Study title

Using 19 waves from the German Socio-Economic Panel (1997–2015), we first focus on how pre- and post-governmental equivalence incomes of sin- gle and married mothers with children have changed between 1997 and 2015 along with major policy reforms. Second, we apply detailed effect decompo- sitions to trace changes in equivalence income of single and married mothers to changes in mothers’s resources and changes in how these resources affect maternal income. Our analysis shows rising income inequalities between sin- gle and married mothers. The growing inequalities mainly are the result of growing differences in education and employment. Married mothers increa- singly hold higher educational degrees and are increasingly attached to the labor market, while single mothers had to fall back on public transfers to maintain their income.