The Shriver Report – A Woman’s Nation Pushes Back from the Brink: Facts and Figures
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A Woman’s Nation Pushes Back from the Brink: Facts and Figures
  • One in three women in America are living in poverty or teetering on its brink. That’s 42 million women plus the 28 million children who depend on them.
  • The American family has changed. Today, only one in five families has a homemaker mom and working dad. Two out of three families depend on the wages of working moms who are struggling to balance caregiving and breadwinning.
  • The average woman continues to be paid 77 cents for every dollar the average man earns. The average African American woman earns only 64 cents and the average Latina only 55 cents compared to white men.
  • Closing the wage gap between men and women would cut the poverty rate in half for working women and their families and would add nearly half a trillion dollars to the national economy.
  • Women are nearly two-thirds of minimum-wage workers, and a vast majority of these workers receive no paid sick days. Not one.
  • More than half of the babies born to women under the age of 30 are born to unmarried mothers, most of them white.
  • Nearly two-thirds of Americans and 85 percent of Millennials believe that government should adapt to the reality of single-parent families and use its resources to help children and mothers succeed, regardless of family status.
  • An overwhelming 96 percent of single mothers say paid leave is the workplace policy that would help them most, and nearly 80 percent of all Americans say the government should expand access to high-quality, affordable child care.
  • Women living on the brink overwhelmingly regret not making education a bigger priority.
  • The trauma and chronic stress of poverty are toxic to children, making them two and a half times more likely to suffer as adults from COPD, hepatitis, and depression.

 

Be an Architect of Change.

We can push back from the brink.

See our list of 10 things you can do to power A Woman’s Nation.

This is an excerpt from The Shriver Report: A Woman’s Nation Pushes Back from the Brink, in partnership with the Center for American Progress. Download the full report here for FREE from January 12th – January 15th.