Abstract
The United States has a number of social policies that were designed explicitly to provide options and supports for individuals related to their family formation decisions, such as the Title X National Family Planning Program and the Healthy Marriage Initiative. At the same time, because social policies can have considerable implications for the populations they target, we have long known that government policy can impact family structure and individuals’ fertility decisions even when such an impact was not the policy’s stated objective. This article reviews both theoretical and empirical literature asking to what extent United States’ social policy affects the complexity of families. Specifically, we review the literature on divorce and custody laws, means-tested transfer programs, and policies designed to provide information and services related to family formation. We report findings, and discuss common themes across the literature and identify important gaps in knowledge.
Keywords
The family is a dynamic institution. What once was the normative path to the traditional nuclear American family—complete school, start a job, get married, and have children—is more multifaceted now. Individuals across the income distribution enter and exit marriage; have children both within and outside of marriage, often with multiple partners; and frequently cohabit as a predecessor to and often a replacement for traditional marriage. In addition to the changes one observes in the formation of families across time, even within a birth cohort there is considerable variation in the frequency of different family types by socioeconomic status (McLanahan 2004; Lundberg and Pollak 2007).
The United States has a number of social policies that were designed explicitly to provide options and supports for individuals related to their family formation decisions, such as the Title X National Family Planning Program and the Healthy Marriage Initiative. At the same time, because social policies can have considerable implications for the people they target, we have long known that government policy can impact the family structure and fertility decisions that individuals make even when that was not the stated objective of the policy. The goal of this article is to review the theoretical and empirical literatures that reveal the extent to which social policy affects the complexity of families, that is, families with children that have not followed the traditional nuclear family model. 1
Recently, demographers interested in multiple-partner fertility have begun to capitalize on novel datasets to provide, for the first time, descriptions of the array of family types one finds in the United States (see for example, Cancian, Meyer, and Cook 2011; Carlson and Furstenberg 2006; Guzzo and Furstenberg 2007). To date, the policy literature, which attempts to identify the causal impact of social policy, has not evolved to address the full continuum of complex families. Instead, a large portion of the relevant empirical social policy literature concentrates on marriage and nonmarital fertility as outcomes. Therefore, we concentrate our attention in this review primarily on policy changes that affect marriage patterns and nonmarital births. However, we do address cohabitation as an outcome, and when appropriate, we discuss alternative living arrangements that result from social policy changes. In instances where empirical research is absent and when possible, we use the theoretical literature to generate hypotheses on the likely effects of social policy on family complexity.
We begin with the theoretical literature on family structure, focusing on marriage, cohabitation, and divorce. We also describe the theoretical underpinnings for childbearing and how fertility choices may be affected by policy changes. Next, we review the policy literature, discussing the effects of (1) legal changes that affect marital dissolution and child custody, (2) means-tested transfer programs, and (3) policies designed to provide information and services related to family formation. We discuss common themes as well as important gaps in the literature in the concluding section.
Theory: Family Structure and Fertility
Becker’s influential body of work on the economics of the family is our theoretical starting point. Becker (1974) suggests that marriages occur when potential partners compare their expected utility (happiness) in a married state to their expected utility should each remain single. In Becker’s model, couples only have children once married, and children are, in fact, the principal reason for marriage (Becker 1991). However, there are many other advantages to marriage, including gains to specialization, economies of scale, risk pooling, and shared leisure (Stevenson and Wolfers 2007). For couples who believe they will be happier married rather than remaining single, marriage takes place.
The formation of cohabiting unions is consistent with this model. Through cohabitation, each partner gains additional information about her or his potential marriage partner before making a commitment, thereby allowing each partner to make a more informed marital decision (England and Farkas 1986; Nock 1995; Manning and Cohen 2012; Oppenheimer 1988). At the same time, cohabiting couples experience many, but not all, of the benefits of marriage, such as economies of scale and the pooling of resources (Oppenheimer 1988).
Following Becker’s model, couples divorce when the expected utility from divorce exceeds the expected utility from remaining married (Becker, Landes, and Michael 1977). This argument applies to the end of a cohabiting relationship as well, although the cost to dissolving a cohabiting relationship is lower. The decision to dissolve a relationship includes the welfare of children, inasmuch as parents factor the well-being of their children into their own decisions. Many parents may remain married, for example, because they believe it in the best interest of the children, when they would have divorced in a counterfactual state in which they had no children.
