ABSTRACT
Nora is but one of millions of “lone mothers” in the United States, mothers who “are potentially the sole [caregivers] and sole supporters of their children.”2 While being in a family headed by two adult partners is clearly no guarantee that a family will avoid poverty, families headed by lone mothers in the United States are far more likely than two-parent families to experience economic deprivation. The Urban Institute compared the economic hardships experienced by U.S. families with children headed by noncohabiting single parents (the vast majority of whom are women) to the hardships experienced by families headed by married couples. It found that 57.3 percent of single-parent families were “low income” in 2002, having incomes below 200 percent of the federal poverty line, compared with
22.8 percent of married-couple families. Almost 30 percent of U.S. families headed by noncohabiting single parents were living in poverty in 2002, compared with only 6.6 percent of families headed by married couples.3
