In this op-ed Ron Haskins, co-director of the Brookings Center on Children and Families summarizes the massive changes to marriage, childbearing, and family formation over the last 40 years. These changes are associated with some positive developments for adults—more jobs and higher wages for women, more engagement with family and household responsibilities for men—but the results […]
Trends in marriage and fertility pose long-term risks to the financial and fiscal health of the world's wealthiest nations – from China and Japan to Germany and the United States – and are implicated in the recent global economic slowdown, according to a new report released today. The Sustainable Demographic Dividend: What Do Marriage & […]
"The number of Americans who have children and live together without marrying has increased twelvefold since 1970," Sabrina Tavernise wrote in The New York Times recently, adding that "children now are more likely to have unmarried parents than divorced ones." Is that cause for concern? Does marriage contribute to a stable environment, or is it […]
Now that government belt-tightening has become a national obsession, divorce-reform advocates are making the argument that they can be part of the solution. Divorce is costly for everyone, they argue, and encouraging troubled couples to try to work things out could benefit the national bottom line. The average split costs a couple $2,500. A new […]
Co-sponsored by the Center for Marriage and Families at the Institute for American Values and the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia, this new report by a group of 18 family scholars summarizes new findings from the social sciences on divorce, cohabitation, and marriage in the U.S. According to W. Bradford Wilcox, director […]
Act 13 of the 2002 Regular Legislative Session allocated funds to the Department of Social Services for the purpose of developing and implementing family strengthening initiatives to provide intervention and support services designed to enable low-income parents to act in the best interest of their children. To promote marriage and to help couples in their […]
The American Community Survey (ACS) is an ongoing survey that provides vital information on a yearly basis about our nation and its people. Information from the survey generates data that help determine how more than $400 billion in federal and state funds are distributed each year. Through the ACS, we know more about jobs […]
The Blue Star Families Military Family Lifestyle Survey takes a comprehensive look at the current needs and priorities of military families and service members and identifies the key aspects of military life to effectively target resources, services, and programs that support the sustainability of the All-Volunteer Force. Military families are much like their civilian […]
The Healthy Marriage and Relationship Education Models and Measures project developed recommended measures for assessing the outcomes of healthy marriage and relationship education programs. The products focus on two key target populations: parents in complex families and adolescents between the ages of 14 and 18. For each of these populations, the project developed: A dynamic […]
This guide is designed to help safety-net service providers and other stakeholders sustainably integrate healthy marriage and relationship education into their services for military service members and their families. Safety-net service providers are people who work in Federal, State, Local, and Tribal agencies and help others achieve self-sufficiency. The guide uses a three-stage […]