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Single Mothers Since 2000: Falling Farther Down

Single Mothers Since 2000: Falling Farther Down finds that increased joblessness and decreased access to welfare benefits have significantly exacerbated poverty and hardship for single mothers in the last decade.

Between 2000 and 2009, the number of single mothers that with an income less than the poverty level or less than half of the poverty level increased. The number of homeless single mothers increased and more single mothers and their children were forced to live "doubled up" in someone else's home. Many more single mothers were forced to turn to food pantries to feed their families and, in the last decade, more single mothers were "food insecure" (a term used by the U.S. Department of Agriculture to describe families that have "limited or uncertain availability of nutritionally adequate and safe foods or limited or uncertain ability to acquire acceptable foods in socially acceptable ways").

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