Becker’s (1960, 1991) theoretical contributions also serve as the foundation for policy-oriented work on fertility. Given a set of preferences, the number of children a parent has is a function of the cost of children and parental income. The cost of a child is simply the sum of the individual inputs into the production of child services, including direct costs, such as clothing and food, as well as indirect costs, including the opportunity costs associated with a parent remaining home and providing childcare. Following the law of demand, as the cost of a child increases, the number of children demanded will fall. 2 Much of the empirical research in this field investigates how changes in the cost of a child, due to policy implementation or variation in currently existing policy, affect the number of children women will have. Policies that reduce the cost of having a child, all else equal, will increase the likelihood of childbearing. For many couples today, marriage and childbearing have been decoupled, particularly within the low-income population (Edin 2001). However, it is certainly the case that many couples continue to consider marriage and childbearing decisions jointly. Thus, policies that affect one decision, for example, the decision to have a child, naturally affect other family structure decisions.
As both the market and the state have begun to provide some of the gains to marriage, such as childcare provision and pensions, the economic importance of the family has diminished, altering social norms (Lundberg and Pollak 2007). Advances in birth control and abortion legalization have decreased the likelihood of an unplanned pregnancy, thereby giving women greater control over the timing of childbearing and marriage (Stevenson and Wolfers 2007). Increased opportunities in the labor force for women and innovations in home production have also altered the decision calculus for men and women today (Lundberg and Pollak 2007; Stevenson and Wolfers 2007). Incorporating these changes, recent work in the area suggests that single-parenthood will be most common in contexts where women are more numerous than men; when women have economic resources, either through the labor market or through government programs that increase their self-sufficiency; and when the gains to marriage are minimal because men have few economic resources (Ellwood and Jencks 2004; Lundberg and Pollak 2007; Willis 1999; Wilson 1987). Most of these ideas imply that single motherhood, through marital dissolution and nonmarital childbearing, including multiple-partner fertility, should be more common among the low-income population (Lundberg and Pollak 2007; Willis 1999).
Marital Dissolution and Family Complexity
Historically, marriage was considered a lifelong commitment and divorce was only granted in exceptional situations, such as adultery, cruelty, or desertion (Weitzman 1985). Divorce required proof of inappropriate marital behavior in a legal proceeding, and both parties had to agree that divorce was the appropriate course. The innocent party frequently received a considerable proportion of the marital assets, creating hostility and an incentive for spouses to fight vigorously in court. Couples who mutually consented to divorce often participated in charades to convince the court fault existed. This legal environment coupled with the increasing social acceptance of divorce (Thornton and Young-DeMarco 2001) within the United States led to a sea change in divorce law. In 1970, California became the first state to pass no-fault divorce legislation: couples were allowed to dissolve marriages on the basis of irreconcilable differences rather than assigning fault to one member of the couple, but mutual consent was still required to obtain a divorce (Weitzman 1985). Within 25 years, all states shifted to no-fault divorce laws, and during that interval, most states also adopted unilateral divorce laws: laws that do not require mutual consent for divorce. 3
No-fault divorce and unilateral divorce laws could increase family complexity by reducing the cost of divorce. Theoretically, individuals have approached the research on these divorce laws in one of two ways. Stevenson and Wolfers (2006) explain that the first perspective suggests that those who were unable to prove fault in their divorce proceedings or who could not convince their partner to grant a divorce, now had an option to file for divorce, which could have increased divorce rates. Alternatively, a series of economists, beginning with Peters (1986), claimed that all marriages have efficient bargaining and only dissolve if both partners believe they would be better off single rather than married. After the laws were enacted, the bargaining power shifted from the partner who wished to remain married to the partner who wanted to divorce (Peters 1986, 1992; Stevenson and Wolfers 2006). This argument suggests that rather than observing a change in divorce rates, one should instead observe a reallocation of marital resources within a given relationship.
The empirical research on the effect of these divorce law changes is mixed. Peters’s (1986, 1992) initial work in this area showed no change in divorce rates, while Allen (1992) and Friedberg (1998) made subtle changes in the analytic specification and found that divorce rates rose in response to unilateral divorce laws. The most recent work in the area by Wolfers (2006) shows an initial increase in divorce rates as unilateral laws were passed due to the pent-up demand for divorce but that within two years, divorce rates fell back to their pre–unilateral divorce law levels.
