Non-marital childbearing is associated with many adverse outcomes for both the mother and the child. Most of these births are unintended. If these unintended births could be reduced it might improve children's prospects by enabling their mothers to get more education, earn more, and wait to have children within marriage. In this brief, the authors…

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…

Adolescent pregnancy and parenthood have become increasingly important public policy issues in recent years for many reasons, including concerns about their prevalence, about the economic and social problems faced by young mothers and their children, and about the budgetary effects of adolescent parents' reliance on public assistance programs.…

Compares changes in birth rates, sexual activity, abortion rates, illegitimate births, and incidence of giving babies up for adoption among White and Black adolescents and explores social and cultural influences on the racial differences. Presents suggestions for culturally related interventions in the area of teenage pregnancy. (Author/MJL)

Using findings of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID), this report discusses how people become poor and why they stay that way. The PSID reveals that the requirements for getting out of poverty in the United States are so minimal that it takes a mutually reinforcing cluster of behaviors to remain in poverty, even for blacks and females. The…

This report describes results of Project TEEN, a 1-year federal grant project awarded to the Louisiana State Department of Education for the purpose of conducting a state assessment of compliance with Title IX as related to middle and secondary school dropouts among pregnant female adolescents. Other stated purposes of the project include…

Assesses effects of community sex ratio (of men to women) on rural Black family formation and structure. Ratio directly linked to Black women's marriage prevalence, and inversely linked to women's nonmarital fertility. Concludes ratio a family-structure factor. Suggests social policy implications. Suggests urban ghetto studies be broadened. (TES)