There remains a serious structural disincentive to marry for many poor Americans. The U.S. tax and transfer (welfare) systems frequently impose substantial financial penalties on low-income couples who choose to marry. In relative terms, these marriage penalties tend to be much greater than those experienced by non-poor couples, and in some cases amount to family […]

This brief is based on analyses of data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study that examined how current and past participation in the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) program affect the likelihood and timing of marriage among mothers who had a nonmarital birth in urban areas during the late 1990s — a […]

African American boys tend to receive more support and have better outcomes-including greater self-esteem and reduced likelihood of delinquency-when they live with married parents.

In the last four decades, the United States has witnessed a retreat from marriage, marked by high rates of nonmarital births and divorce, as well as lower rates of marriage. Although a growing body of research on the retreat from marriage has focused on its social and economic causes, little attention has been paid to […]

A comprehensive review of recent academic research shows that family structure – whether a child's parents are married, divorced, single, remarried, or cohabiting – is a significant influence on children's educational performance. Family structure affects preschool readiness. It affects educational achievement at the elementary, secondary, and college levels. Family structure influences these outcomes in part […]

Kathryn Edin and Joanna Reed review recent research on social and economic barriers to marriage among the poor and discuss the efficacy of efforts by federal and state policymakers to promote marriage among poor unmarried couples, especially those with children, in light of these findings. Social barriers include marital aspirations and expectations, norms about childbearing, […]

Is children’s development, and children’s cognitive development in particular, affected by the marital status of their parents? On the face of it, this seems to be a simple question to which there is an intuitively simple answer: yes. Yet the answer to this question is anything but simple. The complexity of this question, the policy […]