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MOTHERS’ WORK:
Single Mothers’ Employment,
Earnings, and Poverty In the Age of Welfare Reform
By Mark Levitan and
Robin Gluck
The
proportion of unmarried women with families in NYC who held jobs rose in
the late 1990's at a rate far greater than the national average. These
women not only found jobs as the economy soared, they kept them as the
city's economy soured during 2001.
We have explored trends in employment, earnings, and poverty among
single mothers in New York City and the nation in the context of an
extraordinary event — the 1996 overhaul of the nation’s welfare system —
and an unusual circumstance — an unanticipated boom in employment
opportunities in the second half of the 1990’s.
If ending “dependency” as we knew it was the goal of
the 1996 reform, its success could not be clearer. If creating an
employment-based program that moves working single mothers and their children
out of poverty was the goal, the evidence, in light of the best of all
labor markets, is more ambiguous. While reform’s champions tout the rise in
employment and declines in poverty in the post-reform period, skeptics
point to the many studies of welfare leavers, which show that high rates of
employment have been accompanied by low earnings, periodic unemployment,
and widespread material hardship.
As federal welfare legislation is set to expire and
Congress is engaged in fashioning a new law, this study provides estimates
from the U.S. Bureau of the Census’ monthly Current Population Survey (CPS)
to offer insight into the experiences, opportunities and challenges single
mothers have faced in the labor market during the first iteration of a
profound and continuing shift in public policy.
The report’s principal findings are these:
• There has been a remarkable rise in job
holding by single mothers in New York City
and the United States. From 1996 to 2000, the
proportion of New York City
working-age single mothers with employment leapt by 16.8 percentage points,
from 42.2 percent to 59.0 percent. The increase in single mother job
holding across the nation was also impressive, climbing by 9.6 percentage
points, from 65.9 percent to 75.5 percent.
This was a period of rapid employment growth in New
York, so some employment increase would be
expected. Over the same period, the employment-population ratio (the
proportion of working age adults who are employed) for all city residents
rose by 5.3 percentage points; for women there was a 5.5 percentage point
increase. The increase in job holding among single mothers, therefore,
outpaced these citywide increases three-fold.
• In both New York
City and the U.S.,
single mother unemployment rates fell steadily from 1996 through 2000. Across the nation and in
the city, single mothers continued to experience higher rates of
unemployment than married mothers (often more than twice as high as their
married counterparts). But there was little downward movement in the
married mother unemployment rate, in either the U.S.
or New York City, from 1996 to
2000. Over the same period, although the single mother unemployment rate
never dropped below double digits in the city, it did decline considerably,
from 15.3 percent in 1996 to 10.7 percent in 2000. Nationally, the single
mother unemployment rate fell and from 10.4 percent to 6.9 percent.
• The vast majority of employed New
York City and U.S.
single mothers are working full-time. Part-time work is most prevalent among single
mothers without a high school degree, who are likely to have difficulty
finding full-time jobs at good pay. Not only do part-time workers earn less
than they would if they worked full-time; they are less likely than
full-time workers to receive employer-provided benefits such as health
insurance, retirement programs, or paid sick leave.
• A majority of the city’s, and nearly
half of the nation’s, working single mothers are employed in the service
sector. Most
single mothers are employed in administrative support (clerical) and
service occupations. These jobs are typified by high turnover, low pay, and
few employer-provided benefits.
• The wage rates single mothers can
command in the labor market are modest. Wages for single mothers with less than a
high school degree averaged $7.83 in the city and $7.20 nationwide, a pay
rate that even with full-time, year-around work could not lift a family of
three above the federal poverty line ($14,269 in 2001). While these mothers
are a modest share of all employed single mothers nationally, 13.7 percent,
they represent a considerable share of the employed single mothers in New
York City, 28.3 percent.
• Low wages, less than steady full-time
work, and an inadequate system of income support combine to produce high
rates of poverty in families headed by employed single mothers. At the peak of the 1990’s
economic expansion, one-quarter (24.9 percent) of New
York City and nearly the same proportion (23.9
percent) of U.S.
families headed by a working single mother lived below the federally
defined poverty line.
If reducing poverty is to be a goal of public
policy, our study concludes that the current welfare system needs to be
strengthened. Two areas requiring improvement stand out: single mothers (particularly those
with less than a high school education) need more opportunity to gain
marketable skills, and single mothers need a more robust system of work and
income supports to fill the gap between their wage and salary earnings and
the needs of their families.
Excerpted from a
report from Community Service Society of New York. Available at www.cssny.org
November 2002
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