The recent literature on the effects of welfare on marriage and fertility includes studies employing a wide variety of methodologies and data sets and covering different time periods. A majority of the studies show that welfare has a significantly negative effect on marriage or positive effect...

A considerable amount of work has been done on the relationship between AFDC benefits and family structure in the United States. The evidence to date—based on cross-state variation in welfare benefits and family structure, often with state fixed effects—indicates that there is some nonzero...

We investigate the extent and implications of cohabitation and marriage among U.S. welfare recipients. An analysis of four data sets (the CPS, NSFH, PSID, and NLSY) shows significant numbers of cohabitors among recipients of AFDC. An even more surprising finding is the large number of married...

This paper reports the results of a survey of state AFDC rules regarding the treatment of unrelated cohabitors in households containing AFDC units. We examine state treatment of cash and in- kind contributions by cohabitors and find that the AFDC grant is usually not affected if the cohabitor...

This paper seeks to identify factors that could plausibly have led to the contractionary welfare reform initiatives begun at the state and federal levels in the United States in the 1990s, initiatives concentrated on the Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) program. A review of...

Americans are again concerned about welfare - Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) - and politicians are again proposing to reform the system. According to the author, at issue is not the cost of AFDC, but what the money is supposedly being spent for: to "reward" young women without...

The authors evaluate the effectiveness of two models often used to measure the extent of nonparticipation bias in survey estimates. The first model establishes a "continuum of resistance" to being surveyed, placing people who were interviewed after one phone call on one end and nonparticipants...

This study had three objectives: (1) to assess the validity of questionnaire-based measures in identifying households experiencing hunger and food insecurity, (2) to examine the interrelationships of different questionnaire-based measures, and (3) to examine the construction of a continuous food...