[Author’s Name]
[Institution’s Name]
Essay on Affordable and Quality Childcare
American family structure has changed in the past four decades due to a rise in the divorce rate and a rise in never married women with children. Mother-only families have become increasingly common. In 1960, non-married women headed about 9 percent of families with children; by 1999 the number was over 20 percent (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 2000). In the meantime, female-headed households consistently comprised a large proportion of poor households. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, female-headed families with children were five times more likely to be poor than two-parent families with children. In 2000, 35.1 percent of female-headed families with children under 18 lived in poverty, compared with 6.9 percent of married-couples with children under 18. In the same year, female-headed households with children under 18 comprised 52 percent of all poor households with children under 18.
Given the rise of single-mother families, it is important to examine factors that contribute to the economic well-being of these families. Studies indicate that reasons for the low economic well-being of female-headed households include low earning capacity of single mothers, low job opportunity in the neighborhoods where they reside, inadequate enforcement of child support, and meager public benefits.
A less often cited factor, but probably one of the most important to the economic well-being, is the low level of human capital, especially the lack of higher education, of single mothers. For a married woman living with her husband, her lower level of educational attainment and earning may not be a problem since there is a spouse to help provide for the incomes of the family; however, her earning alone become insufficient in single-mother families. The work requirements and time limits of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) of 1996 have further reduced options for poor women's postsecondary education......
