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Despite the profound implications of family homelessness on social policy, little information is available on the patterns of exiling and returning homelessness among homeless families and the conditions and circumstances that may affect these residential transitions. Although most of the longitudinal research to date has covered primarily single homeless adults, a few community-based studies have explored the phenomenon of repeat homelessness and the determinants of exit from and reentry among families with minor children. Several findings have significant implications for efforts to enable families to leave homelessness and to prevent its recurrence. The study reported here, which was based on an administrative database of family shelter use in New York City between 1988 and 1995, addresses these shortcomings and offers an opportunity to replicate findings in previous research. Homeless families enter the New York City shelter system through either Income Support Centers or Emergency Assistance Units (EAUs). To be considered a family, cohabiting couples must be legally married or be on the same Income Support grant; a marriage certificate or documentation of a shared grant must be provided to the EAU or Income Support staff.

The article focuses on single-mother families. The growth of single-mother families during the past 2 decades is considered a social problem in most Western industrialized countries. Single-mother families have higher poverty rates than other families, and they experience greater economic insecurity. Comparative analyses consistently find that the relative economic status of single mothers in the U.S. is substantially lower than that of their counterparts in most other Western industrialized countries. The older and better educated a single mother is, the higher her earnings capacity. Similarly, the fewer the number of children she must care for, the higher the family's standard of living for a given income level, and the lower the costs of working, regardless of her earnings capacity. The economic status of single-mother families relative to two-parent families in eight Western industrialized countries: Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Norway, Sweden, Great Britain, and the U.S.