THE IMPACT OF WELFARE REFORM ON FAMILY STRUCTURE

Bowdoin College, Brunswick ME

Investigators

Linked publications & trials

Abstract

In the 1990s and with federal encouragement, states proposed dramatic changes in the Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) program, the largest cash welfare program in the U.S. While much of the focus of these reforms has been on moving recipients from welfare to work, many reforms were also directed at affecting demographic decisions that affect the well-being of children. Welfare reform hopes to reduce the incidence of non-marital fertility and encourage the formation and maintenance of two-parent families. This project aims to assess the impact of welfare reform provisions on family structure decisions by low income women and families. The focus will be on female headship decisions, that is, women's decisions to become and remain unmarried mothers. Will welfare reform reduce transitions into female headship and reduce time spent as a female head? Since female headship and welfare use are related, the project will estimate transition rates for entering and leaving welfare and for becoming and leaving female headship both separately and jointly. To sort out the impact of welfare reform provisions, models will also include local area information on labor markets and marriage markets to control for these confounding influences. Data on individuals will come from national samples from the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) for the 1990s. This will be linked by person's residence to indicators of state welfare policy and county labor market data constructed from the Special Edited Detail File of the 1990 Census, the Regional Economic Information System, and the Current Population Survey.