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Despite financial gains, some single parents are still in 'panic mode'
10 April 2024
By Kate Morgan,
Features correspondent

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Mum with baby in pram
Single-parent households are growing rapidly. Some are better off financially than
ever. That's not the case for everyone.

Single parents are a growing demographic across the world. The US has the most one-
parent households of any nation in the world; more than 10 million, according to
2020 US Census Data, the most recent data available. Close to a quarter of American
children live with just one parent. But these ranks are ticking up globally, too. A
data analysis by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development showed
the number of sole-parent households was expected to rise across many of its 38
member countries.

"The consistency of the upward trend across these OECD countries is remarkable,
with the bulk of projections to 2030 suggesting that numbers are likely to increase
by between 22% and 29%," the report's authors wrote. The number of sole-parent
households in Canada, for instance, has risen steadily throughout the past decade
and a half, and the Australia Bureau of Statistics reported in 2021 that single-
parent families were the fastest-growing family type in the country.

There are a number of drivers, say experts: globally, single parenthood numbers are
rising as the divorce rate increases in many nations, particularly in some European
and Asian countries. Research points to several other factors, including an altered
socioeconomic landscape with increased female labour-market participation, and
lessened stigma around single parenthood.

And as single parents now make up a large – and growing – share of the labour
market, many of these families have seen their financial situations improve to the
best point in decades. Yet these gains are not universal – and to support this
large group of families across the world, there's still much work to do.

Good news – with a catch

Relying on a single income is almost always difficult, but data shows some
improvement. In the US, a recent review of Federal Reserve Surveys of Consumer
Finances shows that throughout the past three decades, US single parents' income
has increased; home ownership and retirement savings have both gone up; and overall
net worth for single-parent households has improved at a much faster rate than
other Americans'.
"If we're looking strictly at growth, things have come a long way over the past 30
years for single-parent households," says Elizabeth Renter, a data analyst at
American personal-finance company NerdWallet (and a single mum herself), who used
the US Federal Reserve numbers to compile a January report on single-parent
finances.

Getty Images Single parents now make up a large – and growing – share of the global
labour market (Credit: Getty Images)Getty Images
Single parents now make up a large – and growing – share of the global labour
market (Credit: Getty Images)
Between 1992 and 2022 – the year of the most recent Federal Reserve Survey – she
found median annual income in single-parent homes rose by 45%, compared to 27% for
American households overall. Homeownership grew from 43% to 50%. The most dramatic
numbers concern net worth: while American households overall saw an increase of
89%, the net worth of single-parent households shot up by 189%.

Yet the gains are not universal across the country. The Federal Reserve data
reflects an enormous swath of Americans. Renter is keenly aware that while the
numbers in her report draw a narrative of broad financial improvement, that does
not reflect the lived experience of every single parent.

"I think those big aggregated national numbers mask some structural inequality,"
adds Vicki L Bogan, a professor of economics at Duke University's Sanford School of
public policy. "If you look at single-parent households by race, there's some quite
different statistics."

For instance, US Census data shows black and American Indian children are most
likely to live in single-parent households. And while the poverty rate remains
higher than the national average for single parents overall – in 2022, nearly 23%
of female single-parent households and 11.5% of male single-parent households lived
below the US poverty measure – being black or American Indian raises the odds of
living in poverty even more. Nearly one-third of black families and one third of
Latinx households headed by a single parent live in poverty. For households headed
by a American Indian single-parent the number living in poverty rose to 43%.
Twenty-six percent of white single-parent-led households lived at the poverty
measure.

Outside the US, the growth of single parenthood has had the dual impact of
increasing acceptance of "family diversity" and, in some places, influencing
improved policy, says Catherine Jones, a lecturer in developmental psychopathology
at King's College London. "In parts of Europe, there are amazing childcare
facilities and parental leave," she says, "and in Scandinavian countries, you see
really positive family policies."

I hustle every single day to get as much done and create as big an impact as I
possibly can - Crystal King
Those social policies are a huge influence on families' financial stability. UCLA
researchers looked at more than 370,000 households with children in 45 countries.
They found while poverty levels among single parents are high regardless of
geography, in nations that provide for maternity leave, poverty was significantly
reduced.

