Since welfare reform in 1996, marriage has been promoted as a means to reduce welfare dependency and out-of-wedlock childbearing. Despite extensive public and academic discourse surrounding marriage promotion, a basic factor preceding and predicting marriage--expectations to marry--has received little attention. Using insights from the life course…

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…

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…