Rense Nieuwenhuis

Family Policies and Single Parent Poverty in 18 OECD Countries, 1978-2008

This study examined to what extent family policies differently affect poverty among single-parent households and two-parent households. We distinguished between reconciliation policies (tested with parental leave and the proportion of unpaid leave) and financial support policies (tested with family allowances). We used data from the Luxembourg Income Study Database, covering 519,825 households in 18 OECD countries from 1978 to 2008, combined with data from the Comparative Family Policy Database. Single parents face higher poverty risks than coupled parents, and single mothers more so than single fathers. We found that employment reduces poverty, particularly for parents in professional occupations and for coupled parents who are dual earners. Longer parental leave, a smaller proportion of unpaid leave, and higher amounts of family allowances were associated with lower poverty among all households with children. Parental leave more effectively facilitated the employment of single mothers, thereby reducing their poverty more than among couples and single fathers. We found some evidence that family allowances reduced poverty most strongly among single fathers. An income decomposition showed that family allowances reduce poverty among two-parent households with up to 3 percentage points, and among single-parent households (mothers and fathers) up to 13 percentage points.

Women’s working hours : the interplay between gender role attitudes, motherhood, and public childcare support in 23 European countries

Women’s working hours : the interplay between gender role attitudes, motherhood, and public childcare support in 23 European countries

Women’s earnings and household inequality in OECD countries, 1973–2013

This article shows that women’s rising earnings contributed to reducing inequality in household earnings, with respect to couples. We use data from the Luxembourg Income Study (LIS) on 1,148,762 coupled households, covering 18 OECD countries and the period from 1973 to 2013. In this period, women’s share of household earnings grew, spouses’ earnings became more strongly and positively correlated in various countries, and inequality in women’s earnings was reduced. Inequality in household earnings increased due to the rising correlation between spouses’ earnings, but was reduced more by the decline of inequality in women’s earnings. Had women’s earnings remained unchanged since the 1970s and 1980s, inequality in household earnings would have been higher around 2010 in all observed OECD countries. Household inequality was reduced least by trends in women’s earnings in countries with a long history of high female labor-force participation, such as Finland (3% reduction) and Sweden (5%), and most in countries that observed a stronger increase in female labor-force participation in recent decades such as Spain (31%) and the Netherlands (41%). As more countries are reaching a plateau in the growth of women’s employment and earnings, the potential for further stimulating women’s employment and earnings to counter both women’s and household inequality seems to be increasingly limited.

Comparative Research with Net and Gross Income Data: An Evaluation of Two Netting Down Procedures for the LIS Database

Researchers seeking to perform country-comparative and trend analyses using income data have to account for the fact that income surveys differ in whether income is measured gross or net of taxes and contributions. We discuss, develop, and evaluate two ‘netting down procedures’ for data in the LIS Database. Evaluations of these netting down procedures indicate that comparisons across gross and net datasets can be greatly improved when netting down procedures are applied. In several cases, however, substantial amounts of bias remain.

Single-Parent Families and In-Work Poverty

Single-parent families face unique challenges when it comes to in-work poverty. Without a second caregiver and earner, single parents have to compete with dual-earner couples for their position in the earnings distribution. Facing precarious employment and gendered wage inequality, single-parent families face a high risk to experience poverty even when they are working. This chapter presents empirical evidence on in-work poverty and inadequate wages in the policy context of 18 OECD countries. The impact of family structure, occupation, regulations of part-time work, paid parental leave, and various redistributive policies are examined. We distinguish three distinct patterns of performance in countries’ approach to in-work poverty among single parents: A balanced approach of ensuring low inequality on the labor market combined with redistribution, an unbalanced approach of combating in-work poverty mostly through redistribution, and an approach in which high inequality on the labor market is compensated with redistributive policies only to a very limited extent. Countries that rely on a balanced approach to reduce inequality on the labor market, both with respect to class and gender, combined with an adequate level of redistribution, seem best situated for a durable reduction of poverty among working single parents.

Family policy as an institutional context of economic inequality

It is demonstrated that family policies are an important aspect of the institutional context of earnings inequality among coupled households. Although seldom integrated into prominent analyses of economic inequality, women’s earnings are consistently found to reduce relative inequality among households. This means that family policies, as well-known determinants of women’s employment and earnings, are important contextual determinants of economic inequality. Using Luxembourg Income Study data from 18 OECD countries in the period 1981–2008, this study demonstrates that women have higher earnings, and that their earnings reduce inequality among coupled households more in institutional contexts with generous paid leave and public childcare. We found no sizeable association between financial support policies, such as family allowances and tax benefits to families with children, and the degree to which women’s earnings contribute to inequality among coupled households. Family policy arrangements that facilitate women’s employment and earnings are associated with less economic inequality among coupled households.

Is there such a thing as too long childcare leave

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to revisit the question whether women’s employment is negatively affected in countries with very long periods of childcare leave. Design/methodology/approach The authors analyzed data on 192,484 individual women, 305 country-years, and 18-countries, combined with country-level data on childcare, unemployment and service sector size. Findings The authors found that in countries with short periods of childcare leave the motherhood-employment gap is smaller than in countries with no childcare leave, while in countries with long periods of childcare leave the motherhood-employment gap is bigger than with short periods of leave. Originality/value The authors argued that to correctly answer the long-leave question – the relationship between duration of leave and employment of women should be explicitly hypothesized as being curvilinear; and childcare leave should be expected to affect only mothers, not women without children; testing the long-leave hypothesis requires the use of country-comparative data in which countries are observed repeatedly over time; and is best tested against person-level data.