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Lone mothers and poverty in Italy, Germany and Great Britain: evidence from panel data
| Content Provider | Semantic Scholar |
|---|---|
| Author | Ruspini, Elisabetta |
| Copyright Year | 1999 |
| Abstract | This paper focuses on lone mothers’ poverty in the Italian familistic welfare regime. In order to appreciate its peculiarities, the study of the Italian case will be developed comparatively by taking into account two other European settings, characterised by strong diversities in the resource distribution systems (family, labour market and welfare) and by a different consistence of female economic deprivation: Germany and Great Britain. The data used to analyse lone mothers’ poverty dynamics are household panel surveys. Introducing a temporal element can substantially increase the explanatory power of empirical analysis: when individuals are surveyed at successive points in time, then it is possible to investigate how individual responses are related to the earlier circumstances, allowing an explanation of change. NON-TECHNICAL SUMMARY The purpose of this paper is to explore the potentiality of longitudinal data as a powerful tool to analyse poverty and especially women’s poverty. Particularly, the paper focuses on lone mothers’ poverty in three European settings: Italy, Germany and Great Britain. The data used to analyze lone mothers’ poverty dynamics are household panel surveys: * European Community Household Panel Survey (ECHP) 1994; * Bank of Italy Survey of Household Income and Wealth (SHIW) 1989, 1991, 1993, 1995; * British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) 1991-1995; * Public Version of the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP) 1991-1995. Lone mothers are a real challenge to social policy. They can be viewed as a highly disadvantaged group in terms of resources, which include money but also time and social networks. Nonetheless, lone mothers are not a disadvantaged group per se, that is, there is no causal relation or inevitable association between lone mothering and poverty. Their disproportionate vulnerability to deprivation arises from the interaction of economic disadvantages in the labour market, in domestic circumstances and in welfare systems. Women’s poverty is the outcome of an accumulation of deprivations within the three resource systems, that is, the result of complex but mutually reinforcing threads, whose origins lie in the limitations placed upon women by the current gendered division of labour and by the (inherent) assumption that women are dependent on men. The gendered nature of poverty cannot be ‘captured’ in the absence of a gender-sensitive methodological approach. What I mean, here, is that the visibility of women’s poverty crucially depends on the methodological choices made while trying to conceptualise and ‘measure’ the phenomenon. The research, using the methodology it has traditionally used, has been largely incapable of fully revealing the true picture of female poverty in contemporary society. In mainstream poverty research, if women are considered at all it tends to be in the forms of what proportion of female-headed households falls below a poverty-line. But women cannot simply be ‘added in’ to existing analyses: instead, a different analytic framework is required. I believe that our insight into processes of social change can be greatly enhanced through more extensive use of life-cycle and longitudinal data and, particularly, of household panel data. A fundamental advantage of panel design is that it offers the possibility of detecting and establishing the nature of individual change. Panel data trace individuals over time since information is gathered about them at regular intervals (usually each year): for this reason, they are well-suited to the statistical analysis of social change and of dynamic behaviour. When women and men are surveyed at successive points in time, it is possible to investigate the way in which personal responses are related to the earlier circumstances, allowing an explanation of change. The use of panel data may be particularly valuable for studying income changes or income mobility patterns and for offering an insight into changes in the nature of poverty over time. In addition, the panel approach makes it possible to understand the events or circumstances which cause women and men both to fall into and escape from poverty. Furthermore, it identifies stages of life at which the risk of poverty is particularly high. From the point of view of the response to poverty, the dynamic characteristics of poverty must be understood in order to implement public policies aimed at alleviating it. Recognising the dynamic nature of poverty may predicate a new policy agenda, that explicitly aims to prevent and to bring spells of poverty to an early end. |
| File Format | PDF HTM / HTML |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/92037/1/1999-10.pdf |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | http://www.irc.essex.ac.uk/pubs/workpaps/pdf/99-10.pdf |
| Language | English |
| Access Restriction | Open |
| Content Type | Text |
| Resource Type | Article |
