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four). These families, whose incomes have lagged behind the generaladvance, are at the epicenter of the money crunch.Families headed by single females tend to have fewer financial resourcesthan other families, and the number of children living in such families hasgrown substantially. Whereas families headed by single females made up only10 percent of all families with children in 1970, in 1998 that figure was 22percent. In 1970, just 11 percent of all American children under 18 years ofage lived in such families; in 1998, 23 percent did. About half of all AfricanAmerican children under age 18 live in single-mother households, up from30 percent in 1970. The fraction of white children living in single-motherhouseholds rose from 8 percent in 1970 to 18 percent in 1998. And as discussedearlier, the percentage of children living with grandparents has alsobeen increasing in recent decades.Divorce and out-of-wedlock childbirth are two events that contributedirectly to lower incomes for female-headed families. It is estimated that 22percent of women who get divorced experience a 50 percent or more declinein family income. Also, never-married mothers are much less likely to have achild support award than divorced mothers (44.1 percent versus 75.6 percentin 1995), and for those who have received child support payments, the annualamount received by never-married mothers is much less than that receivedby divorced mothers ($2,271 versus $3,990 in 1995).Reflecting these low income levels, poverty rates for families headed bysingle females with children under age 18 are very high: 38.7 percent ofthese families were poor in 1998, compared with 6.9 percent of marriedcouplefamilies with children. Although the job is not finished, thisAdministration has championed policies to increase the rewards from workand reduce poverty, including the expansion of the earned income taxcredit, welfare reform, and the creation of the State Children’s HealthInsurance Program. These policies have contributed to improving livingstandards for lower income families, and the overall poverty rate hasdropped from 15.1 percent in 1993 to 12.7 percent in 1998. These officialpoverty rates are based on a definition of income that does not include theearned income tax credit, Medicaid, food stamps, or other noncashbenefits. An experimental poverty measure incorporating improvementsproposed in a 1995 report by the National Academy of Sciences (a measurethat does include the earned income tax credit and noncash benefits)shows an even larger drop.Adequate income is certainly essential for families to develop a sense ofeconomic well-being, but that sense of well-being may also be influenced bywhether the family can meet what it perceives to be its consumption needs. Astechnological change has lowered the relative cost of food and freed up incomefor other expenditures over the course of the century, incomes have risen andChapter 5 | 183