Policy Forum No. 3: Fathers, Marriage, and the Next Phase of Welfare Reform

This article was authored by Wade Horn and Andrew Bush in 1997 for the Hudson Institute and updated for republishing in 2000 prior to Wade's confirmation and prior to Andrew Bush taking his job with the department of Health and Human Services. The Acton Institute apologizes for inadvertently omitting this identifying information.

With the passage of the historic welfare reform legislation in 1996, America embarked on a dramatic new course in providing assistance to our nation’s poorest families. These federal welfare reforms altered both the purpose and form of the nation’s principal cash assistance program, Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC). Now retitled Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), welfare no longer serves as a long-term replacement for parents’ earnings. Instead, aid is now supposed to be used to promote long-term self-sufficiency. The law also gives states the responsibility for determining virtually all the standards and requirements for their TANF programs. With the passage of this legislation, the opportunity for revolutionary reform had never been greater.

To date, reforms have focused almost exclusively on welfare-to-work strategies. The results of these efforts have been impressive. Nationally, caseloads have dropped by nearly 50 percent, as millions of previously welfare-dependent heads of households have successfully entered the paid labor force. But if America is to succeed in this grand new experiment, the promotion of work among welfare recipients will need to take a smaller role in the next phase of welfare reform. Despite being viewed primarily as a poverty issue, welfare stands at the center of a broader social conflagration that is even more profound than the vital issue of economic self-reliance: the demise of marriage and the increasing disappearance of fathers from families.

Families are the primary institutions through which we protect and nurture our children, and upon which free societies depend for establishing social order and promoting individual liberty and fulfillment. Over the past several decades, however, the United States has experienced both a dramatic decline in the institution of marriage and a lack of reliance on two-parent families to rear children. Even more precisely, we have been experiencing a decline of fatherhood, because when marriages fail, or when children are born out of wedlock and two-parent families never form, it is almost always the fathers who are absent. The absence of fathers has, in turn, severely increased the life risks faced by their children.

As state and federal officials laud the success of replacing welfare with work, they must not lose sight of the larger issues of fatherhood and marriage. Rather than simply help single-parent households generate earnings in the absence of fathers, state reforms also must find ways to bring more fathers into the lives of their children. At the least, this requires addressing the ability of fathers to support their children financially. But the importance of fathers extends beyond economics, of course. Their involvement as nurturers, disciplinarians, teachers, coaches, and moral instructors is also critically important to the healthy development and maturation of their children.

Given the importance of fathers, the next phase of welfare reform must advance policies that encourage secure marriages and make out-of-wedlock childbearing and single parenting less frequent. This is not to say that all fathers are good for their children or that all marriages should be saved. Separations, and even divorce, are sometimes necessary, but despite this, the trend toward fatherlessness must be reversed, and welfare reform can be instrumental in doing that.

The problem is that strategies for promoting fatherhood and marriage are, to some extent, in conflict with those that seek to help single mothers achieve self-sufficiency through work. Indeed, a welfare system that helps single mothers become employed but ignores the need to promote fatherhood and marriage may serve only to enable unmarried women to rear children without the presence of the father. Yet, despite increasing public concern about the problems of out-of-wedlock childbearing and the absence of fathers, most welfare reform efforts to date have focused almost exclusively on moving unwed mothers into the paid labor force.

Part of the reason for the current focus on welfare-to-work strategies is that we know much more about promoting work than we do about helping couples to form and sustain healthy, mutually satisfying marriages. Moreover, marriage is something about which Americans are considerably ambivalent. Because fatherhood and marriage frequently touch upon difficult, painful, and highly personal decisions, policymakers have been reluctant to address them through public policy reforms. In addition, the awful specter of domestic violence has led some to conclude that marriage is a trap for women. Consequently, welfare reform efforts rarely have included policies to promote marriage. Instead, most efforts have proceeded with what many proponents concede is ultimately a secondary but attainable strategy: improving the way in which we help single parents in their struggle for self-sufficiency.

One way to resolve these often-contentious issues is to understand that efforts to increase workforce attachment, increase marriage rates, decrease out-of-wedlock childbearing, and increase father involvement are not goals in themselves; rather, they are means for achieving welfare’s historic, and, we believe, most important, goal: improving the well-being of children. This does not mean that moving single mothers into the paid labor force, increasing marriage rates, reducing illegitimacy, or increasing father involvement are unimportant. To the contrary, each is vitally important if we are to fundamentally reform a system that has trapped too many families and children in long-term dependence. Each, however, should be viewed more properly as an intervening or process variable that may or may not ultimately improve the well-being of children. Indeed, by focusing on improving the well-being of children, efforts to promote work, marriage, and fatherhood need not be viewed as working at cross-purposes.

Of course, welfare reform cannot, by itself, solve the problems of fatherlessness and marriage any more than it alone will ever solve the problems of poverty. So much depends on both individual choices and broad societal and cultural influences. Nonetheless, welfare policy can substantially influence the decisions that people make and how they think about their life choices. The purpose of this essay is to challenge states to develop integrated strategies for promoting work, fatherhood, and marriage within the context of welfare reform policies that will improve the lives of needy families and their children. This objective must be an important focus of the next phase of welfare reform.

By most measures, children are only slightly better off today compared with four decades ago. Today, one in six American children under the age of eighteen lives in poverty.¹ Overall, nearly twelve million children reside in poor families.² In fact, the percentage of American children growing up within poor families today is higher than the percentage growing up within poor families in 1966, the year after President Johnson declared the War on Poverty.³

Unfortunately, many children today are not only poor but also poorly educated. Almost 40 percent of 1992 high school graduates did not possess the skills and basic knowledge required either for college or for many entry-level jobs.⁴ Eighty percent of seventeen-year-olds lack proficient writing skills.⁵ Fewer than half can understand complicated high school literacy passages or evaluate the results of a scientific study.⁶ Only 60 percent of seventeen-year-olds can compute with decimals, fractions, and percents or solve simple math equations.⁷ Approximately 3.8 million sixteen- to twenty-four-year-olds—just over one in ten—have dropped out of school, including 7.3 percent of white, 12.6 percent of black, and 28.6 percent of Hispanic sixteen- to twenty-two-year-olds.⁸

