More a quarter of American children are being raised in single-parent households, most of them poor.

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Rather than lock single-parent households into perpetual poverty, we ought to promote marriage, responsibility and virtue.

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Also introduced prefab, 500- square-foot Ikea homes, targeting single-parent households in Sweden.

FORBES: Europe

Unlike Mexico, however, it has no slums or seriously deprived regions, no child malnutrition, practically no single-parent households and virtually no crime.

ECONOMIST: Time travellers

Are more children growing up in single-parent households?

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Single-parent households are considerably rarer than among Afro-Caribbeans.

ECONOMIST: Immigration

Curiously, as blogger Tom Maguire notes, Blow himself has written on the dangers of single-parent households to black children in particular--in 2008, when he congratulated Barack Obama for his candor in raising the question.

WSJ: 'Right Wing Lice'

Aside from the basics - utilities, schools, clean streets, efficient public transport - at which Tokyo traditionally excels, the Japanese megapolis provides sign-language interpreters for the deaf, home helpers for the elderly, and subsidies for single-parent households.

CNN: Tokyo

Persistent poverty is most acute among single-parent households: 29% of those in the bottom 30% of the income distribution in 1991 stayed there for the next five years, a higher proportion than for any other household type.

ECONOMIST: Labour��s crusade