One explanation for the widening of racial earnings gaps among family heads during the 1980s is that black families were increasingly headed by females during that period. This explanation is tested using data on black and white family heads in 1976 and 1985 from the Institute for Research on...

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...