Children today also are increasingly likely to be the victims of violence. Between 1976 and 1989, reports of child abuse and neglect rose 259 percent.⁹ According to one recent survey, 14 percent of boys and 20 percent of girls in the sixth through twelfth grades reported having been hit or physically harmed by a parent or other adult, causing them to have a scar, black and blue mark, welt, bleeding, or a broken bone. Eighteen percent of the girls in the survey reported that someone had sexually abused them.¹⁰

If these statistics were not disturbing enough, children today also are increasingly likely to inflict violence upon themselves. Between 1960 and 1998, the teenage suicide rate increased from 3.6 per one hundred thousand to 11.1 per one hundred thousand, while the suicide rate for adults twenty-five years and older remained approximately the same.¹¹

Children today are also more likely than their counterparts of just four decades ago to engage in early and promiscuous sexual activity. Each year, one in ten girls under the age of twenty—over one million annually—becomes pregnant.¹² About two-thirds of these pregnant teens carry their babies to term, resulting in almost five hundred thousand live births.¹³ And nearly eight of every ten births to teenagers are out of wedlock.¹⁴ Additionally, each year, three million teenagers contract sexually transmitted diseases.¹⁵

These statistics paint a grim picture of childhood today. Certainly, there are many reasons for the decline in the well-being of children in America, but two factors stand out above the rest: (1) the dramatic increase in the proportion of children growing up in fatherless households and (2) the rise of the modern welfare system.

Arguably, the most consequential trend of our time is the dramatic increase in the number of children growing up in fatherless households. In 1960, the total number of children in the United States living without their biological fathers was less than ten million. Today, that number is twenty-three million.¹⁶ One-third of children in America do not live in the same homes as their biological fathers. According to some estimates, that percentage may have risen to 60 percent of children born in the 1990s.¹⁷

For nearly one million children each year, the pathway to a fatherless family is divorce.¹⁸ The divorce rate nearly tripled from 1960 to 1980, before leveling off and declining slightly in the 1980s.¹⁹ Today, forty out of every one hundred first marriages end in divorce, compared to sixty out of every one hundred first marriages in 1960. No country has a higher divorce rate than the United States.²⁰

The second pathway to a fatherless family is out-of-wedlock fathering. In 1960, about 5 percent of all births were out of wedlock. That number increased to 10.7 percent in 1970, 18.4 percent in 1980, 28 percent in 1990, and 33 percent today.²¹ On an annual basis, the number of children fathered out of wedlock now surpasses the number of children whose parents divorce.²²

Between 1980 and 1990, the percentage of live births to unmarried women (the non-marital birth ratio) increased in each of the fifty states.²³ During this time period, ten states saw the non-marital birth ratio increase by over 60 percent. Furthermore, although the absolute number of births to unmarried teenagers has declined in recent years, the percentage of teenagers who give birth out of wedlock increased by 38 percent between 1985 and 1999. In fact, 79 percent of all births to teenagers nationwide are now out of wedlock.²⁴

African Americans are disproportionately affected by the problem of father absence. Fifty-six percent of African-American children live in father-absent homes, but fatherlessness is by no means restricted to African Americans. Indeed, the absolute number of father-absent families is larger—and the rate of father absence is growing the fastest—in the white community. Currently, over 15 million white children reside in father-absent homes, compared to approximately 7.7 million African-American children.²⁵

The absence of fathers in the home has profound consequences for children. Almost 75 percent of American children living in single-parent families will experience poverty before they turn eleven years old, compared to only 20 percent of children in two-parent families.²⁶ Children who grow up without fathers also are more likely to fail at school or to drop out,²⁷ experience behavioral or emotional problems requiring psychiatric treatment,²⁸ engage in early sexual activity,²⁹ and develop drug and alcohol problems.³⁰

Fatherless children are at especially high risk for committing or being the victims of violence. Males who grow up without fathers—compared to those who grow up with fathers in the home—are significantly more likely to commit rape,³¹ to be charged as adolescents with murder,³² and to be sentenced to juvenile reform institutions.³³ Children who grow up without fathers also are significantly more likely to commit suicide as adolescents³⁴ and to be victims of child abuse or neglect.³⁵

In light of these data, noted developmental psychologist Urie Bronfenbrenner draws this conclusion:

There are, of course, many reasons for the growing problem of fatherlessness in America. The transformation from an agrarian to a modern industrialized society separated fathers from the home for extended periods of time, leading some to view the contributions of fathers to their families as primarily, if not exclusively, economic. In addition, both the sexual revolution of the 1960s and the more radical elements of the feminist movement sought to decouple childbearing from the institution of marriage. Moreover, over the past several decades the media has dramatically changed its portrayal of fathers from wise, central figures in the lives of families to bumbling buffoons or worse.³⁷ As important as each of these causes may be, much of the blame for fatherlessness, especially among the poor, can be placed squarely on the development of welfare policy over the past few decades.

Welfare—along with the nature of its relationship to families—is by no means a concern addressed only by modern policymakers. The roots of American public welfare laws go back to sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England. Beginning with the New Deal legislation of the 1930s, however, welfare policies in the United States—and the ideas that underlie them—have become distinct from the tradition out of which they grew. In developing a plan for the new direction of welfare policy, policymakers ought to know something about the evolution of welfare policy, especially in terms of its relationship to fathers and families.

For much of the early history of England, providing for the impoverished and needy was left up to individuals, churches, and monasteries under what were known as the English poor laws. As summarized and codified in 1601 during the forty-third parliament of Queen Elizabeth, four major principles underlie these early English poor laws. First, welfare was defined, at least in part, as a public responsibility, and designated officials, called overseers of the poor, were charged with the duty to assist the impoverished. Second, welfare was to be administered as a local responsibility. Each parish congregation was held responsible for its poor. If members of the parish became needy elsewhere, the parish of origin was required to receive them back and provide for their welfare. Third, the primary responsibility for taking care of the poor was to be shouldered as a family responsibility. A parish did not have to provide for a poor family or individual if there were parents, grandparents, adult children, or grandchildren who could do so. Fourth, the poor were seen as having a personal responsibility to try to help themselves. Overseers of the poor, therefore, were authorized to put them to work, reflecting the belief that people ought to support themselves insofar as they were able and ought neither to live in idleness nor to beg from those who did work.³⁸

Colonial America borrowed heavily from the English poor laws. For much of the early history of America, people were expected to look out for themselves and their families. If a family became destitute, it was to turn first to relatives or neighbors for support. If these informal sources of support proved inadequate, the community was morally and, in some cases, legally obligated to provide for the family through the poor laws. Public officials might, for example, give an allowance or arrange to pay the family’s bills at the local store. Or, if a family was unable to care for itself or needed supervision (as in the case of the mentally ill), the overseer might place them into the home of a functional family and pay their host for the service. But officials also were justified in seeing that individuals or members of the family did not evade their own responsibilities; therefore, they required work in exchange for aid and compelled financial support from relatives.³⁹

Thus, well into the twentieth century, the provision of public welfare was seen as a local or state responsibility, with financial aid for dependent children primarily designed to help widows and abandoned mothers stay out of the paid labor force. There is little evidence that there was much public sentiment to provide financial aid to never-married mothers. Indeed, the historical record suggests that never-married mothers were routinely stigmatized; moreover, if they were destitute, their dependent children were placed in foster homes or orphanages.

