9 Sole mothers
An important group that is particularly prone to low wages is mothers of young children, and sole mothers in particular. In this section, I set out what is known about the labour market experience of sole mothers, and their prospects for upward wage mobility. The questions are “What is the role of low-wage jobs as a pathway into paid employment for sole mothers? Do sole mothers get stuck in low-wage jobs indefinitely, or do low-wage jobs provide a ladder to work up to higher-wage jobs? Most of the information is taken from the US literature, with some also from Australia and Canada.
There is a special social significance to the wage experience of sole mothers. First, they are responsible not just for themselves, but also for their children. Prospects for the mother affect prospects for the children. Evidence emerging from the US experiment with pushing sole mothers off welfare and into work is suggesting that the substitution of work for welfare, of itself, does little for children’s welfare. Only when mothers’ incomes rise do discernible benefits to children become evident (Savener et al, 2002:4). Second, the alternative to wage work for most sole mothers is social welfare support (though there is some financial support for the children provided by some fathers). The taxpayer therefore has an interest in the ability of sole mothers to find adequate employment, that enables them to become financially independent. The evidence of Lane and Stevens (2001) is that finding employment that provides financial independence is much harder than finding any employment.
The number of sole mothers has grown dramatically in many OECD countries over the last 20 to 30 years. By 1998, 21% of all Australian families (with 18% of the children) were headed by a sole parent, and the vast majority (90%) of these sole parents are women (ABS, 1999). A similar growth in sole mothers has occurred in North America, to 23% in 1998 (Horwitz and Scheid, 1999). Generally sole mothers comprise two main groups - older, divorced or separated women with two or three children of school age, and younger, never-married women who usually have just one child, often of pre-school age (McHugh and Millar, 1996).
9.1 The labour force participation of sole mothers
One possible way for sole mothers to improve their poor financial circumstances is to have higher wage income. In 1994, the split between economically active and inactive sole mothers was about 50:50 in Australia, whereas for married mothers the split is closer to 60:40 (McHugh and Millar, 1996). Similarly, in the US, married mothers have had a higher employment level than sole mothers since the early 1990's. In Germany however, married mothers exhibit consistently lower employment rates than lone mothers (Drobnic, 2000). Despite about half of sole mothers not working, numerous studies have found that the vast majority of sole mothers would much prefer to work than receive welfare (Edin and Lein, 1997; McHugh and Millar, 1996; Youngblut, Brady, Thomas and Brooten, 2000). There are a number of reasons why sole mothers who want to work do not do so. They include the level and availability of income support payments; the care needs of young children, access to jobs, attainable wage rates and the availability and affordability of child care (Ross and Saunders, 1990).
Unemployment is generally more of a problem for sole mothers than for married mothers. In 1995, 20% of never-married American mothers with pre-school children were unemployed, compared to 5% of married mothers with pre-school children (Drobnic, 2000). Despite this, the inability to get a job is not the major problem of labour force participation for sole mothers (Harris, 1993, 1996; McHugh and Millar, 1996; Spalter-Roth et al 1995). Rather, the potential wage that a sole mother can earn is the major determinant of whether she will participate in the labour force or not. If a sole mother cannot find a job with wages, benefits and working conditions that outweigh the difference between welfare benefits and the costs of childcare, she has little economic incentive to enter the labour market. Jencks (1994) argues that sole mothers do not turn to welfare because they are unusually reluctant to work or prefer hand-outs, rather they turn to welfare because they cannot get jobs that pay better than welfare. The general belief of researchers throughout the late 20th century was that employment provided no exit from poverty for most sole mothers because the jobs available to them were predominantly and persistently low wage positions (eg, Mann and Albelda, 1989).
A considerable body of research appears to confirm these expectations about the role of low wage work for sole mothers. First, the types of occupations which are available to sole mothers are predominantly characterised by low wages. Sole mothers, (even those who participate in schemes designed to help sole mothers find work, such as Jobs, Education and Training (JET) in Australia), end up employed in traditional women’s occupations, such as hospitality, retail, factory work, secretarial work, cleaning, and child-minding, (Edin and Lein, 1997; Leung, 1998; Mulroy, 1995). Spalter-Roth, Burr, Hartmann and Shaw (1995) found in a two year longitudinal study of welfare-reliant mothers in the US that 7 in 10 single welfare-recipients reported some participation in the labour force during the 2-year period, but that these jobs were concentrated in the lowest rungs of the occupational ladder (39% worked as maids, cashiers, nurse's aides, child care workers or waitresses). Among working sole mothers in Brooks and Buckner’s (1996) study, cashier and food service were the most common jobs (75%), with only 3.2% working in management positions. Furthermore, 57% of the working sole mothers worked in part-time jobs.
