LONE MOTHERS IN RUSSIA: SOVIET AND POST-SOVIET POLICY

One would expect centrally planned socialist systems, designed to socialize the costs and benefits of childrearing, to be particularly supportive of lone mothers and the transition to a market economy in Russia therefore to have hurt lone mothers and their children more than other groups. While the evidence confirms that lone mothers are among the poorest groups in Russia today, I argue that their position at the bottom of the income distribution is not new and that it is the government's retreat since the mid-1980s from its commitment to women as workers, rather than to women as mothers, that has made their lives especially difficult.