The living arrangements of separated,widowed, and divorced mothers

When her marriage is disrupted a woman must make some decision about where to live. A basic component of residential choice is the decision whether to live alone as the head of a household, to move in with other relatives, or to share a household with nonrelatives. Such a choice is constrained by the availability of relatives, and by whether or not the woman can afford to live alone. The question of living arrangements is one important component of the economic status of women experiencing marital disruption, and the choice between heading a household or sharing someone else’s household influences the differential incidence among population subgroups of the female-headed family. The living arrangements of mothers without husbands are investigated cross-sectionally using the 1/1000 sample of the 1960 census. Attention is focused on what characteristics (age, family composition, education, race, and income) are associated with household headship. Among women who are not household heads, we examine the type of living arrangement from data on “relationship to head of household”. The paper includes some discussion of the ambiguity of the income-living-arrangements relationship, and some discussion of the “tenure” status (owner versus renter) of women in disrupted marital statuses.