| Fragile families and
welfare reform: An introduction |
277 -- 301 |
| Irwin Garfinkel, Sara S. McLanahan, Marta
Tienda, Jeanne Brooks-Gunn |
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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 receive
public assistance. In addition, the legislation strengthens
child support enforcement and, because many children on welfare
were born to unmarried parents, requires states to strengthen
paternity establishment. Taken together, these new laws promote
marriage and family formation by making it nearly impossible for
single mothers to rely on welfare for long periods of time and
by making it increasingly difficult for non-resident fathers to
avoid supporting their children.
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| Fragile Families: sample
and design |
303 -- 326 |
| Nancy E. Reichman, Julien O. Teitler,
Irwin Garfinkel, Sara S. McLanahan |
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This paper provides important background information on the
Fragile Families and Child Well-being Study, and is the first
and only paper to provide detailed information on the research
methodology and sampling strategies employed. The bulk of the
paper is devoted to a detailed description of the three-stage
sampling process that was used to obtain a nationally
representative sample of non-marital births in large
US
cities. First, it was necessary to sample cities that,
collectively, were nationally representative and had maximum
variation in policy regimes. Next, it was necessary to sample
hospitals so as to be representative of non-marital births in
each city. Finally, we sampled births in order to be
representative of those at each hospital. The paper concludes
with some general information about the study and a simple
description of the baseline non-marital sample from the first
seven cities. |
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| Capabilities and
employability of unwed mothers |
327 -- 351 |
| Aurora P. Jackson, Marta Tienda, Chien-Chung
Huang |
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In this paper we assess the economic capabilities
of a sample of unwed mothers who gave birth in spring, 1998 in
hospitals that serve low-income residents in seven cities that
are part of a national sampling frame. We show that recent unwed
mothers who are not in a cohabiting relationship are especially
vulnerable to economic hardship because they are more likely to
encounter multiple barriers to employment than mothers who do
cohabit with their newborn’s father. However, analyses of
earnings capacity suggest that most single-mother families would
be poor even if the mothers worked 1500 hours per year, and near
poor if they worked full-time, year round (2000 hours). Analyses
of income portfolios indicate that low-income mothers are quite
resourceful packing cash and income transfers from multiple
sources to meet the needs of their families. These results are
discussed in the context of recent welfare reform.
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| Regular and irregular
earnings of unwed fathers: Implications for child support
practices |
353 -- 376 |
| Lauren M. Rich |
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This paper estimates the regular and irregular earnings of
unmarried fathers, using data from the first seven cities of the
Fragile Families and Child Well-Being Study. The results
indicate that these fathers earn about $17,000 on average, a
figure comparable to previous estimates of the earnings of
nonresident and/or unmarried fathers. The paper also explores
the relative importance of these fathers’ irregular economic
activity. The findings indicate that almost three in ten fathers
participate in the irregular sector, and that most of these
fathers combine irregular with regular sector work. Also, among
fathers reporting informal activity, irregular earnings serve to
increase total earnings by 20 percent. However, among all
unmarried fathers, irregular earnings increase total earnings by
only 6 percent. |
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| Health status and
behaviors of unwed fathers |
377 -- 401 |
| Melvin Wilson, Jeanne Brooks-Gunn |
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| Father involvement,
child health and maternal health behavior |
403 -- 425 |
| Julien O. Teitler |
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| Low birthweight: Do
unwed fathers help? |
427 -- 452 |
| Yolanda C. Padilla, Nancy E. Reichman |
Previous studies have revealed that
marital status is an important predictor of birth
outcomes, with unmarried mothers having a higher
probability than married mothers of delivering low
birthweight babies. However, research on the impact of
different mother-father relationships among
unwed parents is virtually non-existent and little
is known about whether and how father involvement
affects birth outcomes. In this study, we use the sample
of unwed parents in the 7-cities baseline Fragile
Families and Child Wellbeing data to examine the effects
of parents’ relationship status and support provided
by the baby’s father during pregnancy on the
likelihood of delivering a low birthweight baby, and to
examine whether father involvement explains racial and
ethnic disparities in low birthweight. We include
several variables that past studies have suggested may
be important in explaining birth outcomes but generally
have not been able to include, such as mother’s social
support, her attitudes and values, and her religiosity.
We find that having received monetary support from the
baby’s father has a negative effect on the likelihood
of low birthweight and that mothers who are in a
non-cohabiting romantic relationship with the father
have significantly higher odds of low birthweight
compared to mothers who cohabit with the father of their
baby. Finally, racial and ethnic differences in birth
outcomes within this population appear to be invariant
to the level of father involvement. A major contribution
of the study is that it uses rich new data to examine
birth outcomes in a population at high risk—unmarried
mothers—and incorporates measures such as parents’
relationship status and father’s financial support,
along with an extensive set of demographic, social, and
behavioral risk factors.
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