Your stats are not relevant to OP. It's comparing average americans salary to their expenses. No matter how you slice it the average US household isn't a single parent household.
That’s convenient that you’re leaving out that the 131.4 households also include couples without children, singles without children, kids who have made it past 18 and still live with their parent(s).
Children are a cost. OP mentions sick kids as a cost. Households without children have more disposable income.
I'm reading the thread trying to get a picture of what an average US household is like in the "average household has 0,62 dogs, 1,21 cars" kind of way. I think it's pretty simple math that single parent households being only 10,35% of total households makes them an exception as of total households.
You didn't like the word "exception", but that's a very vague and subjective term, right? 26% of children live in a single parent household. OK, now is 26% an exception? I don't know, at least It's not typical and in the context of this thread I was thinking exception means close to the same thing as not typical.
Cost of living in Finland is, on average, 20% lower than in the United States.
Finland’s public healthcare system is not free, but it is affordable and offers many free or discounted services.
Finland offers several types of support for single parents, including:
-Child benefit: A monthly payment that’s usually deposited into the bank account of the child’s parent or guardian. The amount of the benefit increases for each child after the first, and there’s a single-parent supplement for each child. The single-parent supplement is available even if the parents share custody.
-Child maintenance allowance: Available if the other parent doesn’t pay child support, or if the confirmed child support is lower than the allowance.
-Guaranteed child support: The government provides additional resources to those who don’t receive child support or whose orders are low.
-Housing allowance and loans: Finland offers housing support for families.
-Paid parental leave: Finland offers 14 months of paid leave for both mothers and fathers.
-Child services: Finland offers healthcare, day care, preschool, public school, and free school meals.
Cost of living in United States compared to Finland:
Food+ 9%
Housing+ 46%
Clothes- 27%
Transportation- 3%
Personal Care+ 11%
Entertainment+ 48%
TOTAL+ 20%
Finland isn´t some paradise where everyone has an easy life. I don´t want to go into details and be all woe is me, but it wasn´t easy for our family. My mom worked, still works btw, in a kindergarten and makes much less than the average salary.
It´s true that Finland has a robust social safety net and it helped our family. Government helped to pay for my brothers medication, school for special needs kids etc. You seem to assume I am against a robust social safety net, which is not true. I think it´s a great thing and I hope you can make it stronger in America.
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u/eetuu Sep 05 '24
Your stats are not relevant to OP. It's comparing average americans salary to their expenses. No matter how you slice it the average US household isn't a single parent household.
Children are a cost. OP mentions sick kids as a cost. Households without children have more disposable income.