The seeds of the modern welfare system were sown during the Great Depression. Not only did that period give birth to what was to become the AFDC program, but the Great Depression also changed how large parts of American society began to view public programs and expectations for family and local self-sufficiency.

As the nation struggled to cope with the Great Depression, an economic emergency of unprecedented breadth and longevity (unemployment rose from 1.6 million in 1929 to a high of 12.8 million in early 1933—25 percent of the labor force),⁴⁰ it experimented with new ideas about the role of the federal government in the provision of welfare. This experimentation ultimately resulted in the enactment of the Social Security Act of 1935, through which the federal government began to try to ensure economic security for several demographic groups of American families.

Of particular interest are the provisions in Title IV-A of the Social Security Act for Aid to Dependent Children (ADC). Essentially, Title IV-A was an expansion of earlier widows’ pension programs established by most states during the early 1900s. Advocates for the federal ADC program frequently emphasized that these cash subsidies were to go primarily to widows so they could stay home with their children and remain out of the paid labor market. As long as welfare was directed toward this population—the so-called deserving poor—there was little public dissatisfaction with ADC.⁴¹

The early years of ADC also emphasized the responsibility of families as the primary suppliers of financial aid. In fact, as late as 1937, two-thirds of the states had provisions requiring that, before relief could be given, relatives with “sufficient ability” were to be called upon to support poor persons and were subject to prosecution if they refused.

Although the architects of ADC intended the program primarily to aid widows, they did not restrict eligibility to this population. Instead, eligibility was defined in terms of children deprived of the financial support of the head of the household. As a result, ADC rolls quickly expanded to include mothers and children who were commonly thought to be less deserving because the parents were divorced or because the fathers had never married the mothers.

Moreover, while benefits under the ADC program increased over time, cash benefits for unemployed heads of households did not keep pace. Hence, a disparity arose between the amount of financial assistance that father-absent families could receive through ADC and the amount that families with an unemployed but present father could receive. The confluence of these two developments resulted in increasing public concern that fathers who could not find work might do better financially by deserting their families so that their wives and children could receive ADC benefits, with their higher levels of financial assistance, rather than rely on the lower benefit levels of unemployment compensation.

As a result of these concerns, Title IV-A was amended in 1950 to require ADC eligibility workers to obtain information from mothers about deserting fathers and to give this information to the local district attorney. The district attorney would then be charged with the responsibility to seek, through legal means, financial support from the father. This system came to be known as child support enforcement. This quickly led to unannounced inspections of the home, even “midnight raids,” to reassure officials that the mothers were, in fact, deserted and that there was no “man in the house.”⁴²

Despite these efforts, the 1960s saw increasing public concern over the growth in ADC rolls. In response, cash welfare, since renamed Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), was expanded to include situations in which the father was unemployed but had a work history. This would end, some believed, the incentive for fathers to desert their families in order to get them into the ADC program. To reflect this policy change, the AFDC program was expanded to include, at state option, the AFDC-UP (or unemployed parent) program. Nevertheless, AFDC rolls continued to rise, increasing from 4.3 million in 1965 to 10.8 million in 1974, even though the number of poor persons during this time period actually declined.⁴³

A variety of factors likely contributed to this growth in the AFDC caseload. In particular, a welfare rights movement emerged that sought both to erase the stigma associated with welfare receipt and to ensure that all potential recipients were treated fairly. By the early 1970s, welfare benefits were being touted as a right to which there should be few, if any, exclusions. This likely contributed to a higher proportion of eligible families drawing benefits, while converting welfare into a system that increasingly protected recipients from interference by welfare officials. Eventually, the operations of welfare departments became heavily regulated and focused almost exclusively on benefit determination and distribution.

At the same time, welfare rules continued to discourage the presence of a father in the home by encouraging, or at least enabling, mothers to give birth out of wedlock. Although welfare researchers disagree as to the magnitude of the effect, a substantial body of literature documents a connection between welfare benefit levels and the propensity to give birth out of wedlock. Research by M. Anne Hill and June O’Neill, for example, demonstrates that even after the variables of income, parental education, and socioeconomic status are held constant, a 50 percent increase in the monthly value of AFDC and food stamp benefits results in a 43 percent increase in the number of out-of-wedlock births.⁴⁴ Similarly, research by Mark A. Fossett and K. Jill Kiecolt found that an increase of one hundred dollars in the average monthly AFDC benefit per recipient child led to a drop of over 15 percent in marital births among African-American women aged twenty to twenty-four.⁴⁵ Indeed, C. R. Winegarden of the University of Toledo estimates that fully half of the increase in out-of-wedlock births among African Americans in recent decades can be attributed to the effects of welfare.⁴⁶

Receiving welfare is associated not only with higher rates of out-of-wedlock births but also with lower marriage rates after a woman bears a child out of wedlock. Using a nationally representative, longitudinal sample, researchers Jodi R. Sandfort and Martha S. Hill of the University of Michigan found that the higher the cash welfare benefits provided to unwed mothers, the lower the probability that an unwed mother would get married after the birth of her child. Furthermore, unwed mothers who subsequently got married were significantly more likely to attain self-sufficiency than those who did not. Specifically, unwed mothers who eventually married had significantly higher annual family incomes ($16,191 versus $6,344) and were less likely to be living in poverty (39 percent versus 68 percent), compared with those who did not marry. Thus, as cash welfare increases, the odds decrease that an unmarried mother will ever marry; this, in turn, decreases the prospect that an unwed mother will escape welfare.⁴⁷

By implicitly encouraging out-of-wedlock births and discouraging marriage, welfare has had the unintended effect of increasing fatherlessness among the nation’s poor. Indeed, roughly 90 percent of all families currently receiving cash welfare do not have fathers living in the home.⁴⁸ As documented earlier, this increase in fatherlessness has contributed to the decline in the well-being of children residing in low-income households.

