The promotion of marriage and two-parent families became an explicit public policy goal with the passage of the 1996 welfare reform bill. Marriage has the putative effect of reducing welfare dependency among single mothers, but only if they marry men with earnings sufficient to lift them and their children out of poverty. Newly released data from…

We apply marital search theory to examine whether out-of-wedlock childbearing affects mate selection patterns among American women. Using 1980-1995 CPS data, we apply probit models with selection to account for potential selection bias due to differences in "marriageability" between women in and not in unions. Compared to those without unmarried…

The promotion of marriage and two-parent families as a strategy to reduce welfare dependency continues to be a major public policy goal of the 1996 welfare reform. Based on the assumption that women will marry employed men and that their earnings will lift poor mothers and their children from public dependency, this objective raises important…