IDENTIFYING AND MISIDENTIFYING SINGLE MOTHERS IN THE PANEL STUDY OF INCOME DYNAMICS

Many studies of single motherhood and related problems of welfare use and poverty have used data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PS ID). Unfortunately, the PSID's Family Unit (FU) Mead definition omits subfamily single mothers nor observed to leave their household of orig in, Resulting biases in terms of the age, race, welfare use, and pover ty status are estimated in the present study by using the 1968-85 PSID Relationship File. Substantial undercounts of single mothers in the y ounger ages and some overcounts at alder ages are found especially for black mothers.