After many years of tinkering with the AFDC program, Congress enacted the Personal Re-sponsibility and Work Opportunities Act in 1996, significantly altering both the underlying purpose of public aid and the way in which it is administered. At the act’s core was a philosophical shift that viewed cash assistance as a temporary means through which low-income families could achieve self-sufficiency. Under this legislation, recipients are permitted to draw federal benefits for no more than five years; moreover, they must be engaged in work activities within two years. Notably, the entitlement to benefits under federal law was eliminated, and AFDC was replaced with a block grant to states called Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF).

Welfare reform posed a historic opportunity for states to reassess their goals for public assistance and to decide how they wanted to use welfare funding to achieve those goals. Federal funds no longer needed to be used for cash benefits; states could spend the funds on services and subsidies to help families strengthen their commitments to work and to their children. Subsequently, the new federal law and discussions surrounding it have focused on work, and state programs are now built around promoting employment.

Although the public paid little attention to welfare reform’s emphasis on unwed parenting, reversing the tide of fatherlessness was, indeed, a central concern of federal reform. In fact, the opening passages of the bill that established TANF addressed the need to promote marriage and responsible fatherhood. Federal legislators clearly felt that reforms should help to promote stable two-parent families. While few provisions in that law specifically addressed family structure, the bill did include a twenty-million-dollar bonus program for states that reduced out-of-wedlock births without increasing the number of abortions.

Thus far, most states have launched comprehensive reforms designed to replace welfare with work, but they need to do much more than simply implement tougher work requirements. States should use the opportunity afforded them by federal welfare reform to construct entire new systems of aid, with a goal of not only increasing work effort but also promoting responsible fatherhood and marriage. Such changes are necessary not only because they will save the taxpayers money but also because the system we have created has been disastrous for children.

Since the 1950s, welfare’s focus on fathers has been limited primarily to paternity establishment and child support enforcement. Of course, any man who fathers a child ought to be held financially responsible for that child, but there are several reasons that child support enforcement alone is unlikely to substantially improve the well-being of children.

First, establishing paternity does not guarantee that children will receive support. In fact, only one in four single women with children living below the poverty line receives support from the non-custodial father.⁴⁹ Some unwed fathers, especially in low-income communities, may lack the financial resources to provide economically for their children. For these men, establishing paternity and receiving a child support order may not translate into economic support for their children.

Lack of earnings, however, is not the only explanation for the low rate of child support. Although studies show a substantial range of incomes, the average child on cash welfare has a father who earns approximately fifteen thousand dollars in annual income, which indicates some ability to pay child support.⁵⁰ Even though unwed fathers can often afford to pay, many do not. Although precise data are not available, reasons frequently cited for lack of payment include parental conflict, substance abuse, remarriage, and simple lack of interest in the welfare of the child or mother.

Second, even if paternity establishment were to lead to a child support award, the average level of child support (about $3,500 per year)⁵¹ is unlikely to move large numbers of children out of poverty. Some may move out of poverty at the margins, but without changes in family structure, moving from poverty to near-poverty is not associated with significant improvements in child outcomes.52

Third, an exclusive emphasis on child support enforcement may drive low-income fathers further away from their children. As word circulates within low-income communities that cooperating with paternity establishment but failing to comply with child support orders may result in imprisonment or revocation of one’s driver’s license, many fathers may simply choose to become less involved with their children. Therefore, the unintended consequence of such policies may be a decrease, rather than an increase, in the number of children growing up with involved fathers, proving once again that no good policy goes unpunished.

Finally, an over-emphasis on child support enforcement ignores the many non-economic contributions of fathers to the well-being of their children. Although providing economic support is certainly important, it is neither the only nor the most important role that fathers play. Indeed, emphasizing fatherhood in largely economic terms may have helped to contribute to its demise. After all, if fathers are little more than paychecks to their children, they can easily be replaced by welfare payments. If we want fathers to be more than just money machines to their children, we need a public policy that supports their work as nurturers, disciplinarians, mentors, moral instructors, and skill coaches, not just economic providers.

If paternity establishment and child support enforcement alone are not the answer, then what is? All available evidence suggests that the most effective pathway to involved, committed, and responsible fatherhood is marriage. Research has consistently found that unmarried fathers, whether through divorce or out-of-wedlock fathering, tend, over time, to become disconnected, both financially and psychologically, from their children. About 40 percent of children in father-absent homes have not seen their fathers in at least a year. Of the remaining 60 percent, only one in five sleeps even one night per month in his or her father’s home. Overall, only one in six sees his or her father an average of one or more times per week.⁵³ More than half of all children who do not live with their fathers have never even been in their fathers’ homes.⁵⁴

Unwed fathers are particularly unlikely to stay connected to their children over time. Whereas 57 percent of unwed fathers are visiting their children at least once per week during the first two years of their children’s lives, by the time their children reach seven-and-a-half years of age, that number drops to less than 25 percent.⁵⁵ Approximately 75 percent of men who are not living with their children at the time of their birth do not, ever, subsequently live with them.⁵⁶ Even when unwed fathers are cohabitating with the mothers at the time of their children’s birth, they are unlikely to stay involved in their children’s lives over the long term. Although a quarter of non-marital births occur to cohabitating couples, six out of ten cohabitating couples never go on to marry, and those who do are more likely to divorce than those couples who bear children within marriage.⁵⁷ Remarriage, or, in the case of an unwed father, marriage to someone other than the child’s mother, makes it especially unlikely that a non-custodial father will remain in contact with his child.⁵⁸

The inescapable conclusion is this: If we want to increase the proportion of children growing up with involved and committed fathers, we will have to increase the number of children living with their married fathers. Unmarried men—especially unwed fathers—are simply unlikely to stay in contact with their children over the long term.

