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Article
Time Binds: US anti-poverty policies, poverty and single mother’s wellbeing
Feminist Economics (2011)
  • Randy Albelda, University of Massachusetts Boston
Abstract
Many US antipoverty programs and measures assume mothers have little, intermittent, or no employment and therefore have sufficient time to care for children, perform household tasks, and apply for and maintain eligibility for these programs. Employment-promotion policies directed toward low-income mothers since the late 1980s have successfully increased their time in the labor force. However, low wages and insufficient employer-based benefits often leave employed single mothers with inadequate material resources to support families and less time to care for their children. The lack of consideration given to the value of poor women’s time in both the administration and benefit levels of antipoverty government support, as well as the measures used to calculate poverty, place more binds on poor and low-income mothers’ time. Ignoring these binds causes researchers and policymakers to overestimate single mothers’ well-being and reduces the effectiveness of the policies.
Keywords
  • Single mothers,
  • poverty,
  • time use,
  • welfare reform,
  • employment-promotion policies
Disciplines
Publication Date
2011
Citation Information
Randy Albelda. "Time Binds: US anti-poverty policies, poverty and single mother’s wellbeing" Feminist Economics Vol. 17 Iss. 4 (2011)
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/randy_albelda/29/