Poverty and Gender in Affluent Nations

Abstract

Women are more likely to be poor than men in nearly all Western nations. The ‘feminization of poverty’ was first noted by Diana Pearce in the late 1970s, and since that time, various scholars have examined trends in men's and women's poverty rates—and the ratio between them—in order to explore how economic status may be affected by gender. The underlying causes for women's poverty vary across countries but generally fall into one of three main categories—demographic composition, economic conditions, and government policy. The prevalence of single-mother families affects women's poverty because women disproportionately bear the costs of childrearing. Although women's labor force participation has increased in recent decades, women have lower average earnings than men, and they may face other costs of caring for children such as paying for out-of-home child care. Finally, government policy affects women's economic well-being because it can either obviate or intensify the inequalities within the market economy; in countries where more of the costs of childrearing are borne by government instead of parents, women's poverty rates tend to be lower. Ultimately, reducing women's poverty in industrialized countries requires the convergence of all three factors—demography, the market economy, and government policy—to better support women and their children. This is because women's economic status depends on whatever resources they can conjointly obtain from the family, the market, and the state.