Lone mothers between paid work and care
The recommodification policies and
employment
Mia Hakovirta
Department of Social Policy
20014 University of Turku
In many countries labour market participation among lone mothers has remained at a relatively low level compared to the married mothers. In recent years many countries have implemented extensive reforms in increasing the employment rate of lone mothers. Lone mothers are to a larger extent than before assumed to both join to the labour market and to support themselves and their children by paid work. The recommodification policy involves different incentives for lone mothers’ employment. Enforcing policy is characterized by work requirements, limits on welfare benefits and workfare system. In contrast, the enabling recommodification is designed to supply child care facilities and improve in work benefits that provide financial resources above the minimum of welfare benefits. In this paper I analyze the recommodification policies for lone mothers and show how different recommodification strategies might lead to the very different outcomes in terms of employment, income packaging and poverty. The study focuses on the turn of the millennium when lone mothers' social security has been the target of extensive reforms, in the 1990s in particular. The countries selected for this study are the US, Norway, Finland, Sweden, Germany and the UK. These countries represent different welfare state models and have different ways of securing the economic welfare of lone mothers. The data used here has been obtained from the Luxembourg Income Study database.