A Million Single Moms

 The Dominican Republic has at least a million and a half single mothers, whether by choice, widowhood, divorce or some other reason. This means that 35% of households are headed by a single parent and of these, some 90% are headed by women. More than 20% of single parent households survive on less than two dollars a day.

According to El Caribe, people who have lived in barrios for many years are noticing the different demographics of this rise in single-parent homes. One woman noted that in the building next to hers, there were three women with children but no visible husbands, and on the other side there was a young woman whose child was cared for by her parents, while she worked.

The report cites the last study that counted the single mothers, done in 2007: The Demographic and Health Survey. In 2007, the study projected 1.4 million single mothers, with most of them in the National District and the province of Santo Domingo.

A later study by the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank carried out at the request of the Ministry of Economy, Planning and Development during 2005 and released in 2010 said that 32% of households were headed by a single parent.

The 2007 Enhogar survey conducted by the National Statistics Office (ONE) showed 39.8% of the homes to be headed by a woman. The World Bank and IDB study showed that single-parent households were generally much poorer than families headed by a man or a couple.