拉丁美洲和加勒比地区独自抚养孩子：强大的母亲和薄弱的社会援助

Policy Research Working Paper Raising Children Alone in Latin Americaand the Caribbean Strong Mothers and Weak Social Assistance Laura CuestaJacobus de HoopHugo Ñopo Fiscal Policy and Growth Global DepartmentApril 2026 A verified reproducibility package for this paper isavailable athttp://reproducibility.worldbank.org,clickherefor direct access. Policy Research Working Paper11351 Abstract well-being of these households. Among households withchildren, the share of lone-mother households is steadilyincreasing. The same holds for the share of children growingup in lone-mother households. Lone mothers have higherlabor force participation and are more likely to receive pri-vate and public transfers than women who raise childrenwith other adults. Yet, at 45.5 percent, lone-mother house- Studies across countries find that single-mother householdsare socioeconomically disadvantaged. However, the hetero-geneity of these households is regularly overlooked in theliterature, with lone-mother households (with only onefemale adult) frequently undifferentiated from householdsin which a single mother lives with other adults. Usingthe Socio-Economic Database for Latin America and the The Policy Research Working Paper Series disseminates the findings of work in progress to encourage the exchange of ideas about developmentissues. An objective of the series is to get the findings out quickly, even if the presentations are less than fully polished. The papers carry thenames of the authors and should be cited accordingly. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this paper are entirely thoseof the authors. They do not necessarily represent the views of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/World Bank and Raising Children Alone in Latin America and the Caribbean:Strong Mothers and Weak Social Assistance Laura Cuesta,2Jacobus de Hoop,3and Hugo Ñopo Keywords: single motherhood; lone motherhood; poverty; Latin America and the CaribbeanJEL Codes:H55, I32, J11, J12, J13, J16, J18, J22 1The authors gratefully acknowledge the excellent research assistance of Kelly Yelitza Montoya Muñoz, AgustinArakaki, Phoebe W. Ishak, and Becca Jensen Compton, and the helpful comments received from Clemente AvilaParra, Wendy Cunningham, Carlos Rodriguez Castelan, and participants at the LACEA-LAMES conference held inMontevideo, November 14-16, 2024, and the Population Association of America (PAA) Annual Meeting held inWashington DC, April 10-13, 2025. This work has been partly funded by the Umbrella Facility for Gender Equality(UFGE), a multi-donor trust fund administered by the World Bank to advance gender equality and women’sempowerment through experimentation and knowledge creation aimed at helping governments and the private sectorfocus policies and programs on scalable solutions with sustainable outcomes. The UFGE is supported with generous Authors listed in alphabetical order:2Associate Professor, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey,lcuesta@ssw.rutgers.edu3Senior Economist, The World Bank,jdehoop@worldbank.org4Senior Economist, The World Bank,hnopoaguilar@worldbank.org Introduction Approximately one in four children in Latin America and the Caribbean live with only oneparent, usually their mother (Chisholm-Maldonado, 2017; Esteve et al., 2022; Institute forFamily Studies, 2019). Studies across a wide range of countries find that children living apartfrom their father are more socioeconomically disadvantaged than children living with bothparents (Chisholm-Maldonado, 2017; Cuesta et al., 2018; Hakovirta, 2011; McLanahan, 2004). The family context in which mothers raise their children matters for the well-being ofthese women and their children (Amato, 2005; McLanahan, 2004) and has implications for socialpolicy and research. Compared to lone mothers, women raising children with a new partner orextended family members might have access to economic resources that could improve their Paraguay, and Uruguay who lived with extended family were less likely to work for pay, lesslikely to receive child support (and to receive less money in child support among those that didreceive this transfer), and less likely to receive informal support compared to lone mothers livingin their own households (Guarin et al., 2025). Thus, mothers who raise their children alone might Our study contributes to closing this research gap by examining lone motherhood in LatinAmerica and the Caribbean. We use the harmonized Socio-Economic Database for LatinAmerica and the Caribbean (SEDLAC) to document differences between lone-mother We find that raising children alone is becoming an increasingly common experience inLatin America and the Caribbean. Both the share of lone-mother households and the proportionof children growing up in these households are steadily increasing in the region. Compared to Prior Research Trends in Lone Motherhood in Latin America and the Caribbean The prevalence of single-parent househo