West Coast Family

Family Structure and Poverty in the West Coast States

Consistently across the West Coast States, single mother families represent 23% of all families with children, and single father families represent 10% in 2005. The remaining two thirds (68%) are married couple families. Families with only one parent and consequently, only one wage earner (in most cases) were more likely to be poor in 2005. Poverty among single mothers remains particularly high. When we focus attention on the poor population, (the second column for each state in the graph below), we find that single mother families make up about one half of poor families with children in California (49.6%) and 59% in Oregon and Washington.

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