Interestingly, not only does marriage dramatically increase the likelihood that a child will grow up with a father, but it also has a significant positive effect on the earnings of the father. According to research by Robert Lerman, young, unwed fathers who later married boosted their annual earnings from about $7,400 to $17,700. In contrast, those who remained unwed fathers saw much less income growth, from $5,500 to $10,500.⁵⁹ Given the connections between marriage, father involvement, and earnings, the most effective means for improving the income security of children is not child support but marriage.

Unfortunately, welfare frequently operates to punish marriage. According to calculations by Eugene Steuerle of the Urban Institute, when a man working full time at a minimum-wage job marries a mother on welfare with two children, the new family’s combined earnings plus benefits would be $3,862 less than if the couple did not marry and the woman stayed on welfare.⁶⁰ (This hardly provides an incentive for marriage.) In part, this financial penalty is due to welfare rules, but it is also due to marriage penalties inherent in the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), which can cause low-income parents who marry to lose as much as $5,000 annually. There also are instances where non-cash benefits, such as public housing subsidies, are withdrawn or substantially reduced, should a welfare recipient marry. The essential message that welfare sends to single mothers is this: If you want your welfare benefits to continue, do not marry an employed man.

In addition, federal rules have historically operated to make it more, not less, difficult for married, two-parent families to receive cash welfare, in comparison with single-parent families. First, the one-hundred-hour rule in the Unemployed Parent (UP) program dictated that a two-parent family—but not a single-parent family—lost eligibility for cash welfare if the principal wage earner was employed for one hundred hours a month or more, even if the family’s wages from employment were so low that the family would still be financially eligible for cash assistance. Second, UP program rules did not allow a two-parent family to receive aid until thirty days after the principal wage earner had become unemployed—a waiting period that was not required for single-parent households. Third, the UP program rules required that two-parent families, but not single-parent families, demonstrate a “connection to the work force,” typically defined as having had at least fifty dollars of earnings in at least six of thirteen quarters before applying for cash welfare.

Making matters worse, there is evidence that the availability of cash welfare can have a destabilizing effect on marriage. Mary Jo Bane and David Elwood, for example, calculated that for mothers under the age of twenty-four, a one-hundred-dollar increase in welfare benefits increases the number of divorced and separated mothers by as much as 50 percent.⁶¹ Indeed, Stacy Dickert-Conlin of the University of Kentucky estimates that cutting the marriage penalty in half for couples facing the largest reductions in income would reduce the likelihood of annual separations by 36 percent.⁶²

Of course, not all marriages between biological parents are ideal. Domestic violence and other irreconcilable differences will, at times, create single-parent families. The reality is that some men are lousy and even abusive husbands and fathers. It is not, therefore, our view that either the ideal divorce rate or the ideal out-of-wedlock birth ratio ought to be zero. But neither should the divorce rate be 50 percent nor the out-of-wedlock birth ratio 33 percent.

Therefore, while acknowledging the reality of domestic violence and accepting the inevitability of some divorces and even out-of-wedlock childbearing, states need to pursue a pro-marriage welfare reform strategy. As pointed out by Senator Hillary Clinton, every society, in order to function well, requires a critical mass of married, two-parent families to raise their own children well and to serve as models for those who are being reared in something other than a married, two-parent family.⁶³ The great tragedy today is that there are communities—especially low-income communities—that have already lost that critical mass. What we need now is a transformation of welfare—from a system that is biased against fathers and marriage to one that actively promotes responsible fatherhood and marriage. But how to do this remains a question.

The Next Phase of Welfare Reform: Recommendations for a Pro-Work, Pro-Marriage, and Pro-Father Welfare Policy

Out-of-wedlock childbearing has become the most common route to welfare.⁶⁴ Conversely, the most common route off of welfare is work. Kathleen Mullan Harris of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill found that two-thirds of all monthly exits from welfare were due to a new job or a pay increase in an existing job, compared with only 5 percent that were due to marriage. However, most of the women who exited welfare due to increased earnings returned to the welfare rolls relatively quickly.⁶⁵

The next most common route off of welfare is marriage. Indeed, those who exit welfare through marriage are less likely to return within a year than those who exit welfare because of work (33 percent versus 39 percent).⁶⁶ Therefore, marriage is at least as important a mechanism for escaping welfare as work is. Given that marriage also provides a father for the children, it will likely be more effective at improving the well-being of children than will a simple increase in workforce participation by single mothers.

Many argue that marriage is a matter of the heart and, as such, is impervious to legislation or financial incentives. But research has found that financial incentives can—and do—influence decisions about whether to get married. For example, research by Shelly Lundberg and Robert Plotnick found that as a state’s welfare benefits increased, the probability decreased that a white, unmarried pregnant adolescent would get married before the birth of her child. Specifically, these researchers found that in low-benefit states, 65 percent of young women got married before the birth of their children, compared with only 40 percent in high-benefit states.⁶⁷

Given that marriage is the most effective long-term escape from welfare dependence, states should make the following changes in welfare policy to provide strong and unambiguous support for marriage:

Eliminate systemic preferences that give advantages to single-parent families over two-parent, married families. As discussed earlier, the AFDC program had a variety of eligibility rules that were more restrictive for two-parent, as compared to single-parent, households, thereby creating disincentives for marriage. In determining eligibility of families for welfare assistance, states should eliminate the one-hundred-hour rule, the work history rules, and the thirty-day waiting period, and should allow substantially higher earnings and asset disregards for low-income, married couples than for single-parent households. The good news is that a significant number of states have already eliminated many of these anti-marriage rules, especially the one-hundred-hour rule. Every state that has not yet done so should aggressively move to change these onerous provisions.

Require that participants be married, and not just cohabitating, in order to qualify for two-parent family benefits. Cohabitation is one of the fastest growing types of family situations. Among adults aged twenty-five to thirty-four, the percentage of cohabiting couples in which children were present increased from 34 percent in 1980 to 47 percent in 1993. Overall, 3.3 million children are members of cohabiting families.⁶⁸

Research indicates that children living in cohabiting families have lower academic performance and more school problems than children living in married, two-parent families. In addition, children in cohabiting families are more likely to be poor than those in two-parent, married families, although they are less poor than children living in single-parent households.⁶⁹ For optimum benefit, therefore, children need to be living with two married parents, not merely with cohabiters. Given the poor outcomes associated with cohabitation, incentives should be unambiguously in favor of marriage, not cohabitation.

