About half of all American children can expect to live with both of their biological parents at age fifteen, compared to two-thirds of children born in Sweden, Germany, and France, and nine-tenths of those born in Italy. This form of American exceptionalism reflects both higher rates of divorce...

Although many opponents of welfare reform predicted that it would increase hardship, the official poverty rate for female headed families with children fell from 42 percent in 1996 to 34 percent in 2002. Skeptics have nonetheless argued that declines in official poverty rates may have been...