Productive Activities and Support Systems of Single Mothers

Lingxin Hao,Mary C Brinton

doi:10.1086/231085

Abstract

Young single mothers' human capital development and labor market participation are important issues of public policy concern in the United States. This article uses a dynamic approach to model the determinants of single mothers' entry into and exit from productive activities. Using 14 waves of data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, the article shows that kin coresidence facilitates young single mothers' entry into productive activities but does not play a significant role in sustaining participation. Women's individual trainability, the local labor market conditions, child support, and some family background factors all play a role. The results also demonstrate the insignificance of race and never‐married versus ever‐married status.

Highlights

Over the past two decades, there has been a divergence in married versus single mothers’ labor force participation and school attendance
We suggest that kin coresidence may change the price of a single mother’s home time in three ways: (1) normative supervision— coresidence may facilitate more effectively parents’ and kin’s expectations of the single mother and raise her obligation to fulfill these expectations by being engaged in productive activities; (2) child care assistance may be provided; and (3) exposure to the world of work—coresident kin may provide examples of the experience of a normal work routine and may be helpful in providing information about jobs and access to social networks of employed friends and other kin
About 44% of women in the sample had a single motherhood spell lasting less than six years, and the remainder had a spell lasting for a longer period

Summary

INTRODUCTION

Over the past two decades, there has been a divergence in married versus single mothers’ labor force participation and school attendance. Because of the high value placed on working due to normative supervision and encouragement, together with the reduced child care costs resulting from kinprovided assistance and reduced costs in job searching due to parents’ labor market attachment, the opportunity costs of not working should increase Under this new conceptualization, kin coresidence is predicted to exert both an income effect and a price-of-time effect. Because of the higher value placed on working and the reduced costs of child care and job searching, it is likely that the price-of-time effect dominates, so that overall, kin support promotes participation in productive activities. This measure is appropriate for our theoretical purposes. the survey provides a detailed week-byweek employment history and month-by-month school enrollment history, we use discrete-time measures of productive activities and kin coresidence with intervals between interviews, since kin coresidence and many timevarying explanatory variables such as community conditions were measured only at the time of each interview

A Model for the Interdependence of Two Endogenous Processes

RESULTS

CONCLUSION