The decline in marriage and its serious consequences for poverty and inequality are well documented. This paper concentrates on how marriage, cohabitation, single parenthood and the presence of biological parents affect the incomes and material hardships of children. The study uses data from the National Survey of America’s Families to examine: 1) recent changes in […]
This paper examines the effect of marital and family status on the experience of material hardship, using data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP). Among the key indicators of hardship are the ability to meet essential expenses, housing conditions, neighborhood problems (including crime, schools, public services), and having enough resources to buy […]
This paper examines the dynamics of marriage and family patterns and their relationship to living standards of a recent cohort of mothers. It is not obvious that married mothers should perform economically better than mothers in cohabitingrelationships or single mothers living with at least one other adult. But marriage is likely to raise living standards […]
This paper highlights the benefits of using the American Community Survey (ACS) including the ability to analyze data at the state and national levels, as well as explore the relationship between socio-economic characteristics and changing family structure. The following family structure variables are explored in the paper: estimated median age at first marriage, married and […]
In 1994, Minnesota began testing a major welfare reform initiative that emphasized financial incentives for work, a participation requirement for long-term recipients, and the simplification of rules and procedures for receiving public assistance. MDRC conducted an in-depth evaluation of the Minnesota Family Investment Program’s effectiveness and impact on various populations served. One of the striking […]
This report examines state efforts to reduce nonmarital births since the passage of PRWORA. In addition to synthesizing existing surveys of related state efforts, the study also includes findings from a series detailed interviews with a sample of nine states. These interviews focused on how states’ efforts to reduce nonmarital births had changed since passage […]
This power point presentation illustrates the relationship between church attendance and the stability of African American marriages.
Fact sheet from the National Healthy Marriage Resource Center outlining the trend in birth rates for unmarried women from 1975 to present.
The implications of family structure for children have been a central focus of public policy and research for decades. This brief highlights trends in family structure for children in the United States over the last few decades and reviews the research evidence on the effects of family structure on children. Research tells us that children […]