Take affirmative steps to enhance the marital and parenting skills of high-risk families. Marriage alone is not sufficient to improve the well-being of children. For marriages to have a positive impact on the development of children, parents must have the skills both to sustain a marriage and to be good parents. Unfortunately, many men and women lack these necessary skills. Some may have grown up in broken homes where they never experienced positive marital role models. Others may have had inadequate or abusive parents. To help couples sustain their marriages and rear their children well, states should encourage religious and civic organizations to offer parenting and marriage enrichment classes to mothers and fathers applying for public assistance.

Recommendation Two: Increase the marriage potential of low-income males by increasing their workforce attachment

When a family lacks a reliable wage earner, the family is likely to be poor. Poverty, in turn, is associated with poor developmental outcomes for children. A number of studies have found that children living within poor families are significantly more likely than non-poor children to develop emotional and behavioral problems,⁷⁰ underachieve at school,⁷¹ and live in poverty themselves in adulthood.⁷²

The absence of money, however, is not the most important reason that poverty is associated with poor outcomes for children. Living in poverty is highly correlated with living in father-absent households. According to research by Victor Fuchs and Diane Reklis, father-present households saw a steady rise in income from 1960 to 1990, while father-absent households saw a decline in income from 1980 to 1990.⁷³ Indeed, the median family income for a married couple with children is three times higher than it is for a single-mother family—sixty thousand dollars a year versus twenty thousand dollars a year.⁷⁴ In fact, 31 percent of divorced or separated mothers and 49 percent of never-married mothers—compared to only 6 percent of two-parent families—live in poverty.⁷⁵ Thus, much of the negative effect of low income on the well-being of children is actually the result of the absence of fathers.

However, it is not merely low income but, rather, welfare dependence that has the most deleterious effects on children. For example, in a study of young boys growing up in families with identical non-welfare incomes, Mary Corcoran and her colleagues at the University of Michigan found that increases in income obtained through welfare were correlated with lower earnings by the boys upon their reaching adulthood. Indeed, an increase of one thousand dollars per year in welfare received by the family was correlated with a decrease of as much as 10 percent in a boy’s future earnings.⁷⁶

Girls also are negatively affected by receipt of welfare. Research by economist John Pepper at the University of Wisconsin at Madison showed that young women whose parents received AFDC were themselves 25 percent more likely to be recipients of cash welfare in adulthood, compared with young women who grew up in poor families that did not receive cash welfare.⁷⁷ Furthermore, research by Margaret E. Ensminger found that, even after controlling for other early life conditions, women who grew up in families that received welfare, compared with those who did not, exhibited lower self-esteem and were significantly more likely, as mothers of young children, to report psychological distress.⁷⁸

Perhaps most alarming of all is the fact that welfare receipt, but not low-income alone, has been found to negatively affect a child’s cognitive capacities. In an examination of the IQs of young children who were long-term welfare dependents, Anne Hill and June O’Neill of Queens College concluded, “Although long-term welfare recipients are generally poor, persistent poverty does not seem to be the main reason for the poor performance of these children. Moreover, our analysis suggests that policies that would raise the income of children on welfare simply by increasing AFDC benefits are not likely to improve cognitive development.”⁷⁹

Increasing the workforce attachment of parents is likely to improve the well-being of children for several reasons. First, work, even at low wage levels, increases the amount of earned income available to families relative to welfare, while helping parents develop the skills, habits, and contacts to find better jobs and higher wages.

Second, when adult welfare recipients get jobs, it provides their children with models of work. Children then learn the behavioral skills necessary to get and keep jobs, such as regularly and consistently going to work in the morning and being courteous to one’s employer, fellow employees, and customers. Even more important than passing along skills to their children, working parents pass along an attitude about work and self-support that is critical to avoiding dependence and poverty—the attitude that adults should do their jobs well and stay employed, regardless of obstacles.

Third, as previously welfare-dependent parents begin to exercise the responsibility of supporting themselves, they are also more likely to exercise responsibility in other areas of their lives, including parenting. Indeed, non-working mothers have been found to be significantly less likely than employed mothers to be highly involved in the educational activities of their children, despite the fact that non-working mothers presumably have more time available to spend at their children’s school.⁸⁰Hence, increasing workforce attachment is likely to increase parents’ commitment to responsible and involved parenting as well.

Finally, the workplace is where large numbers of people meet their future spouses. It is reasonable, therefore, to expect that when single welfare mothers get jobs, their marriage prospects will increase. Hence, one benefit of welfare-to-work strategies is an increase in marriage rates for low-income women.

Increasing the workforce attachment of single mothers, however, also has a downside. There is evidence that women—especially women living in low-income communities—are reluctant to marry men whose economic prospects are lower than their own. Hence, an increase in the earnings of single mothers, especially in communities with high rates of male unemployment, may inadvertently decrease the probability that they will marry.⁸¹

Of course, few would argue that public policy should aim to decrease the economic prospects of single women. At the same time, however, one must take into account the reality that women do not like to “marry down.” Thus, in order to reinstitute marriage in low-income, welfare-dependent communities, states will need to take the following steps:

Expand participation in welfare-to-work employment programs to include low-income men. The emphasis on workforce attachment and development that is the focus of welfare reform for single mothers is needed for low-income males as well—not only as a means to increase their own life prospects but also as a means to increase their marriageability. In fact, research has shown that the availability of suitable potential husbands for single mothers on welfare had a greater effect on marriage rates and non-marital fertility than AFDC benefit levels did.⁸² Consequently, states should replace welfare for single mothers with a comprehensive system of job preparation, placement, and retention services, and should offer subsidies for all low-income adults who could benefit from them.

We do not recommend that welfare agencies finance job training that is not well connected to employment. Rather, states should use money formerly spent on benefits, education, and training to finance services that help individuals find jobs and remain employed—including, when feasible, employment subsidies and community service jobs for those who cannot find unsubsidized work. The elements of this strategy have already been developed in many states, but services now need to be sewn together into a comprehensive replacement for welfare that promotes successful workforce attachment for low-income women and men.

An example of this can be seen in the Wisconsin Works (W-2) program. W-2 ended unconditional benefit payments, instead offering employment opportunities to able-bodied, low-income parents. Job subsidies are available when needed, but assistance is oriented toward helping parents secure employment. Eligibility is based on income and resources, with no special benefits given to single parents. With such eligibility rules and a focus on finding and securing employment, W-2 provides needed opportunities to all low-income families while conveying a consistent and important message: All parents will be expected to support themselves and their families. Public assistance under W-2 is intended, then, to be family assistance. As such, it is oriented to include fathers as well as mothers and to help stabilize families.

