AFDC income, recipient rates, and family dissolution: a comment.

Poverty in the U.S.: Why Is It So Persistent?

We investigate the extent and implications of cohabitation and marriage among U.S. welfare recipients. An analysis of four data sets (the Current Population Survey, the National Survey of Families and Households, the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, and the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth) shows significant numbers of cohabitors among recipients of AFDC. An even more surprising finding is the large number of married women on welfare. We also report the results of a telephone survey of state AFDC agencies conducted to determine state rules governing cohabitation and marriage. The survey results indicate that, in a number of respects, AFDC rules encourage cohabitation. Finally, we conduct an analysis of the impact of AFDC rules on cohabitation, marriage, and single motherhood and find weak evidence in support of incentives to cohabit.

Beyond single mothers: cohabitation and marriage in the AFDC program.

Publisher Summary Historically, income maintenance has taken the form of private charity or the poor law. These have been typically uneven in their impact, varying from locality to locality, and have been dependent on the generosity and caprices of donors or public relief officials. In the administration of state support, concern for the cost has been paramount, and there has been a lively sense of the possible disincentive to work. The main objective of income support is the relief of poverty. It has been an intermediate objective rather than an end in itself, for example, to avoid civil unrest. Today, there is considerable disagreement about the proper role of income maintenance, but it remains widely accepted that the abolition of poverty is a central objective. The second approach seeks to reduce the multiple values to a single indicator by taking total expenditure and comparing this with a target level of total outlay. The third approach takes total income as the variable to indicate poverty; and it is this approach that is most commonly employed in the studies of poverty. In considering these three approaches to the indicator of poverty, there are two different conceptions. The first, and perhaps the more usual, is concerned with the standard of living, and it points to the use of total expenditure or the consumption of specific commodities. The second is concerned with rights to a minimum level of resources or the opportunity to consume, even if not exercised.

Chapter 13 Income maintenance and social insurance

Expanding welfare benefits to include two-parent families has long been considered an option for a public policy designed to strengthen family units. The negative income tax experiments employed this option, and it was found that the experimental group experienced 50 percent higher marital instability than the control group that was eligible for the current set of income-maintenance programs-AFDC and Food Stamps. Marital instability increased even when an experimental plan was no more generous than AFDC for the splitting wife. The conclusion must be either that because of differences in information, stigma, or transaction costs, the experiments produced more powerful independence effects than an equivalent amount of AFDC, or that receiving NIT payments somehow reduced the attractiveness of the married state by calling into question the success of the husband as provider. These findings suggest that, if strengthening marriages is a public-policy objective, two-parent families would be better aided by wage subsidies that reduce the unemployment of family heads and raise the earnings of the family's working members.

Jobs, Cash Transfers, and Marital Instability: A Review and Synthesis of the Evidence.

The purpose of this study was to estimate the effects oqfwelfare on marital dissolution and remarriage. The data were firom a sample of 4,322 females age 30-44 f~om the National Longitudinal Surveys. It was fbund that those who received AFDC, fobod stamps, or other public assistance dissolved their marriages more frequently than those not receiving welfare. This finding held among low-income whites but not

AFDC income, recipient rates, and family dissolution: a comment.

Citations

Poverty in the U.S.: Why Is It So Persistent?

Beyond single mothers: cohabitation and marriage in the AFDC program.

Chapter 13 Income maintenance and social insurance

Jobs, Cash Transfers, and Marital Instability: A Review and Synthesis of the Evidence.

The Effects of Welfare on Marital Stability and Remarriage.

Related Papers (4)

AFDC Income, Recipient Rates, and Family Dissolution

Work and Welfare as Determinants of Female Poverty and Household Headship

The impact of demographic change on the distribution of earned income and the AFDC program, 1975-1985

AFDC Benefits and the Inter-Urban Variation in Poverty among Female-Headed Households