The Social Safety Net, Social Investment, and Employment of Single Mothers in Europe and the US

• In Event: 4255 - Section on Economic Sociology Roundtables (1 hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: 7. Law, Regulation, Policy

Abstract

Do generous benefits keep single mothers out of work? In line with recent research that has put forward the argument that the employment effects of benefits depend from the institutional context that they are situated in, we argue that the employment effect of generous benefits for single mothers depends on the availability of opportunity structures given by social investment policies, specifically active labor market policies, childcare, and parental leave. We use data on single mothers and their employment outcomes (employment, part-time contracts, and work hours) from the European Union Labour Force Survey for Europe and the Current Population Survey for the United States from 1992 to 2014 and merge them with macro-level indicators in multilevel models. We find that a generous safety net for single mothers is associated with lower employment, more part-time work, and lower work hours only in certain contexts, specifically, when social investment policies are underdeveloped. By contrast, when spending on active labor market policies and childcare is high and parental leave regulations are generous, generous benefits tend to be associated with stronger involvement in the labor market.
Thus, we conclude that policies supporting labor market integration of single mothers create a context in which there is no need to penalize the unsuccessful by cutting their benefits.

Authors

• Thomas Biegert, London School of Economics and Political Science

• David Brady, University of California, Riverside

• Lena Hipp, WZB Berlin Social Research Center