The Administration for Children and Families within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has launched a project called Supporting Healthy Marriage (SHM). Led by MDRC, a team of nationally known policy research organizations, and leading experts on marriage, marriage education programs, and services for low-income families, the SHM project is the first large-scale […]
A Chapin Hall discussion forum on marriage promotion policies funded under TANF assessed the benefits of these programs for low-income families. Listen to the complete audio recording of the event.
Emerging federal initiatives seeking to support marriage have increased the need for improved information on low-income married couples. These needs begin with basic descriptive statistics. Research on fragile families has demonstrated that simple facts can be very useful in stimulating thinking about interventions for couples. For example, the finding that a substantial majority of unwed […]
Our nation’s lack of affordable housing can dramatically reduce options for women experiencing domestic violence, trapping them in abusive situations or forcing them and their children to become homeless if they leave. Women living in poverty are especially vulnerable. Despite this, domestic violence often becomes so severe that women leave their homes, even when they […]
This document includes detailed information at the national level about the characteristics of children, husbands and wives, unmarried couples, households and family groups. Many of the tables have data by race and Hispanic origin. The data are from the 2005 Current Population Survey’s (CPS) Annual Social and Economic Supplement (ASEC). The ASEC supplement to the […]
Women who are battered often go to extreme and courageous lengths to protect their children from an abusive partner. In fact, research has shown that the non-abusing parent is often the strongest protective factor in the lives of children who are exposed to domestic violence. However, growing up in a violent home may be a […]
This paper explores the challenges, opportunities and lessons learned from domestic violence protocol development at sites currently receiving federal funds for healthy marriage activities and with domestic violence advocates attempting to partner with these programs and others. By way of establishing a context for this analysis, we provide a brief discussion on domestic violence prevalence […]
This fact sheet provides statistics on the prevalence of violence against women and children, harms and costs of victimization, and crime and incarceration of youth who have a history of child abuse and exposure to domestic violence.
The Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE) funded this project to learn about the status of policies to support and promote marriage at the state level. We inventoried policies that were enacted and proposed both prior to PRWORA and after the law’s passage. The project did not examine specific programs operating in localities. Nor […]
The Minnesota Family Investment Program (MFIP) originated, in 1994, as a new vision of a welfare system that would encourage work, reduce reliance on public assistance, and reduce poverty. The program differed from the existing Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) system in two key ways: It included financial incentives to “”make work pay”” […]