Great strides have been made in reducing poverty amongst the elderly in most rich countries over the past forty years. But pensioner poverty has not been eradicated, especially in the English-speaking nations. Poverty rates amongst older women are much higher than those for older men and much...

Comparisons of the economic position of single older women in various industrialized countries have shown substantial differences, especially regarding the proportion of widows, divorcees, and never-married women experiencing poverty. This review aims at a comparative assessment of existing...

U.S. women have higher poverty rates than women in other affluent nations. In this paper I attempt to explain this disparity by examining the effect of single motherhood, employment, and social assistance on women's poverty. With cross-national comparisons of quantitative data, I find that the...

I begin with a review of the literature that considers the gendered assumptions upon which many welfare states base their social policies. Next I present my research questions, discuss data and methods, and present analyses of how welfare states affect the poverty rates of mothers, single...

Our study extends research on the feminization of poverty by analyzing the variation in women's, men's and feminized poverty across affluent democracies from 1969 to 2000. Specifically, we address three issues. First, we provide more recent estimates of adult women's and men's poverty and the...

It is well known that women are much more likely to be poor than men. This is true in the US and in most developed nations. But the causes of this phenomenon remain a matter of dispute. This paper looks at two feminist explanations for the feminization of poverty. First, there is the issue of...

Social vulnerability for older persons, especially older women, due to insufficient income in retirement and earlier in life and low market earnings may be attributable to many sources, both demographic and economic, in our globalizing world. This paper examines the problems of population...

The feminisation of poverty is said to have become a common feature in the majority of advanced welfare states, but it is equally true that there has been significant variation in the feminisation of poverty from one country to another. While the concept of the feminisation of poverty remains...