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Title: Mothers' Pensions and Female Headship

Citation Type: Conference Paper

Publication Year: 2002

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Abstract: Longitudinal studies of white female headship over the past few decades do not find significant welfare effects but do find a positive relationship between state fixed effects and welfare benefit levels. In other words, although white female headship does not respond to the year-to-year changes in welfare benefit levels, states with the most generous welfare benefits tend to be the states with the highest rates of white female headship. This positive relationship does not exist, however, for blacks. The questions are: Why does a positive relationship exist for whites and when did it originate? and Why does this relationship not exist for blacks? This paper examines these questions by considering the relationship between female headship for blacks and whites and state mothers pensions legislation enacted between 1910 and 1920. Mothers pensions programs were the first public cash assistance programs targeted to single mothers and, like their successors, varied greatly across the states. The results indicate that welfare generosity preceded relatively high rates of white female headship. The positive relationship between welfare generosity and white female headship observed today was not embodied in the mothers pensions legislation enacted in the 1910s. But these early welfare programs, like more recent programs, were not responsive to, and may in fact have been reactionary to, the experiences of black women.

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Authors: Moehling, Carolyn M.

Conference Name: Labor and Population Workshop, Department of Economics, Yale University

Publisher Location: New Haven, CT

Data Collections: IPUMS USA

Topics: Family and Marriage, Poverty and Welfare

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