PI: Joya Misra Institution: University of Massachusetts, Amherst
SES-1020831 PI: Stephanie Moller Institution: University of North Carolina, Charlotte
This project will assess how poverty rates and the depth/severity of poverty vary for women by marital and parenthood status, and whether family benefits and work-family policies explain these variations. This research will expand on the Misra-Budig-Böeckmann Family Policy Database to determine how policies affect the risk of and the depth of impoverishment among women across twenty-two countries and five time periods by combining the policy data with the Luxembourg Income Study (LIS). This will allow stronger claims about the relationships between work-family policies and poverty.
Broader Impacts: By examining the impact of a variety of work-family policies across twenty-two nations and five time periods on poverty, this research will provide important answers about the relationship between particular policies and poverty outcomes.
This project assesses how poverty rates vary for women by marital and parenthood status. Using data from a number of different countries through the Luxembourg Income Study, as well as an expanded Work-Family Policy Indicators Database, we show that there are substantial variations in poverty for families with children among wealthy countries. We further show that policies such as family allowances, paid parental leaves, and childcare, reduce the risk of poverty for families with children. These policies are most effective at reducing the risk of poverty for single mothers. In addition, we show that childcare and parental leaves reduce the risk of poverty through boosting mothers’ employment. Simply put, work-family policies help ensure that mothers can remain employed, which further reduces their likelihood of experiencing poverty. We also illustrate how policy effects differ for women depending on their levels of education. We find that for single mothers, child care policies reduce the risk of poverty regardless of levels of education, but extended family leave with generous wage replacement is more beneficial for less educated mothers. This is sensible because more educated women tend to be employed in more specialized jobs, jobs for which employers are keenly interested in minimizing turnover. For partnered mothers, family allowances reduce the risk of poverty more for less educated mothers than highly educated mothers. Additionally, generous family leave is most beneficial for less educated mothers. This research has clearly illustrated that the risk of poverty for mothers varies by their levels of education interacting with the work-family policies available to them.