In expanding welfare-to-work employment programs to low-income men, do not limit programs to unwed fathers. In expanding employment services to low-income males, states should not condition receipt of services upon being an unwed father. Doing so would, in a strange way, introduce incentives for men to father children out of wedlock, in much the same way that AFDC provided incentives for women to bear children out of wedlock. Hence, access to welfare-to-work services should extend not only to unwed fathers but also to married fathers and even non-fathers.

Expanding job placement and supportive employment services to the general population of low-income men may prove to be an expensive proposition (although states such as Oregon and Wisconsin have shown that it is possible to reform welfare, spend money on hard-to-place recipients, and still save money). Consequently, this recommendation should be undertaken only within the context of a welfare system that has first systematically and unambiguously instituted supports for marriage. Otherwise, we will succeed only in implementing a massive jobs program, not in increasing the prevalence of marriage or improving the well-being of children.

Recommendation Three: Increase the opportunity costs for men who father children out of wedlock

Two of the most frequent pathways to welfare are divorce and out-of-wedlock childbearing.⁸³ Although the immediate result is the same (i.e., the formation of a single-parent family), the two situations are quite different. First, divorced mothers are far more likely than unmarried mothers to receive formal child support payments from the fathers. Second, divorced mothers spend substantially less time on welfare than never-married mothers, primarily because they are more likely to remarry than women who have children out of wedlock.

The percentage of AFDC recipient children of never-married parents rose steadily over the past several decades (from 27.9 percent in 1969, to 44.3 percent in 1983, to 55.7 percent in 1994), while the percentage of AFDC recipient children of divorced parents steadily declined (from 43.3 percent in 1969, to 38.5 percent in 1979, to only 26.5 percent in 1994).⁸⁴

These statistics indicate that the most effective strategy for fighting long-term welfare dependence is to reduce the number of births to never-married women. While divorce certainly has terrible consequences for children, it is substantially less likely than an out-of-wedlock birth to lead to long-term welfare dependence. Hence, while there may be many good reasons to work toward reducing the divorce rate, reducing the number of children born out of wedlock is a far more important strategy for reducing long-term welfare dependence.

The evidence suggests that by increasing the opportunity costs for out-of-wedlock childbearing, public policy can reduce the number of children born out of wedlock. In 1992, for example, New Jersey implemented a family cap provision, denying additional cash benefits to women who conceived an additional child while on welfare. Statewide, births to mothers on AFDC subsequently declined by 4 percent between 1992 and 1994, compared with a 1.9 percent decline in births to all mothers statewide. This post-reform decline contrasts sharply with the 4.9 percent increase in births to mothers on AFDC over the year preceding discussion of the family cap, when birth rates to all mothers statewide were declining by 1.3 percent.

Interestingly, AFDC birth rates declined more significantly in areas of the state where AFDC recipients were most highly concentrated. Between 1992 and 1994, the ten New Jersey cities with the highest AFDC rates saw birth rates to mothers on AFDC drop by 8.5 percent. The largest city, Newark, experienced a decline of 10.4 percent in births to mothers on AFDC. The state’s most welfare-dependent city, Camden, saw a startling 21.2 percent decline in births to mothers on AFDC.⁸⁵ The lesson: Requiring parents to assume responsibility for having children can have a significant impact on illegitimacy.

To date, most sanctions for out-of-wedlock childbearing have focused on single mothers; however, to maximize the effectiveness of such efforts, states should take steps to increase the opportunity costs for men who father children out of wedlock:

Use public education campaigns and the “bully pulpit” to communicate the need to delay fathering until marriage. One of the reasons for the startling reduction in illegitimate births in Camden, New Jersey, is the uncompromising moral rhetoric against out-of-wedlock childbearing used by Wayne Bryant, a former leader of the New Jersey State Assembly and a prominent voice in the African-American community. His arguments, along with the considerable discussion and debate that the family cap proposal generated statewide, were likely important in conveying the message that mothers would be held responsible for supporting the children they had out of wedlock. There is no reason to believe that such an uncompromising moral stand against fathering children out of wedlock would not have at least some impact on the behavior of men as well.

Vigorously enforce the child support obligations of men who father children out of wedlock. Although we have criticized child support enforcement as the exclusive means for addressing the importance of fathers in the lives of their children, it can be an effective means for deterring out-of-wedlock fathering when utilized as part of a larger strategy.

Restrict the ability of teenage boys to participate in extra-curricular activities, especially sports, if they father children out of wedlock. Since the 1972 passage of Title IX, which prohibits discrimination in education programs and activities receiving federal financial assistance, schools have been reluctant to restrict students from participating in extracurricular activities on the basis of childbearing. This has removed an effective means of sanctioning out-of-wedlock childbearing, thereby also lessening the stigma traditionally attached to it. State education agencies should, therefore, encourage local education agencies and schools to restrict participation in extracurricular activities for boys who father children out of wedlock.

Pursue stricter enforcement of statutory rape laws. Historically, statutory rape laws have served to protect minors from sexual activity by setting an age—usually between thirteen and sixteen years old—under which there is no possibility of consensual sex. In the 1960s, however, state statutory rape laws were changed to a two-tiered system. A younger age was typically established, usually twelve or thirteen years old, under which consensual sex was legally impermissible. A second age range, usually thirteen through sixteen years old, was then established, allowing for consensual sex with persons of similar age but not with persons four or five years older than the minor. This change signaled that it was now acceptable for teenagers to have sex with each other, but not with older persons.

Given that two-thirds of all births to unwed teenage women are fathered by men twenty years of age or older,⁸⁶ states should return to the historical idea of statutory rape and place more effort on enforcing existing statutory rape laws. Although we do not necessarily support jail terms for offenders, we do strongly recommend that some consistent and sure sanction, such as a monetary fine or loss of a driver’s license, be applied to men who engage in sexual intercourse with teenage girls.

