Three Decades Since Making Ends Meet: How Single-Mother Families Survive Today

In their 1997 book Making Ends Meet, Kathryn Edin and Laura Lein revealed how struggling single mothers strategized to support their families as the deepest welfare reform since the 1930s began. Upending arguments that cash assistance incentivized dependency and single parenthood, their book sparked decades of scholarship on families’ actual living conditions and survival strategies. We introduce this issue by describing how the safety net, and low-income families’ experiences, have evolved since the book’s publication. We highlight research on how the administrative complexity of means-tested programs creates barriers to accessing benefits and how low-income families cope, including by piecing together additional support from employment, charities, personal networks, and their children’s fathers. We discuss evidence on the relationship between the evolving safety net, maternal employment, and child well-being, persistently central questions in political discourse. Finally, we propose policy reforms to improve our most marginalized families’ well-being and opportunity.