This brief is based on extensive in-person observational data, as well as survey data, from 55 unmarried low-income African-American mothers and fathers who were part of the Fragile Families study. Given that 70 percent of African-American children (compared with one-third of all children) in the U.S. are born to parents who are not married, this […]

Policy makers propose to promote healthy marriage among low-income unmarried couples by providing services to improve relationship skills. This article uses data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study to explore whether enhancing parents’ relationship skills may have spillover effects on parent-child relationships. Drawing on findings that relationship quality is positively associated with parenting […]

This is the ninth publication in CLASP’s Couples and Marriage policy brief series. It explores the attitudinal, experiential, economic, and social contexts in which disadvantaged parents have children and decide to marry or not marry. It also discusses the public policy implications of research on this topic. Like others in the series, this brief is […]

This study examines the effects of changes in family structure on children’s economic well-being. An initial shift-share analysis indicates that, had the proportion of children living in female-headed families remained constant since 1970, the 1998 child poverty rate would have been 4.4 percentage points lower than its actual 1998 level of 18.3 percent. We then […]

The federally-funded Healthy Marriage & Family Formation Project enhances the capacity of child welfare professionals and community service providers capacity to address healthy marriage and family formation issues as a way of improving safety, permanency, and well-being outcomes for children and families in Colorado, Wyoming, and Kansas. The project is also working to identify and […]

This webcast focused on efforts to build healthy relationships and sustain healthy marriages through marriage education. Panelists included: Bill Coffin, Special Assistant for Marriage Education, Administration for Families and Children, HHS; Francesca Adler-Baeder, Auburn University, Alabama; Dana Reichert, TANF Director for the state of Louisiana; and Carlis Williams, Regional Administrator, Administration for Children and Families, […]

Has the relationship between economic prospects and marriage formation in the United States changed in recent decades? To answer this question, a discrete-time event-history ananlysis was conducted using data from multiple cohorts of the National Longitudinal Surveys of Labor Market Experience. Among women, results indicate growth in the importance of earnings for marriage formation between […]

Family instability is often offered as an explanation for the possible disadvantages faced by children with cohabiting parents. However, measures of family stability typically have focused on changes in legal marital status to the exclusion of cohabitation status. Consequently, children’s experiences of family instability have been underrepresented (Raley and Wildsmith 2004). To better understand a […]

What do the half-century decline in U.S. marriage and the attendant rise in single parenthood mean for the economic well-being of children, especially children living in single-parent families? Adam Thomas and Isabel Sawhill show how differing living arrangements can be expected to affect families’ economic well-being. Married-parent and cohabiting households, for example, can benefit from […]

The institution that most strongly protects mothers and children from domestic abuse and violent crime is marriage. Analysis of ten years worth of findings from the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), which the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) has conducted since 1973, demonstrates that mothers who are or ever have been married are far less […]