Thus the types of unskilled occupations typically held by sole mothers tend to be part-time, offer low wages, few if any benefits like health coverage, no paid leave, have unpredictable and limited hours, low status, and be insecure, temporary and casual (Avison, 1997; Brown and Moran, 1997; DeBord et al 2000; Department of Social Security, 1992; Edin and Lein, 1997; Leung, 1998; Lipman, Offord and Boyle, 1997; Mulroy, 1995; Spalter-Roth et al, 1995). These jobs held by sole mothers have also been found to offer few rewards for education or years on the job, short duration (averaging only about 1.8 years) and few opportunities for advancement (Brooks and Buckner, 1996; DeBord et al 2000; Mulroy, 1995).
Research suggests that many sole mothers cease working because the low-wage jobs they obtain often make them worse off financially than they would be if they remained on welfare. The most prominent study conducted in this area was by Edin and Lein (1997). In the early, 1990s, Edin and Lein interviewed 214 poor sole mothers who were welfare recipients and 165 poor sole mothers who worked mostly in unskilled jobs, all from the US. They found that these sole mothers had to choose between a welfare system that paid far too little to provide for their basic needs, and a labour market that offered them little more than they could have received by staying home. Wage-reliant mothers faced the largest gap between their income and expenses. Their material hardship rates reflected this large gap: wage-reliant mothers reported experiencing more material hardship than those who relied primarily on welfare. Those who worked usually fared worse than those on welfare because the government took so much back from workers and because no matter how hard life was on welfare, it was more stable than the low-wage, unskilled employment that characterised these sole mothers. Many of the wage-reliant sole mothers in Edin and Lein's study said that they were no better off financially than they would have been on welfare, that there was little prospect of promotion in their jobs, there were few rewards for job experience, their employers rarely offered any training or education, that they worked in industries characterised by unstable employment, and that working full-time placed substantial strains on their ability to be a good parent.
Edin and Lein (1997) concluded that there were a number of sound reasons why welfare-reliant sole mothers were better off not looking for work. One of them was that, no matter how long they stayed at a job and no matter how diligently they worked, jobs in what some called “the five-dollar-an-hour ghetto” rarely led to better jobs over time.
Other researchers have obtained findings corresponding to those of Edin and Lein (1997). Using both national data and qualitative data from a sample of diverse sole mothers (not just poor sole mothers like Edin and Lein sampled), Mulroy (1995) found that about 60% of all employed sole mothers were poor, because the types of jobs available to them were generally low-wage, part-time and temporary. In their analysis of unemployment and earnings data for sole mothers in Vermont, USA, McCrate and Smith (1998) also found that the major cause of sole mother's predicament was scarce job opportunities and low wage jobs that do not provide economic security. Further, an Australian study of sole mothers by Shaver, King, McHugh and Payne (1994) examined older Jobs, Education and Training participants whose youngest child was about to turn 16 and who were thus about to lose the sole parent pension. They found that a year after the pension ceased, almost a third of the sample still had no paid work and more than half of the women in the study reported lower incomes after the transition off the pension than before, because their jobs were predominantly low-wage, casual and temporary.
The welfare reform in the US during the late 1990's (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families) was implemented due to the belief that this change would eliminate the “welfare trap”, where sole mothers were better off on welfare. In line with this belief, a recent study conducted after the implementation of welfare reform in the US found results contrasting with those of Edin and Lein (1997). Danziger, Heflin and Corcoran (2000) found in a sample of sole mothers who received welfare in 1997, those who left welfare to work or who combined work with welfare were financially better off, on average, than those who remained on the welfare caseload. Those who worked had higher household incomes and experienced less material hardship than did non-working welfare recipients. They concluded the raised income gain now associated with moving from welfare to work was partially due to the economic boom of the 1990's producing a higher minimum wage, and the increases in benefits that supplement the earnings and subsidise the work expenses of the low wage workers. Nonetheless, Danziger et al (2000) had some findings that were consistent with Edin and Lien (1997). Many working mothers could not make ends meet on their wage alone; they continued to rely on government assistance (eg, food stamps), and contributions from family and friends.
