this suggests that households headed by persons of african descent exhibit a pattern of monetary poverty that is similar to the pattern displayed by other households but that the level of deprivation was slightly higher for the former especially in terms of multidimensional forms of deprivation the absence of a spouse in the majority of these households is one of the reasons for their low incomes households in which there is a couple many of which have at least two sources of income tend to be headed by males when households headed by single males or females are compared the differences are much smaller