Has there been an adequate poverty reduction policy for single-parent households? An examination of the financial support for the single-parent and two-parent families with children in the Taiwanese context

Abstract

ABSTRACT Single-parent households have been the interest of policy since the 1990s in the Taiwanese context. As the impacts of the existing support to single-parent households remains unclear, this research is aimed at empirically comparing the distributional effects of policies on two-parent families and single-parent families with children, with the factors of gender, employment status and co-residence of the head of household being taken into account. Using data from Survey of Family Income and Expenditure for the years 1990, 2000, 2010 and 2019, the findings show that the economic gap between two-parent and single-parent families is growing. There have been clear signs of poverty mitigation for two-parent and single-parent families, showing that a general redistributive policy in Taiwan has been pursued to address poverty reduction for all families, but favour single-parent families. Based on the findings, policy suggestions are made regarding how to address single-parent families’ financial wellbeing.