To provide our readers with a context for understanding the debate over marriage, we selected several central topics and invited some of the country’s leading scholars to share their expertise. Two authors were asked to examine recent economic, demographic, and social developments that have affected marriage and to comment on the causes and consequences of […]
The Healthy Marriage Self Assessment Tool was created for FRIENDS, the National Resource Center for Community Based Child Abuse Prevention programs. (CBCAP). This tool is to be used on a voluntary basis. The purpose of this self-assessment tool is to help state lead agencies and their networks of programs strengthen their work regarding healthy marriages […]
Evidence of public and private interest in programs designed to strengthen the institution of marriage and reduce the number of children growing up without both their parents is growing. Robin Dion addresses the question of whether such programs can be effective, especially among disadvantaged populations. She begins by describing a variety of marriage education programs. […]
For the last 30 years, encouraging employment has been the primary focus of U.S. anti-poverty policies. More recently, however, promoting the formation and maintenance of “”healthy marriages”” has emerged as a central feature of domestic social policy in the United States, with proposals pending that would allocate up to $1.5 billion to undertake and evaluate […]
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”” […]
More than one in four children with married parents is low income. The majority of low-income children in rural and suburban areas live with parents who are married, and most single parents were formerly married as well. The majority of married low-income parents are employed, and 41 percent of their children have two employed parents. […]
Preliminary evaluations of marriage education programs have revealed some positive results for middle-class parents, but there is not yet scientific evidence on how these programs will work for more disadvantaged couples. Indeed, marriage promotion among the poor remains a contentious issue. Not only is the effectiveness of such strategies unproven, but some critics view these […]
Encouraging and strengthening marriage continues to move up the US’s social policy agenda. This analysis uses nationally representative data on cohabiting couples with children from the 2002 round of the National Survey of America’s Families (NSAF) to assess the actual marriage penalties or bonuses facing these couples. In addition to examining the consequences of current […]
There has been a sharp increase over the last two generations in the proportion of American children who do not live with their own two married parents, first spurred largely by increases in divorce, and more recently by large jumps in unmarried or cohabitating childbearing. A vigorous public debate sparked by these changes in family […]