Research by Stone Center Affiliated Scholar Regina S. Baker of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Heather A. O’Connell of Louisiana State University analyzes the impact of structural racism on poverty among single-mother and married-parent households in the U.S. South.
Is the higher prevalence of single-mother households the reason why more Black families are in poverty than white families? Although there is racial inequality at every rung of the socio-economic ladder, the disparity is most pronounced among poor households: studies have shown that Black households are more than twice as likely as white households to be poor, a difference that has remained consistent for several decades. As an explanation, many policymakers and researchers have pointed to family structure: Black families account for a disproportionate share of households headed by a single mother in the United States, and single mothers are more likely to live in poverty.
However, research has also shown that even among households headed by married parents, there is more poverty among Black families than white families, suggesting that forces beyond family structure are at play. A recent study by Stone Center Affiliated Scholar Regina S. Baker and Heather A. O’Connell argues that it is the intersection of family structure with a second factor — structural racism — that may partly explain racial inequality in poverty. Their research shows these two factors — the first operating at the individual level, and the second at the macrolevel — interact in surprising ways, with structural racism having a greater impact on the Black-white poverty gap in married-parent families than in single-mother families. The paper won this year’s Aldi Hagenaars Memorial Award, awarded by LIS, for the best LIS/LWS Working Paper authored by one or more scholar under age 40, and was published in the Journal of Marriage and Family.
To assess whether structural racism impacts racial inequality among individuals within the same family structure, the authors used the legacy of slavery as a proxy for structural racism. Focusing on the U.S. South (comprising 15 states) where the concentration of enslaved persons was highest, they analyzed the relationship between the concentration of enslaved persons in 1860 and current (2015-2019) Black-white inequality in poverty among individuals living either in single-mother households or in married-parent households. Their multilevel approach combined an individual- and state-level analysis with a separate county-level analysis, and relied on data from the LIS Database, the American Community Survey, and the 1860 U.S. census.
Their descriptive analysis showed that the poverty rate for Black individuals in single-mother households was 48.4 percent, compared with a rate of 35.6 percent for white individuals in single-mother households. The poverty rates were much lower for individuals in married-parent households, with a rate of 13.7 percent for Black individuals and 8.2 percent for white individuals. The Black-white difference in poverty was much higher for individuals in single-mother households than in married-parent households — a gap of 12.6 percentage points, more than double the comparative gap of 5.5 percentage points. Their research also confirmed that, regardless of family structure, poverty rates were higher for Black families than for white families. However, it is notable there is any racial gap among married-parent households at all given marriage continues to be deemed a solution for poverty and poverty gaps among families with children.
More important, the authors found that among married-parent households, there was a positive and significant association between the proportion of the historically enslaved-person population and Black-white inequality in poverty. Additionally, Baker and O’Connell note, “the significant interaction… between the legacy of slavery and race indicates elevated levels of poverty for Black married families with children in stronger legacy contexts.” However, these findings did not hold among single-parent households.
This unexpected finding raises a question: Why is the legacy of slavery — the connection between the historically enslaved-person population and racial inequality in poverty — more consequential for individuals in married-parent households than those in single-mother households?
Possibly “the punitive nature of the legacy of slavery, particularly its connections to the criminal legal system…may extend to the economic realm and impact marginalized families (i.e., single mother families) similarly, regardless of race,” the authors write, citing earlier studies. This, they argue, coupled with a general lack of economic/social welfare support experienced by single mothers in the U.S., produces a context that is detrimental across all places.
As for the findings for individuals in married-parent households, the authors point out that marriage yields greater financial returns for white individuals than Black individuals, and as prior studies have shown, slavery is associated with advantages for white individuals. Thus, the legacy of slavery may enhance the benefits already experienced by white married-parent families. Simultaneously, residing in a stronger legacy of slavery context can exacerbate the existing disadvantages Black married-parent families already face. Overall, findings from this study are “consistent with recent research demonstrating marriage does not operate as the same protective mechanism against adverse socioeconomic outcomes across racialized groups.”
The study also confirms the authors’ core point that the impact of family structure on poverty has been overemphasized in the poverty literature, and it demonstrates that the effects of family structure are far more indirect and complex than some scholars and policymakers often claim. Rather than simply promoting marriage as a way to avoid poverty, policymakers should focus on solutions that address systemic racism and its effects (e.g., persistent racial gaps). “We cannot blame racial inequality in poverty on ‘the pathology of Black single motherhood’ because it is not as if single mothers are simply creating their own poverty, and married parents are creating their own relative advantage,” the authors conclude. “We must consider the (racialized) contexts in which families reside because local manifestations of structural racism play a crucial role in understanding how family structure matters for racial inequality in poverty.”
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