Marital Status and Fertility in the United States: Welfare and Labor Market Effects

Abstract

Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Terms of use: Documents in ABSTRACTThe incidence of marriage and the proportion of childbearing that occurs within marriage has decreased sharply in the United States in the last several decades. This paper examines whether the probability that a woman is currently married and the number of children she has born, as reported in the 1980 U.S.Census, is related to two identifiable factors: the variation in welfare programs across states (specifically, AFDC and Medicaid benefits and AFDC-UP expenditures) or in market wage opportunities available to women and to their potential husbands. AFDC and Medicaid benefit levels are associated with fewer women being currently married. Medicaid benefits are related to lower fertility levels for both black and white women, whereas AFDC benefits in cash and food are associated with lower fertility among white women age 15 -24. Those states that extend AFDC benefits to families with Unemployed Parents (i.e. fathers in intact poor families) do not have significantly more women married or higher fertility rates, as might be expected from economic incentives. Men's market wages are associated with more frequent marriage and· higher fertility, whereas higher market wage opportunities for women have substantial effects in the opposite direction, all of which are consistent with standard models of gender specialization and the demand for marriage and fertility.

The effect of benefits on single motherhood in Europe

“…Increased economic opportunities for women (McLanahan 1994, Edlund 2000, Schmidt 2003; 3. Reduced supply of marriageable men (Wilson 1987), or a combination of those (Rosenzweig 1999, Schultz 1994, Willis 1999, Moffitt 2000, Neal 2004). None of these hypotheses alone is totally satisfactory, and no consensus has been reached on the subject to date.…”

“…These analyses usually model the probability of being a female head as a function of individual and state characteristics, including welfare benefits. Most studies estimate cross-sectional regressions, which rely on interstate variation in benefits to identify the welfare effect (Schultz 1994). Some use more than one period and introduce state fixed-effects in order to control for omitted state variables (Moffitt 1994), and Hoynes (1997) also adds individual fixed-effects.…”

The Impact of State Welfare Policies on Women's Cohabitation

“…The woman's observed hourly wage would measure her potential earnings, were she to work. Since many woman are not observed working in any particular month, studies such as Schultz (1994) use Heckman's method to correct for possible selection bias while determining predicted wages for each woman. The use of predicted variables in a nonlinear framework such as multinomial logit may cause inconsistency, however.…”

“…Using 1980 Census data, Schultz (1994) finds that higher property income and higher predicted wages make Black women more likely to marry but White women less likely. Census data from 1990 again reveal a negative relation between White women's predicted wages and marriage, while for Blacks the wage is now insignificant for those aged 25-44 (Schultz 1998).…”

“…While many of these are spouses, many others are not. Marriage and its relation to choices of fertility, work, and welfare receipt have been widely studied (among recent work, see Moffitt 1990;Schultz 1994;Moffitt et al 1995a), yet little research has focused on nonmarital cohabitation. In recent years it has received increasing attention for two reasons.…”