Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-8bhkd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-15T20:36:57.821Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Welfare Benefits the Duration of Single Parenthood

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 March 2020

John Ermisch  and
Robert E. Wright
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The number of one parent families has risen by about 80 per cent since 1971, reaching just over a million in 1986. (Haskey 1989). In 1986, they made up 14 per cent of all families with dependent children, and the primary reason for this large increase is marital breakup: about 70 per cent of the increase is attributable to the growth in the number of divorced and separated mothers. At present, 90 per cent of single parents are women, and ¾ of mothers heading one parent families have previously been married.

Type
Articles
Information
National Institute Economic Review , Volume 130 , November 1989 , pp. 85 - 90
Copyright
Copyright © 1989 National Institute of Economic and Social Research

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

(1)

NIESR and Birkbeck College respectively. We are grateful to the Joseph Rowntree Memorial Trust and the Economic and Social Research Council (programme grant on ‘Economic Inequality, Gender and Demographic Differentials’) for financial support for the research upon which this paper is based. They are not, however, responsible for the views presented in the paper.

References

Allison, P.D. (1982), ‘Discrete-time methods for the analysis of event histories’, Sociological Methodology, pp. 61–98.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Becker, G.S. (1973), ‘A theory of marriage: part I’, Journal of Political Economy, 81, pp. 813–846.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Duncan, G.J. and Hoffman, S.D. (1988), ‘A comparison of choice-based multinomial and nested logit models: the family structure and welfare use decisions of divorced or separated women’,Journal of Human Resources, 23, pp. 550–562.Google Scholar
Department of Health and Social Security (1984), ‘Abstract of Statistics for Index of Retail Prices, Average Earnings, Social Security Benefits and Contributions’ DHSS, Branch HQ SR8A (April).Google Scholar
Ermisch, J.F. (1981) ‘Economic opportunities, marriage squeezes and the propensity to marry’, Population Studies, 35, pp. 347–356.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Ermisch, J.F. and Wright, R.E., (1989a). ‘The duration of lone parenthood in Britain’, Centre for Economic Policy Research Discussion Paper No. 303.Google Scholar
Ermisch, J.F. and Wright, R.E. (1989b), ‘Welfare benefits and lone parents' employment’, National Institute of Economic and Social Research Discussion Paper No. 159.Google Scholar
Ermisch, J.F. and Wright, R.E. (forthcoming), ‘Entry to lone parenthood: analysis of marital dissolution’, Birkbeck College Discussion Paper in Economics.Google Scholar
Hannan, M.T., Tuma, N.B. and Groeneveld, L.P. (1977), ‘Income and marital events: evidence from an income-maintenance experiment’, American Journal of Sociology, 82, pp. 1186–1211.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Haskey, J. (1989), ‘One-parent families and their children in Great Britain: numbers and characteristics’, Population Trends 55, London: HMSO, pp. 27–33.Google Scholar
Martin, J. and Roberts, C. (1984). Women and Employment: A Lifetime Perspective, London: Her Majesty's Stationary Office.Google Scholar
Murphy, M.J. (1984), ‘Fertility, birth timing and marital breakdown: a reinterpretation of the evidence’, Journal of Biosocial Science, 16, pp. 487–500.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Peters, H.E. (1988), ‘Retrospective versus panel data in analyzing lifecycle events’, Journal of Human Resources, 23, pp. 488–513.CrossRefGoogle Scholar