Recommendation Four: When births do occur out of wedlock, do more to encourage adoption as a loving alternative to abortion and single parenting

By most measures, children growing up in two-parent, adoptive families fare as well as those growing up in two-parent, biological families, and they fare significantly better than children growing up in single-parent or stepparent families.⁸⁷ Furthermore, opinion surveys consistently find that, in cases of out-of-wedlock pregnancies, the general public views adoption as a more attractive option than either abortion or single parenting. Yet only 3 percent of white women and 1 percent of African-American women who conceive children out of wedlock choose adoption.⁸⁸

Given that children in loving, adoptive, two-parent households fare better than those reared in single-parent homes, states should take the following steps to promote adoption as a loving option when single women are confronted with out-of-wedlock births:

Ensure that caseworkers present adoption as a loving alternative to abortion and single parenting. Today, adoption is too frequently seen as a failure of the “system”—a last resort that should be chosen only after all other options have been exhausted. If improving the well-being of children is the goal, however, states ought to operate under the principle that adoption is a loving option, not a sign of failure.

Aggressively publicize the advantages of adoption as well as private-sector initiatives that help place children in adoptive homes. The “One Church-One Child” campaign sponsored through African-American churches has effectively increased the number of minority children successfully placed for adoption. States should highlight effective adoption programs such as this, both to encourage more adoptions and to combat thepublic perception that there are not enough potential adoptive parents.

Use welfare block grant funds to increase the number of maternity homes available to unwed mothers who choose adoption. Several decades ago, maternity homes for unwed, pregnant girls were relatively common. With the advent of widespread access to legal abortion, however, public support for maternity homes has dwindled. One permissible use of the new federal welfare block grant is to support adoption. Hence, states should consider using a portion of their block grant funds to breathe life back into the network of maternity homes.

Provide a clear and unambiguous preference for married couples in the adoption process. If we wish to strengthen marriage, it will be necessary to provide preferences for marriage in every aspect of public policy, including adoption. Consequently, whenever more than one potential adoptive home is available, preference should be given to married couples.

Take affirmative steps to speed the adoption of abandoned infants and chronically abused children. It is a national disgrace that it takes so long to terminate the parental rights of repeat child abusers and those who abandon their infants. Rather than emphasize family preservation services in these circumstances, states should hold child welfare agencies accountable for adhering to strict timelines for decision making with regard to the termination of parental rights. In addition, states should privatize adoption placements when public child welfare agencies fail to proceed swiftly enough.

Recommendation Five: Transform the child support enforcement program into a father involvement program

In cases where adoption is rejected as an option, the goal ought to be to ensure that the child has the benefit of growing up with the love of both the mother and the father. To date, most states have made paternity establishment and enforcement of child support the focus of their efforts toward unwed fathers; however, if the goal is for every child to have an engaged, responsible, committed father, states should take the following steps to encourage more involved fathering:

Alter priorities within the child support enforcement program to promote not only financial responsibility but also father involvement. One of the most promising programs for getting unwed fathers to establish paternity and support their children economically is run by the National Center for Responsible Fathering and Child Development in Cleveland, Ohio. The strength of this program is its focus on enhancing father-child ties, which takes precedence over paternity establishments and child support. Experience from this program suggests that as fathers become increasingly attached to their children, their desire to claim the children as their own and to care for them also increases.

Require custodial mothers to cooperate with visitation enforcement as a condition of welfare receipt. For too long, the child support enforcement system has treated fathers merely as financial supporters for their children; however, this approach ignores all of the contributions that fathers make to the well-being of their children. Although this perspective is changing, there continues to be a sense that the child is “owned” by the mother and that the involvement of the father is largely dependent on her goodwill. Making receipt of welfare conditioned on cooperation with visitation orders can help reinforce the idea that children belong to both parents.

Pass all child support payments directly to the custodial parent, with none assigned to the state. Under AFDC rules, only the first fifty dollars of a monthly child support payment went directly to the mother; the rest went to the state to reimburse it for the costs of AFDC. When such a small amount of child support goes directly to the mother, there is an incentive for her to keep the identity of the father secret if he is providing more than fifty dollars a month in financial support under the table. Under TANF, states now have the authority to change these rules and allow all or most of the child support payments to be paid directly to the custodial parents.

Experience in Wisconsin suggests that welfare recipients who are made aware of the child support that is available to them and who understand that it will not be taken away if they work are more apt to find their way off of welfare. In particular, when all child support was passed through in a demonstration project in Fond du Lac County, recipients began to see that much of the support they were receiving did not depend on their being on welfare, and that by increasing their earnings they could leave welfare altogether. Program administrators believe this led many recipients to increase their work effort so they could escape welfare dependence.⁸⁹

As an alternative to child support enforcement, allow, or even require, unwed fathers to satisfy the welfare reform work requirement while mothers care for the children. Fathers who owe child support but are unable to pay could be offered the opportunity to work in community service positions or be assisted in finding jobs, as an alternative to jail. A number of states have already implemented this plan, which not only increases the earnings of the fathers so that they can help support their children financially but also fosters a sense of interdependence between the mother and the father.

Today, the greatest single threat to the long-term well-being of our children and our communities is the increasing number of children being raised without a responsible, loving father. Our nation is known for its optimism and fondness for reforms that promise to make society safer, stronger, and richer. Yet all the social reforms we have attempted in the past, or may attempt in the future, will likely pale in comparison to the good that would come if we could turn back the tide of fatherlessness.

This tide will not be turned easily—and certainly not by changes in public policy alone—but welfare policy can have a significant effect on parents’ views of marriage and family. Welfare policy in recent decades has systematically subsidized single parenthood, serving to discourage many fathers from meeting their responsibilities. Fortunately, the federal welfare law of 1996 has given states the opportunity to make revolutionary changes in their systems of public aid.

As states proceed with their reforms, they should keep in mind both the importance of fathers to the well-being of their children and the fact that marriage is the most effective route to increasing the number of children growing up with an involved, loving father. In the past, states have concluded that promoting responsible fatherhood is mostly about child support enforcement. But, as this essay has shown, child support enforcement alone is insufficient to ensure that every child grows up with a responsible father.

Success in welfare reform will depend on the clarity of our collective vision as to the ultimate purpose of the next phase of welfare reform. If we focus exclusively on measures that move single mothers into the paid labor force, we will have missed the most important role of any legitimate welfare system—to enhance the well-being of children. Simply put, children need their fathers, and marriage helps men to be good fathers. Effective welfare reform means encouraging both more work and more marriages.