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Purpose – This chapter examines change over time in income, human capital, and socio-demographic attributes for married, divorced, and never-married mothers

Methodology/approach – The chapter consists of descriptive analysis of data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth's 1979 cohort. Respondents were followed from 1979 to 2006.

Findings – The economic consequences of single motherhood are persistent. Women who have once been divorced or never-married mothers remain poorer through middle age, no matter how their family structure subsequently changes.

Social implications – A critical feature of the modern economic and demographic landscape is the intersection of individual and family characteristics. Many divorced and, especially, never-married mothers experience profound disadvantage even before they become mothers. Single mothers in general are far less likely to have college degrees, and, in the case of never-married mothers less likely to even have a high school diploma. Never-married mothers are also much less likely to be employed. Single mothers have less educated parents, and are themselves more likely to come from nonintact families. All of these disadvantages contribute to the economic costs – and the economic stress – of single motherhood.

Originality/value of paper – The chapter demonstrates that single mothers comprise two very different populations, divorced and never-married mothers. However, both are at a substantial disadvantage compared to married mothers.

Purpose – Although many have expressed concern over whether generous welfare policies discourage the employment of single mothers, scholars have rarely exploited cross-national variation in the generosity of social policies to assess this question. This is the case even though much previous scholarship has examined the effects of social policy on women's and mothers' labor force engagement. This chapter evaluates whether generous social policies have a disincentive effect on single-mother employment.

Methodology/approach – Using the Luxembourg Income Study (LIS), we conduct a cross-national, multilevel analysis of the effects of social policy generosity on single-mother employment in 17 affluent democracies.

Findings – We find high rates of single-mother employment – above 60 percent in 15 of the 17 countries and above 70 percent in 5 countries. We find little effect of social policy for employment, as our two measures of social policy are insignificant in almost all models. If there are welfare disincentives, they only appear significant for young single mothers, and this evidence is limited as well. We find contradictory evidence for the employment incentive for low-educated single mothers.

We determine that single-mother employment is largely driven by the same individual characteristics – educational attainment, age, and household composition – that drive employment in the general population, and among women and mothers.

Originality/value of chapter – To the best of our knowledge, this is one of the few cross-national, multilevel tests of the welfare disincentive thesis for single-mother employment. We provide evidence that welfare generosity does not discourage single-mother employment.

To delve further into the phenomenon of psychological pressure on single mothers, the purpose of this paper is to explore the factors that affect the psychological state of single mothers in Vietnam.

Interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) interviews were conducted and analysed with the aim of understanding the psychological state of single mothers sampled from a social group in Vietnam.

Single mothers lack direct support needed to improve their confidence, job opportunities, income levels and social status. The absence of interventions increases the psychological pressure on single mothers in Vietnam.

A future study can explore the psychological state of single mothers using a more expansive data set.

Understanding the psychosocial and socio-economic risk factors of postpartum psychological pressure in single mothers may have important implications on preventative and support measures, as well as laying the groundwork for social protection interventions and informing welfare policy-making at a national level.

Social constructs in Vietnam compound the effect of postnatal depression on Vietnamese single mothers (in contrast to their counterparts in developed Western nations). This means that researchers and policymakers need to reconstruct stigmas that cause psychological pressures on single motherhood, and in doing so, help to change the view held about single motherhood.

This study is the first to explore psychological state of mothers in Vietnam using IPA.