Welfare caseloads have declined substantially since the landmark PRWORA legislation of 1996, which was designed to shift the burden of supporting needy families from government to families themselves. These caseload declines have been well documented, and characteristics of recipients following...

In this paper, we study the 20 percent of unmarried mothers in the U.S. who have attended college. We ask whether these women constitute a distinct subgroup of unmarried mothers in terms of their attitudes toward marriage and men, the characteristics of their partners or the age at which they...

The family arrangements of Latinos in the U.S. are increasingly diverse, with growing numbers of Latino children living in households headed by married and unmarried parents. Latinos also tend to be more religious than the population at large. Yet no research has examined the associations...

We use data from the Fragile Families Study (N=1975) to examine the relationship between mothers’ partnership changes and parenting behavior during the first five years of their child’s life. We compare coresidential and dating transitions and recent and more distal transitions. We also...

In 1965, Daniel Patrick Moynihan warned that non-marital childbearing and marital dissolution were undermining the progress of African Americans. I argue that what Moynihan identified as a race-specific problem in the 1960s has now become a classbased phenomena as well. Using data from a new...

Research indicates that religious participation is correlated with marital satisfaction. Less is known about whether religion also benefits participants in nonmarital, intimate relationships, or whether religious effects on relationships vary by gender. Using data from the first three waves of...

Over the last several years, as new waves of immigrants have continued to enter the United States, the effects of immigration on the nation’s economy and society have been hotly debated. Largely ignored in the debate, however, has been the wellbeing of immigrant children. Little is known about...

Most analyses of time and resource allocation in couple households ignore what couples do with their money, assuming that money is “absolutely fungible, qualitatively neutral, infinitely divisible, [and] entirely homogeneous” (Zelizer 1994). If, instead, couples’ money management sets the...

The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (PRWORA) is designed to shift more of the responsibility for poor children from government to parents. To accomplish this goal, the new law requires welfare clients to work and limits the total number of years they can...

The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (PRWORA) is designed to shift more of the responsibility for poor children from government to parents. To accomplish this goal, the new law requires welfare clients to work and limits the total number of years they can...