Welfare Rules, Incentives, and Family Structure

Abstract

This paper reexamines the effects of welfare on family structure, emphasizing that AFDC and TANF rules are based more on the biological relationship of the mother’s children to any male in the household than on marriage or cohabitation. We find that many 1990s welfare reform policies did not affect family structure but that several work-related reforms increased single parenthood and decreased marriage to biological fathers. These effects are most evident when work-related reforms are bundled and examined over a longer time period. We hypothesize that these effects stem from increased earnings of single mothers and factors specific to biological fathers.