Reducing Poverty for Families with Children: Interrelationships between Gender, Policies, and Culture

Gender inequalities are reflected in poverty for families with children, but there are surprisingly large variations in poverty rates across industrialized countries. This article focuses on the cross-national variations in poverty rate by gender and parenthood across 19 industrialized countries (Austria, Czechia, Denmark, Finland, former East and West Germany, Hungary, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, Taiwan, the United Kingdom, the United States), using Luxembourg Income Study data. Descriptive analyses on post-tax-and-transfer poverty show that mothers’ poverty rates are higher than childless women in all but a few countries. While fathers are always less likely to live in poverty than mothers, in some countries, childless men are more likely to live in poverty than childless women. Second, adjusted logistic regression models generally show that mothers are more likely to live in poverty than childless women, suggesting that higher poverty for childless women in descriptive analyses reflect their earlier career stage. Third, we found that two important work-family policies, parental leaves and childcare for aged 0-2, are associated with a lower risk of poverty for families with children, and the leave effect is curvilinear (long parental leaves may instead be associated with greater risk of poverty). Interestingly, indicators of more progressive gender culture, including attitudes toward gender equity and more egalitarian divisions of household labor, are also associated with a lower risk of poverty for mothers with children. Policy effects are stronger when gender culture is more egalitarian, but this effect is only consistent when we focus on pre-tax-and-transfer poverty. For post-tax-and-transfer poverty, only the combination of childcare and more egalitarian divisions of household labor are associated with a lower risk of poverty. These findings suggest that work-family policies and gender culture may play a role in alleviating poverty for mothers, whereas anti-poverty policies may complement them.