“More women than ever financially support their families. And with American women today earning 78.3 cents for every dollar a man makes, female workers who struggle economically often face a steeper climb to prosperity than their male counterparts.

Fixing this disparity could slash poverty in half for families with working women, according to a report published Wednesday from the Institute for Women’s Policy Research, the second installment in a series of seven.”

The country’s number of working single mothers who live in poverty would drop from about 30 percent to 15 percent, researchers estimate, if they earned on average as much as comparably skilled men.