In the United States, multipartnered fertility (MPF) has become commonplace. This study provides the first nationally representative measures of women's MPF, across multiple years, using the U.S. Census Bureau's Surveys of Income and Program Participation. Because welfare rules contain strong incentives for MPF, and because MPF is especially…

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…

Guided by the conceptual frameworks of social support appraisal mechanisms and cultural variant perspectives, the reported experiences of 23 Black grandmothers parenting grandchildren who receive cash assistance under the current welfare program, Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF), were used to integrate macro- and micro-level…