Gender Inequality in Poverty in Affluent Nations: The Role of Single Motherhood and the State

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  • 1 January 2000
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      • Published in RePEc
Abstract
Women have higher poverty rates than men in almost all societies (Casper et al., 1994). In this paper, 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 industrialized 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 programs that may particularly help households headed by women.
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