Single Mothers in Russia: Household Strategies for Coping with Poverty

By Michael Lokshin, Kathleen Mullan Harris, Barry M. Popkin. 2000

709 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The authors describe trends in single parenthood in Russia, examining factors that affect living arrangements in single-mother families. Before economic reform, single mothers and their children were somewhat protected form poverty by government assistance (income support, subsidized child care, and full employment guarantees). Economic reform in Russia has reduced government transfers, eliminated publicly subsidized pre-school care programs, and worsened women's opportunities in the labor market. The loss of government support has eroded family stability, and left single mothers at increased risk of poverty. Over the last decade, the proportion of households headed by women has increased rapidly, raising the risk of poverty. Single-parent families now represent nearly a quarter of all Russian households. Using seven rounds of data from the Russian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey, the authors investigate how household living arrangements, and other factors, affect income in single-mother families. They find that a single parent with more earning power, and child benefits is more likely not to live with relatives. But single mothers are increasingly choosing to live with other adults, or relatives, to survive, and to raise their children in times of economic stress, and uncertainty. Half of all single mothers in Russia live with their parents, their adult siblings, or other adult relatives. Help from relatives is important to single-mother families, and that help - including the sharing of domestic and childcare duties - is more efficient, and productive when the single parent lives with the family. The other half live in independent residences, and face increased risk of poverty.

Subfields: Accounting, Gender Studies, Political Science and International Relations

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/ed064d293460bc32fb7d37baaab5c3aa37e9faba

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Citations in the corpus

The Return of the Policy That Shall Not Be Named: Principles of Industrial Policy (2019, background): “…against growth regressions including the endogeneity issue (see Bazzi and Clemens 2013), the difficulty of extracting policy recommendations from growth regressions (see Rodrik 2012), or the unreasonable assumption that all countries follow the same linear model (see Hausmann et al. 2005).”
A Cross-country Database For Sectoral Employment And Productivity in Asia and Latin America, 1950-2005 (2007, methodology): “We employ a filter introduced by Hausmann et al. (2005) to select accelerations and decelerations in GDP per worker.”
Both Institutions and Policies Matter but Differently for Different Income Groups of Countries: Determinants of Long-Run Economic Growth Revisited (2009, methodology): “For institution variables, we rely on Jaggers and Marshall’s (2000) Polity IV Project as this provides the longest time series data.”
THE NEW DEVELOPMENT ECONOMICS: WE SHALL EXPERIMENT, BUT HOW SHALL WE LEARN?* (2008, methodology): “…Hausmann, Lant Pritchett, Charles Sabel, and Andres Velasco) has focused on developing methodologies for designing country-specific growth strategies (Rodrik 2007, Hausmann et al. 2005, 2008) and on innovations in institutional arrangements for industrial policy (Rodrik 2008, Hausmann et al. 2007).”
Exploring Regional Economic Resilience (2008, neutral): “See Hausmann, Pritchett, and Rodrik (2004).”