The Short-Term Effects of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Single Mothers’ Income Sources and Economic Wellbeing: Evidence from Wisconsin

Abstract The economic downturn triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic caused widespread economic harm to families across the United States. Single-mother families with young children were particularly vulnerable to these negative effects as many were already in precarious economic positions. Given the harmful effects of economic deprivation in early childhood on children’s lifelong health and wellbeing, it is critical to understand whether the unprecedented safety net expansions during the COVID-19 recession era mitigated income losses and prevented economic hardship among these families. We leveraged administrative data from the state of Wisconsin to estimate the short-term effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on single mothers’ income sources (earnings, child support, and safety net benefits) and economic wellbeing with attention to differences by mothers’ race and ethnicity and labor force attachment. Our analyses compared a cohort of mothers with a nonmarital birth that were impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic two years following childbirth to a similar cohort of mothers who gave birth one year prior. We found that the unprecedented expansion of the safety net in 2020 more than compensated for declines in single mothers’ earnings, ultimately leading to a higher level of total personal income and reductions in poverty. Black single mothers and single mothers with strong attachment to the labor force prior to the pandemic experienced the largest increases in income among the subgroups examined. Meanwhile, Hispanic mothers with no labor force participation were the most economically vulnerable.