Stable, healthy marriages and relationships can bolster the economic security and well-being of adults and children. However, reality is much more complex. Relatively few children currently live in families with married parents in which only the father is employed. In fact, more than half of U.S. children today will spend at least part of their…

Throughout history, marriage and parenthood have been linked milestones on the journey to adulthood. But for the young adults of the Millennial Generation, these social institutions are becoming delinked and differently valued. Today's 18- to 29-year-olds value parenthood far more than marriage, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis of…

We investigate change in the association between premarital cohabitation and the risk of separation. Using retrospective marriage history data from the first wave (2001) of the Household Income and Labor Dynamics in Australian survey, we examine 6,210 first marriages formed between 1945 and 2000. We find the association between premarital…

This paper investigates the effect of gender differences and household bargaining on charitable giving. I replicate the study of Andreoni, Brown, and Rischall (2003) using a different data set--the recently available Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) supplement on charitable giving--and test the sensitivity of their results to inclusion of…

The authors used data from the Add Health study to estimate the effects of parents' marital status and relationship distress on daughters' early family formation transitions. Outcomes included traditional transitions (marriage and marital births) and nontraditional transitions (cohabitation and nonmarital births). Relationship distress among…

Research indicates that the quality of co-parenting and couple relationships has an impact on parenting and on children's development, including their social skills and academic abilities. However, few applied studies have tested whether efforts to enhance the couple and co-parenting relationship result in benefits to the children, and no research…

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…

This study examined the effects of marital status and family income on the self-esteem of 292 African American mothers. Counter to previous studies with European American mothers, family income moderated the effects of marital status. Those mothers with higher family income had higher self-esteem, regardless of their marital status. For those with…

This report examines what share of the current level of child poverty in the United States can be attributed to the growth of single parenthood since the 1960s, focusing on what the child poverty rate would be today if single parent families had remained at the levels that existed before the beginning of the war on poverty. Researchers simulated…

This bulletin explores the social, economic, and demographic trends that have contributed to the changing structure of the American family. Sections of the document discuss: (1) definitions of household and family; (2) types of families, including married couples with and without children and single-parent families; (3) living arrangements of…

Much of the discussion surrounding marriage promotion policies have little basis in the reality of life in low-income communities. Research suggests that much of the income differential between low-income and middle class women is the result of differences in educational attainment, labor market experience, and access to labor supply rather than…