Purposes: The U.S. society has conventionally more emphasized personal efforts and characteristics when seeking causes of as well as solutions for economic deprivation facing disadvantaged segments of its population, compared to other Western European countries. Educational achievements are stressed as one of the most significant personal attributes for one's economic well-being. We examined whether the impact of educational attainments on the economic well-being of female-headed households would be different between the U.S. and other Western industrialized countries. Methods: For the purpose of the study, we identified 3,917 female-headed households in the U.S. and four Western European countries including Finland, Germany, the Netherlands, and Sweden, using data from the Luxembourg Income Study. Economic status of the household, which is the dependent variable of the study, was measured in two ways: (1) being in poverty, which was defined if a household had income less than 50% of the median income of its own country and (2) income-to-needs ratio, which refers to the ratio of the household income to the poverty threshold, which was ½ of the national median income. The major independent variable was educational attainment coded into three categories: low, medium, and high level, using the standardization routine provided by the LIS. Control variables included age, marital status, number of children under 18, work status of the single mother, and age of the youngest child in the household. Using OLS and logistic regression, we performed multivariate analyses of economic status of female-headed households for the pooled sample that included households from all five countries, where analytic focuses lied on the interaction terms between country and educational attainments that would show differential effects of education on the probability of being poor and the income-to-needs ratios of female-headed households between the U.S. and the other countries. To control for impacts of various government transfers and taxes on the operation of the differential education effects, we conducted multivariate analyses of economic status of female-headed households where economic position is estimated based only on market income. Results: (1) The effects of educational attainments on economic status of female-headed households were significantly greater in the U.S. than in the other countries. (2) When various government transfers and taxes were controlled, the greater education effects on income status of female-headed households that had been found in the U.S. disappeared. There were no such differences when based on market income. Policy Implications: We concluded that the ostensibly greater effects of education on economic status of female-headed households in the U.S. does not indicate greater effectiveness of the U.S. education system (if this is the case, the effects of education must have been greater in the U.S. than in other countries, even based on market income), but rather show a much smaller role that social supports play for economic well-being of female-headed households in the U.S. than in countries included. Thus, it would be self-evident to U.S. policy makers what should be emphasized and/or done to alleviate economic deprivation facing a number of female-headed households in the U.S.