Poverty And Single Parent Families

First published in 1998. In August 1996 Congress passed welfare reform legislation designed to 'end welfare as we know it.' The people most affected by this radical transformation of the public assistance system are families headed by single parents. The authors states that unfortunately, misinformation regarding single parent families is widespread. Too often public policy, such as the 1996 welfare reform, has been based on stereotypes and misperceptions rather than facts. The primary objective was to show how the official measures of poverty underestimate the extent of material hardship in single parent families. The facts, as developed in this book, show that for most single parent families income from employment is not sufficient to support a decent standard of living