Hostname: page-component-745bb68f8f-v2bm5 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-01-24T05:02:55.388Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

At What Cost A Room of Her Own? Factors Contributing to the Feminization of Poverty Among Prime-Age Women, 1939–1959

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 March 2009

Linda Barrington  and
Cecilia A. Conrad
Linda Barrington
Affiliation:
Assistant Professors of Economics at Barnard College, Columbia University, 3009 Broadway, New York, NY 10027
Cecilia A. Conrad
Affiliation:
Assistant Professors of Economics at Barnard College, Columbia University, 3009 Broadway, New York, NY 10027
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article investigates the feminization of poverty prior to 1960 by focusing on three factors that contributed to the increase in the propensity to form female-headed households and to the poverty rate among such households. Compared with 1939, households headed by prime-age women in 1959 included fewer adults, thereby reducing earnings potential. The earnings level at which such women formed independent households was lower relative to the poverty line; and although higher earnings allowed more women to form independent households, the increase was not large enough to lift some of these households out of poverty.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 54 , Issue 2 , June 1994 , pp. 342 - 357
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1994

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Barrington, Linda, “Measuring Poverty in the United States, 1939: Where Do We Draw the Line?” (Working Paper Series 94–05, Department of Economics, Barnard College, Columbia University, 03 1994).Google Scholar
Beresford, John C., and Rivlin, Alice M., “Privacy, Poverty and Old Age,” Demography, 3 (08 1966), pp. 247–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bianchi, Suzanne, and Spain, Daphne, American Women in Transition (New York, 1986).Google Scholar
Cutright, Phillips, “Components of Change in the Number of Female Family Heads Aged 15–44: United States, 1940–1970,” Journal of Marriage and the Family, (11 1974), pp. 714–21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dewhurst and Associates, America's Needs and Resources (New York, 1955).Google Scholar
Goldberg, Gertrude Schaffner, “The United States: Feminization of Poverty Amidst Plenty,” in Gertrude, Goldberg and Kremen, Eleanor, eds., The Feminization of Poverty: Only in America? (New York, 1990), pp. 17–59.Google Scholar
Information Please Almanac, Atlas and Yearbook (New York, 1947).Google Scholar
Information Please Almanac, Atlas and Yearbook (New York, 1964).Google Scholar
Kobrin, Frances, “The Fall in Household Size and the Rise of the Primary Individual in the United States,” in Michael, Gordon, ed., The American Family in Social-Historical Perspective (New York, 1983), pp. 100–112.Google Scholar
Pearce, Diana, and McAdoo, Harriette, “Women and Children: Alone and in Poverty,” in Genovese, Rosalie G., ed., Families and Change: Social Needs and Public Policy (New York, 1984), pp. 161–76.Google Scholar
Ross, Christine, Danziger, Sheldon, and Smolensky, Eugene, “The Level and Trend in Poverty in the United States, 1939–1979,” Demography, 21 (11 1987), pp. 587–600.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sawhill, Isabel, “Poverty in the U.S.: Why Is It So Persistent?” Journal of Economic Literature, 26 (09 1988), pp. 1073–1119.Google Scholar
Stern, Mark, “Poverty and the Life Cycle, 1940–1960,” Journal of Social History, 24 (Spring 1991), pp. 521–39.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stern, Mark, “Poverty and Family Composition Since 1940,” in Michael, Katz, ed., The Underclass Debate (Princeton, NJ, 1993), pp. 220–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
U.S. Bureau of the Census, Department of Commerce, Census of the Population, 1940: Public Use Microdata Sample [machine-readable file] (Washington, DC, 1983).Google Scholar
U.S. Bureau of the Census, Department of Commerce, Census of the Population, 1960: Public Use Microdata Sample [machine-readable file] (Washington, DC, 1973).Google Scholar
U.S. Bureau of the Census, The Statistical Abstract of the United States (Washington, DC, 1960).Google Scholar