are poor (Ford, 1989, p. 10).
An increasing number of poor households are headed by single women. Children in these female-headed households are more likely to live in poverty than children who live in two-parent households. Women tend to earn lower wages and to have lower participation rates in the labor force than their male counterparts. Because of high rates of teenaged pregnancy and divorce, an estimated half of all children under age eighteen will live in female-headed households (Ford, 1989, p. 6).
The increasing number of children born out of wedlock has reached epidemic proportions in the United States, partly because there is more social acceptance of unwed mothers. Almost 500,000 teenagers give birth to children in the United States each year (Ford, 1989, p. 43). Teenaged mothers are half as likely to graduate from high school than other young women. Unmarried young mothers tend to have decreased economic prospects throughout their lifespans: "There is evidence that, compared with those who have their children later, early childbearers are much more likely to experience economic hardship and family disruption in later life, to d
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