Pauvreté des familles monoparentales.
Le Canada et le Québec dans l’univers des régimes providentiels

Single parent poverty has long been a significant challenge for policy makers in developed countries. Some societies have been more effective than others at developing policy regimes that provide conditions more favourable to families regardless of their status (single parent or two-parent families). As a result, the circumstances and experiences of single parent families tend to vary considerably from state to state.  This thesis seeks to better understand the role of welfare state in mediating the relationship between poverty and single parenthood. The circumstances of single parenthood depend on three welfare pillars: the state, the market and the family. Some societies place emphasis on the role of the state, while others favour the market. In other cases, the family is considered to be primarily responsible for individual well being.  The combination that best protects single parent families is not always clear. If governments are too generous, families may become dependent on welfare and public assistance programs. In a liberal context, incentives to work that target single parents tend to reduce this dependence, but simply finding a job doesn’t always provide a route out of poverty and financial vulnerability. At the same time, family supports often turn out to be more limited and transitory than most families need. What, then, is the best combination that permits single parents to maintain an autonomous household that is neither poor nor overly dependent on one welfare pillar?  In order to examine this question, we present a series of international and interprovincial comparisons using data from the Luxembourg Income Study (LIS). We explore differences in single and dual-parent family poverty outcomes among several high income nations. We place particular emphasis on how the welfare policies of Quebec compare to other members of the World of Welfare Regimes.   Our results show that single parent poverty is greatest in societies that allow well-being to depend most heavily on the market. It is greatest also in societies that offer state provisions that consist of mainly allowances and that neglect other sources of well-being. We find that certain regimes provide a good combination of welfare pillars that support families, which in turn result in lower poverty levels among single-parent families.  While Quebec, like the rest of Canada place more emphasis on market than state pillar, it structures its state supports in such a way that it actually encourages greater labour market participation and amplifies the benefits of market resources for single parents. But in the same time, Quebec reports some of the lowest single parent poverty rates in the nation. In contrast, a high proportion of working single parent families in some other countries and the rest of Canada confront a high risk of poverty.   When we consider part-time work, we find that single parents in Quebec are poorly protected and are at a higher risk of poverty. Yet some societies, particularly the Netherlands, have managed to use part-time work as a strategic tool to find a balance between work and family activities, where a very high proportion of single parents are working part-time jobs with low risk of poverty.

Keyphrases: Single parents, Welfare regimes, Family, Poverty