This report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) summarizes 2005 preliminary births and birth rates and selected 2005 preliminary maternal and infant health birth data for the United States. The findings come from a substantial portion of the records of births (99.2 percent) that occurred in calendar […]
The Building Strong Families (BSF) project originated from these bodies of research, and is one of the centerpieces of a broader policy strategy to support healthy marriage. BSF is a multi-year, multi-site project sponsored by USDHHS/Administration for Children and Families (ACF). Its goal is to learn whether well-designed interventions can help interested, romantically involved, unwed […]
This document includes detailed information at the national level about the characteristics of children, husbands and wives, unmarried couples, households and family groups. Many of the tables have data by race and Hispanic origin. The data are from the 2005 Current Population Survey’s (CPS) Annual Social and Economic Supplement (ASEC). The ASEC supplement to the […]
The Administration for Children and Families within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has launched a project called Supporting Healthy Marriage (SHM). Led by MDRC, a team of nationally known policy research organizations, and leading experts on marriage, marriage education programs, and services for low-income families, the SHM project is the first large-scale […]
U.S. government policy has sought alternatively to improve the circumstances of single parent families and to reduce their numbers. There now is growing interest in interventions seeking to promote healthy marriages, and, where marriage is infeasible, strengthen relationships between unmarried parents. These interventions will stand a better chance for success if they are based on […]
The Community Healthy Marriage Initiative (CHMI) is a key component of the demonstration strategy of the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) to determine how public policies can best support healthy marriages. Two concepts underlie the CHMI strategy. One is that community coalitions can be an effective vehicle for developing a range of healthy marriage […]
In 2002, the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) within the Department of Health and Human Services launched the Healthy Marriage Initiative (HMI) to support the President Bush’s goal of increasing healthy marriages by focusing attention and action on strengthening marriages and preparing interested individuals and couples for healthy marriage. In supporting healthy marriage, ACF […]
This paper explores the challenges, opportunities and lessons learned from domestic violence protocol development at sites currently receiving federal funds for healthy marriage activities and with domestic violence advocates attempting to partner with these programs and others. By way of establishing a context for this analysis, we provide a brief discussion on domestic violence prevalence […]
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 […]