Poverty among Women and Children: What Accounts for the Change?
分析1967-1985年间美国女性户主家庭增多背景下，女性与儿童贫困率相对男性上升的原因，通过分解框架考察工资、工时、男性收入、福利等因素的直接和间接影响。
Over the past few decades there has been a phenomenal increase in the number of households that are headed by women. This fundamental change in family structure has been accompanied by increases in the number of women in poverty, relative to the number of men in poverty. For instance, in 1959 women were 23 percent more likely to be poor than were men, but by 1985 they were 51 percent more likely to be poor.1 At the same time, the ratio of children's poverty, relative to that of men's has skyrocketed. While children were 53 percent more likely to be poor than were men in 1959, by 1985 they were 121 percent more likely to be poor. The feminization of has become shorthand for describing the disproportionate percentage of poverty that is borne by women living alone or with their children. This paper analyzes the forces behind these changes. A framework is developed that allows changes in poverty rates to be decomposed into component parts. Using a timeseries of independent cross sections covering the period from 1967 to 1985, this framework is then used to examine the empirical significance of a variety of factors that contribute to poverty. The first set of factors examined includes women's wage rates and hours of work, men's earnings, and AFDC-guarantee levels. The effects that these variables have had on poverty rates are twofold; they have affected poverty directly (holding marital status constant), and have affected poverty indirectly through their effects on marital status. Both of these effects are considered. In addition, the direct (but not the indirect) poverty effects of changes in the number of children, and changes in income from child support and alimony, are examined.