Usually, we think of poverty in terms of economic circumstances: A job is lost, or college sits out of reach. But for many women, economic misfortune has more to do with family circumstances than a specific financial calamity.
More than half of the children born to mothers under the age of 30 today are born to single mothers, a demographic that is far more likely to be poor than their married counterparts. A third of families headed by single mothers are in poverty.
The newly released Shriver Report, in partnership with the Center for American Progress and the AARP, commissioned a large national survey on Americans’ attitudes toward family and the economy. For the poll, Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research and Target-Point Consulting contacted 3,500 adults by landline and cell phone between August 21 and September 11, 2013. The margin of sampling error for all adults was plus-or-minus 1.7 points.
Here are some of the most surprising findings:
1. Poor women and single moms suffer from much higher levels of economic anxiety.
Single mothers and low-income women were more likely to report feeling like "the harder I work, the more I fall behind" or that the economy simply does not work for people like them, no matter what:
2. Single moms are more likely than other women to stress about caring for their kids.