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Fighting Lone Mothers' Poverty through in-Work Benefits - Methodological Issues and Policy Suggestions

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  • Chiara Pronzato

Abstract

Lone mothers are overrepresented among poor people in many European countries. In 1998, in Norway, a welfare reform increased the amount of benefits and introduced working requirements. Using a quasi-experimental model, Mogstad and Pronzato (2012) find a positive effect of the reform on lone mothers’ labour supply and a small reduction in poverty. Is the best result that policy makers could obtain in terms of poverty reduction? In this paper, I estimate a discrete choice model of earnings and welfare participation decisions, and use the behavioural estimates to derive the policy parameters which would have minimized poverty among lone mothers.

Suggested Citation

  • Chiara Pronzato, 2013. "Fighting Lone Mothers' Poverty through in-Work Benefits - Methodological Issues and Policy Suggestions," CESifo Working Paper Series 4375, CESifo.
    • Handle: RePEc:ces:ceswps:_4375
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    More about this item

    Keywords

    lone mothers; in-work benefits; poverty; discrete choice models; comparison of methods;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • I38 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty - - - Government Programs; Provision and Effects of Welfare Programs
    • J22 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Time Allocation and Labor Supply
    • C25 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Single Equation Models; Single Variables - - - Discrete Regression and Qualitative Choice Models; Discrete Regressors; Proportions; Probabilities

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