-mother poverty with a multilevel analysis across 18 affluent Western democracies. Although single mothers are disproportionately poor in all countries, there is even more cross-national variation in single-mother poverty than in poverty among the overall population. By far, the United States has the highest rate of poverty among single mothers among affluent democracies. The analyses show that single-mother poverty is a function of the household's employment, education, and age composition, and the presence of other adults in the household. Beyond individual characteristics, social policy exerts substantial influence on single-mother poverty. We find that two measures of universal social policy significantly reduce single-mother poverty. However, one measure of targeted social policy does not have significant effects, and another measure is significantly negative only when controlling for universal social policy. Moreover, the effects of universal social policy are larger. Additional analyses show that universal social policy does not have counterproductive consequences in terms of family structure or employment, while the results are less clear for targeted social policy. Although debates often focus on altering the behavior or characteristics of single mothers, welfare universalism could be an even more effective anti-poverty strategy.
我们通过对 18 个富裕的西方民主国家进行多层次分析，考察了个体特征以及有针对性和普遍性的社会政策对单身母亲贫困的影响。尽管在所有国家中，单身母亲都不成比例地处于贫困状态，但单身母亲贫困在各国之间的差异比总体人口贫困的差异更大。到目前为止，美国在富裕的民主国家中单身母亲的贫困率最高。分析表明，单身母亲贫困是家庭就业、教育和年龄构成以及家庭中其他成年人存在的函数。除了个体特征外，社会政策对单身母亲贫困也有很大的影响。我们发现，两项普遍社会政策措施显著降低了单身母亲贫困。然而，一项有针对性的社会政策措施没有显著影响，另一项措施只有在控制普遍社会政策时才具有显著的负面影响。此外，普遍社会政策的效果更大。进一步的分析表明，普遍社会政策在家庭结构或就业方面没有产生适得其反的后果，而有针对性的社会政策的结果则不那么明确。尽管关于社会政策的辩论通常集中在改变单身母亲的行为或特征上，但福利普遍主义可能是一种更有效的反贫困策略。
