The impact of state welfare policies on women's cohabitation

Smith, Mark W. (1999): The impact of state welfare policies on women's cohabitation.

Abstract

Marriage and its relation to choices of fertility, work, and welfare receipt have been widely studied, yet little research has focused on nonmarital cohabitation. This paper presents a multinomial logit model of an American woman's major cohabitation options: not cohabiting, cohabiting with a spouse and possibly others, or cohabiting with others but not with a spouse. Because cohabitation has the possibility of alleviating poor women's need for public assistance, I investigate the connection between state welfare policies and the cohabitation choice. The analysis moves beyond the typical measure of welfare generosity--the monthly benefit level--to include two sets of state welfare regulations that affect how cohabitors' contributions to household expenditures may affect the woman's welfare benefit. The use of Census data allows sufficient sample sizes for separate estimation for White and Black women. I find that many personal and state variables substantially alter the choice of cohabitation, but welfare programs generally do not. The strongest impact of welfare programs falls on the choice of marriage, where I find support for the theory that more generous AFDC payments should be associated with fewer marriages. Although the patterns vary by race, the results reveal that other welfare policies do not exert a strong influence on women's choice of cohabitation and marriage.

• Item Type: MPRA Paper
• Language: English
• Keywords: cohabitation; lone mothers; single mothers; welfare programs; AFDC; AFDC-UP; TANF; Food Stamps; LIHEAP
• Subjects: H - Public Economics > H3 - Fiscal Policies and Behavior of Economic Agents > H31 - Household; H - Public Economics > H7 - State and Local Government ; Intergovernmental Relations > H75 - State and Local Government: Health ; Education ; Welfare ; Public Pensions; H - Public Economics > H5 - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies > H53 - Government Expenditures and Welfare Programs; D - Microeconomics > D1 - Household Behavior and Family Economics

References

Almanac of the Fifty States: Basic Data Profiles with Comparative Tables, Edith R. Hornor, ed. Palo Alto, CA: Information Publications, various years.

Aquilino, William S. 1990 "The Likelihood of Parent-Adult Child Coresidence: Effects of Family Structure and Parental Characteristics." Journal of Marriage and the Family 52(2): 405-19.

Avery, Roger, Frances Goldscheider, and Alden Speare, Jr. 1992 "Feathered Nest/Gilded Cage: Parental Income and Leaving Home in the Transition to Adulthood." Demography 29(3):375-88.

Becker, Gary. 1981 A Treatise on the Family. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Bergstrom, Theodore C. “A Survey of Theories of the Family.” In Mark Rosezweig and Oded Stark, eds., Handbook of Population and Family Economics, vol. 1a. New York: Elsevier, 1997.

Blau, David M., and Philip K. Robins. 1989 "Fertility, Employment, and Child-Care Costs." Demography 26(2): 287-99.

Bumpass, Larry L., and R. Kelly Raley. 1994 "Trends in the Duration of Single-Parent Families." University of Wisconsin-Madison, Center for Demography and Ecology, NSFH Working Paper no. 58.

Bumpass, Larry L., and James A. Sweet. 1989 "National Estimates of Cohabitation." Demography 26(4): 615-25.

Characteristics of State General Assistance Programs 1989. 1990 Prepared for the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation, U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services, by Lewin/ICF and James Bell Associates.

Edin, Kathryn. 1991. “Surviving the Welfare System: How AFDC Recipients Make Ends Meet in Chicago.” Social Problems 38(4): 462-74.

Ermisch, John, and Pamela Di Salvo. 1997 "The Economic Determinants of Young People's Household Formation." Economica 64: 627-44.

Goldscheider, Frances K., and Julie DaVanzo. 1989 "Pathways to Independent Living in Early Adulthood: Marriage, Semiautonomy, and Premarital Residential Independence." Demography 26(4): 597-614.

Greene, William H. 1991 Econometric Analysis, 2nd ed. New York: Macmillan.

Greene, William H. 1993 Econometric Analysis. 3rd ed. New York: Macmillan.

Greene, William H. 1995 LIMDEP: Limited Dependent Variables Models, Version 7.0, User's Manual. Bellport, NY: Econometric Software, Inc.

