Single Mothers Face more Problems
Image: Timo J. Malmi/Northern Lights
On the international level, Finland's single mothers were seen as among the best-off back in the 1980s and 1990s, but their position has weakened since then. Today, more than a third of single mothers are in the bottom fifth of the income scale, says Anita Haataja, special researcher for the Social Insurance Institution, or KELA.
She also says that the number of long-term unemployed among single mothers has doubled since the beginning of the decade.
In the 1980's, the single mothers of small children were as likely to work outside the home as those where the father is living in the same household. Now only one in four single mothers have a regular job.
Haataja says that there is a group of young single mothers whose low educational level and low income appears to be linked with the dissolution of the parents' relationship. Unmarried couples are more likely to split up, and whereas one in five children were born to unmarried couples in the early 1990s, the figure now is more than 40 percent.