Other, more direct assistance has an even greater impact. A 2022 paper from
researchers at the University of Antwerp concluded "it is clearly possible to make
sure that working single parents have minimally adequate incomes". Of more than
two-dozen countries reviewed, single parents in the half the countries could reach
or exceed the poverty threshold, largely thanks to child-benefit packages, such as
pandemic-era policies including the UK's Universal Credit and the US's expanded
Child Tax Credit, which have now expired.
However, in the absence of these programmes as permanent support, and even in
nations with the most robust welfare systems, single parents are confronted with
higher poverty risks. "Although things have improved," says Jones, "it's important
that attention isn't shifted away from still trying to further improve policies for
single parents."

'Work like every day is your last day'

Ultimately, there's still a lot of work to do to improve the financial situations
of single parents – an imperative as this group grows.

One of the biggest stumbling blocks is what Rense Nieuwenhuis, an associate

professor of sociology at Stockholm University's Swedish Institute for Social
Research, calls the "triple bind". "Single parents and their families are
disproportionally caught between inadequacies in resources, employment and
policies," he wrote in in a 2018 book he co-edited on the subject.

Getty Images Some single parents say they feel their financial situations are
precarious, regardless of some gains (Credit: Getty Images)Getty Images
Some single parents say they feel their financial situations are precarious,
regardless of some gains (Credit: Getty Images)
When Crystal King, an HR professional living in Florida, US, decided to become a
mother, she knew her growing family would be completely dependent on her income
alone. "I'm a single mom by choice," says King. "I turned 35 and my partner at the
time didn't want to have kids. So ultimately, becoming a single mom was my option,
and I went full steam ahead, knowing I'd be the only provider."

It's not a decision she regrets, but it is one that's shifted her entire mentality
around work and money. Now a mother of two children, aged six and three, King says
she saves more aggressively and is more conscious of her liquidity – funnelling
less to her 401k retirement account in case she needs to access the savings
immediately – and works harder to stand out in her job.

"It makes me work differently," she says. "I hustle every single day to get as much
done and create as big an impact as I possibly can. Before kids, you do your work,
you chat around with people, you laugh, you go back to doing what you're doing.
Now, I have a 'work like every day is your last day' kind of mentality."

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And money worries don't happen in a vacuum; stress often makes the overall
experience of parenting harder. That's compounded, says Jones, for single parents,
who already deal with higher levels of anxiety than the general population,
according to a 2023 survey of 6,000 UK adults from the Mental Health Foundation.

"They're often the sole provider not just in terms of finances, but also in terms
of care," she says. "Single parents often feel a huge responsibility for all of the
parenting and all of the money. That makes a more challenging environment to parent
in, and I think generally the bigger picture is it's not single parenthood, per se;
it's factors like financial stress, rather than being a single parent in itself."

The same survey asked what would help alleviate the anxiety: "41% of anxious single
parents said financial security, and a quarter (24%) said help with debt,"
according to the report.
And even for single parents in the labour market – a growing demographic – massive
economic hurdles still exist for them to find parity with dual-income families.
"Employment is certainly not a guarantee against poverty. At least in the EU, we've
seen an increase in the employment of single parents, but hardly a decrease in
relative income poverty," says Nieuwenhuis. And even making more money doesn't
necessarily shift single parents' financial situation "in an absolute sense", he
adds. "It might not be enough. In dual-earner societies such as Sweden, as a single
earner it's really hard to keep up with those dual earners."

There's an undercurrent of financial anxiety to single parenthood that never goes

away, says NerdWallet's Renter, regardless of income. "Personally, it still affects
me," she says. "I think of who I was when my daughter was young, and the fear and
anxiety surrounding my personal finances. It's still there, beneath the surface,
and that's impacted how I deal with money and how I think about money, even though
I'm pretty secure now."

King agrees. While she is happy and comfortable in her current job, she still also
worries her situation is hanging by a thread, especially in the current economy.
"When you have a partner's income, it gives you a longer runway to find [a new job]
without the situation being critical or devastating. For me, the moment I lose a
job, it's panic mode."

--

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