Haurin, Donald R., Patric H. Hendershott, and Dongwook Kim. 1993 "The Impact of Real Rents and Wages on Household Formation." Review of Economics and Statistics 75(2): 284-93.

Hill, Martha S. 1990 "Shared Housing as a Form of Economic Support for Young, Unmarried Mothers." Working paper, University of Michigan, Institute for Social Research.

Hu, Wei-Yin. 1997 "Welfare, Marriage, and Cohabitation: Experimental Evidence from California." Mimeo, Dept. of Economics, UCLA.

Hutchens, Robert, George Jakubson and Saul Schwartz. 1989 "AFDC and the Formation of Subfamilies." Journal of Human Resources 24(4): 599-628.

Manning, Wendy. 1992 "The Linkage between Premarital Fertility and Cohabitation in the U.S." Center for Demography and Ecology, University of Wisconsin- Madison, NSFH Working Paper no. 52.

Mincy, Ronald B. 1994 “The Underclass: Concept, Controversy, and Evidence.” In Sheldon H. Danziger, Gary D. Sandefur, and Daniel H. Weinberg, eds., Confronting Poverty: Prescriptions for Change. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.

Moffitt, Robert A. 1990 "Has State Redistribution Policy Grown More Conservative?" National Tax Journal 43(2): 123-142.

Moffitt, Robert A., Robert Reville, and Anne E. Winkler. 1995a "Beyond Single Mothers: Cohabitation, Marriage, and the U.S. Welfare System." University of Wisconsin-Madison, Institute for Research on Poverty, Discussion Paper no. 1068-95.

Moffitt, Robert A., Robert Reville, and Anne E. Winkler. 1995b "State AFDC Rules Regarding the Treatment of Cohabitors: 1993." Social Security Bulletin 57(4): 26-33.

National Center for Health Statistics. 1993 Monthly Vital Statistics Report, v. 40, no. 8. Advance Report of Final Natality Statistics 1991, Suppl. Hyattsville, MD: Public Health Service.

Parish, William, Lingxin Hao and Dennis P. Hogan. 1991 "Family Support Networks, Welfare, and Work among Young Mothers." Journal of Marriage and the Family 53(1): 203-215.

Ruggles, Steven, and Matthew Sobek. 1997 Integrated Public Use Microdata Series: Version 2.0. Minneapolis, MN: Historical Census Projects, University of Minnesota.

Schultz, T. Paul. 1994 "Marital Status and Fertility in the United States: Welfare and Labor Market Effects." Journal of Human Resources 29(2): 637-69.

Schultz, T. Paul. 1998 "Eroding the Economic Foundations of Marriage and Fertility in the United States." Structural Change and Economic Dynamics (forthcoming).

Smock, Pamela J., and Wendy D. Manning. 1997 "Cohabiting Partners' Economic Circumstances and Marriage." Demography 34(3): 331-41.

Stack, Carol B. 1974 All Our Kin: Strategies for Survival in a Black Community. 1st ed. New York : Harper & Row, 1974.

Stata Corporation. 1997 Stata Reference Manual (Version 5.0). College Station, TX : Stata Corporation.

Statistical Abstract of the United States. (various eds.) Washington, D.C.: U.S. G.P.O.

Teachman, Jay D., Jeffrey Thomas, and Kathleen Paasch. 1991 "Legal Status and the Stability of Coresidential Unions." 28(4): 571-86.

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. 1987 Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program: Report to Congress for Fiscal Year 1987.

U.S. House of Representatives. (various years) Background Materials and Data on Programs within the Jurisdiction of the Committee on Ways and Means. Washington, DC: G.P.O.

Wilson, William Julius. 1987 The Truly Disadvantaged: The Inner City, the Underclass, and Public Policy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Winkler, Anne E. 1994 "The Determinants of a Mother's Choice of Family Structure: Labor Market Conditions, AFDC Policy or Community Mores?" Population Research and Policy Review 13: 283-303.

Wolf, Douglas A. 1984. "Changes in Household Size and Composition Due to Financial Incentives." Journal of Human Resources 19(1): 87-103.