Over 2.5 million students across the country complete their high school education each year. How many of these students will emerge from their adolescent years with the skills and information they need to choose a life partner and form a healthy marriage and stable family? To increase the odds that young people in Oklahoma will […]
In 1999, Oklahoma began to consider how state government might play a role in strengthening families and marriages. To achieve their goals, the governor and key leaders first sought support for a statewide marriage initiative. In the first few years of the Oklahoma Marriage Initiative (OMI) various strategies were tested; some worked as anticipated and […]
While welfare reform in Colorado has been generally successful and innovative, government and community programs and partnerships have moved many families to self sufficiency, State leaders recognized that supporting the long-term success of all of Colorado’s families will require continued innovation and strong programmatic partnerships. Conference planners envisioned a meeting where “”policymakers from different communitysectors […]
In an effort to reduce the incidence of out-of-wedlock pregnancies among welfare recipients, some states have imposed family caps on welfare benefits. One factor that determines the amount of cash benefits a family receives is the family’s size-larger families receive more benefits. In states with a family cap policy, however, no additional cash benefits are […]
Existing evidence suggests that many married couples in the U.S. are managing stepfamily relationships. Empirical studies of stepfamily dynamics highlight the unique factors inherent in stepfamily marriages that impact their quality and stability, most notably the complexity of multiple relationships that exist at the onset of the marriage. Additional research on low-income populations suggests that […]
Research has consistently shown that family structure can facilitate or limit the ways in which parents are able to positively influence the future outcomes of their children. What is less understood is in what domains family structure matters and the magnitude of its effects over time. This paper presents existing evidence on the association between […]
Part I: An Advocate’s Guide for all Immigrant Women Victims of Domestic Violence.–Part II: For Battered Women not yet Prepared to Leave the Relationship.–Part III: For Battered Women Who are Currently Leaving an Abusive Relationship or Who Have Already Left. (Author abstract, modified)
The Welfare Peer TA Network sponsored a multi-State TA event on July 15-16, 2003, in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. This event was co-coordinated with Public Strategies, the public relations firm that manages the Oklahoma Marriage Initiative. The Administration for Children and Families’ Region VI, VII and IX Offices provided additional support, ensuring this event met State […]
A large body of research documents the earnings advantage that married men enjoy over never-married men, the “marriage premium.” Marital status is now a control variable in most earnings models, despite disagreements in the literature over whether the source of marital-status effects lies in productivity, selection, discrimination or other factors (Cornwell & Rupert 1997). Some […]
The populations targeted by the Healthy Marriage Initiative and the Serious and Violent Offender Re-entry Initiative (SVORI) and other reentry programs can overlap considerably. The majority of incarcerated individuals are parents, and of these, roughly a quarter are married and 46 percent were living with their children and presumably their child’s mother at the time […]