Thoughts for Father’s Day

Just in time for Father's Day, the Center for Economic and Policy Research, a think tank in Washington, D.C., has published an overview of the economic realities facing America's most-overlooked family type: single-father households.

Policy debates about lone parenthood typically focus on the challenges and opportunities facing single-mother households, which indeed account for the overwhelming majority of single-parent households. Furthermore, families led by single mothers are more likely than any other family type to be economically insecure. Yet the number of single-father families is growing rapidly and many of these families also struggle with the consequences of low-wage work.

Among the report's findings are the following:

1) Single-father families were home to 3.5 million children — five percent of all American children — in 2006. Between 1990 and 2006, the number of children living in single-father families rose by 74 percent. And single-father families now contain 17 percent of all the children residing in single-parent families.

2) Many single-father families are headed by working men holding low-wage jobs. As a result, 28 percent of all single-father families earned incomes that placed them below a basic family budget similar to the N.C. Living Income Standard. 

3) For low-income single-father families, public work supports like the Earned Income Tax Credit and children's health insurance play an important role in helping families make ends meet. Nationwide, the typical set of work supports eliminates two-thirds of the gap between a family's earnings and it basic monthly budget. And work supports reduce the share of people in single-father families who are economically insecure by ten percentage points.