This paper examines empirically the "economic motivation" explanation for the dramatic rise in the proportion of black families headed by females, an explanation positing the attractiveness of welfare as an inducement to black women to "choose" to remain unmarried. Using a Granger-Sims...

Female headship among black families long has been more pronounced in the United States in comparison with other ethnic groups. E. Franklin Frazier's classic study of the black family in the 1930's placed a distinct emphasis on the disproportionately high number of "urban Negro families with...