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The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families (ACF) and the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE), contracted with The Lewin Group and its subcontractor, The Urban Institute, to explore options for the collection of marriage and divorce statistics at the national, state and local levels. The project explored information collected through national surveys as well as information that states and local entities, such as courts and county clerks, collect through their vital records systems.

This report summarizes the findings from site visits to seven states. In addition to the introduction (Section I), the report includes the following sections:
Section II provides an overview of the state and local electronic systems. This section first describes the marriage system, followed by the divorce system. It also summarizes how data are stored at the state level.
Section III describes how state and local staff (when applicable) use marriage and divorce data.
Section IV summarizes key findings from the visits and documents lessons states learned in developing their electronic systems.
Appendix. The state-specific site visit reports are included in the Appendix.(Author abstract)