When a marriage with children dissolves, the court must make a legal ruling regarding the custody of the children. For much of the twentieth century, courts awarded mothers sole custody, while granting fathers “visitation” (Kelly 2006). Over time, courts have become disposed to award joint custody, based on the principle that children are best served by two, active and engaged parents. 4
The theoretical effects of joint custody laws, which voided the assumption of mother sole custody, on divorce are ambiguous. If increased parental responsibility and child contact increases a parent’s utility, then the shift toward joint custody should improve fathers’ well-being following a divorce while potentially making mothers worse off postdivorce. However, as women take on more active roles in the labor market, the prospect of sharing custody might also increase mothers’ postdivorce utility. Conversely, it is plausible that lower divorce costs could actually decrease divorce among some couples. When the cost of divorce is low (or lowered), neither party is locked into the marriage. This makes the marginal impact of marriage-specific investments higher, which provides each partner an incentive to invest more in their marriage. If these behaviors increase martial quality, one should expect a decline in divorce (Brinig and Buckley 1998a; Rasul 2006). Additionally, one might observe an increase in marital fertility as children are a type of marriage-specific investment (Halla 2013). The empirical literature on this topic is thin, and the few studies that do investigate this topic find conflicting results. Brinig and Buckley (1998a) show that joint custody laws significantly decreased divorce rates, while Halla (2013) finds weak evidence that joint custody laws increased divorce rates. Halla (2013) also argues that joint custody laws increase marital fertility while decreasing nonmarital fertility, and these effects are limited to women over the age of 25, the population most likely to be affected by custody laws. During the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s, children’s living arrangements remained largely unaltered following the adoption of joint custody laws (Cancian and Meyer 1998; Kelly 2006). More recent evidence, however, suggests that mother sole custody has become much less common over time, while shared custody has become increasingly prevalent since the mid-1990s (Cancian et al., forthcoming).
Means-Tested Social Programs and Family Complexity
The literature on means-tested social welfare policy is probably the most developed literature that relates to family complexity. Below, we summarize the research on the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program, formerly called Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC); Medicaid; the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), originally named the Food Stamp Program (FSP); the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC); and the Child Support Enforcement (CSE) program. All of these programs, with the exception of the CSE program, exclusively apply to the low-income population, and as a result, a couple of theoretical points are relevant for most of these programs. First, because these programs are means-tested at either the family or household level, a family (household) only qualifies if its income and assets are below a specified threshold, which varies over time and across programs. On average, two people will earn more than a single person; therefore, many of these programs provide a disincentive to marry as a second earner’s income will be figured into the family income, decreasing their likelihood of benefit receipt (Ellwood 1988; Moffitt 1992). 5 Second, many of these programs, including TANF, are available only for families with children. Thus, a single person can qualify for a large bundle of benefits if she or he has a child and that child lives with her or him. All else equal, this package of benefits may create an incentive for childbearing, and coupled with the marital disincentive, this is especially true for nonmarital births.
Aid to Families with Dependent Children / Temporary Assistance for Needy Families
The legislation that replaced the AFDC program with TANF in 1996 included a number of reforms to encourage welfare recipients to become self-sufficient (including time limits, work force requirements, and sanctions for noncompliance) and to alter the family structure of the low-income population. Moffitt (1999) describes TANF as “contractionary” because TANF benefits were less generous than those available in the AFDC program and were also tied to a recipient’s work status.
AFDC discouraged marriage on several margins by improving a mother’s economic position outside of marriage and by making marriage financially unattractive, since most married couples did not qualify for the AFDC-Unemployed Parent (AFDC-UP) program. 6 TANF requires recipients to work, which may have implications for marriage. Increasing hours worked could produce a marriage disincentive by reducing women’s leisure time or by promoting their independence from a second earner. Alternatively, TANF may encourage marriage if states alter program participation rules to allow two-parent families to retain more income before benefits phase out. Thus, the family structure effects of TANF are ambiguous.
One would also expect TANF’s additional eligibility requirements and time limits to reduce fertility relative to AFDC. In states with family caps 7 —a policy that limits welfare benefits as a mother has more children—one might expect the reduction in fertility to be even more pronounced thereby reducing family complexity. Also, due to the federal Minor Parent Provisions (MPPs), requirements that mothers younger than 18 remain in high school and live with an adult guardian, one might expect to see reductions in the teen birthrate with TANF relative to AFDC.
The empirical literature, which comprises experiments and observational studies that use state welfare waivers or variation in TANF implementation as an identification strategy, suggests that welfare reform increased marriage rates primarily by reducing the likelihood of divorce, which should have reduced the prevalence of complex families (Bitler et al. 2004; Gennetian and Knox 2004; Hu 2003; Klerman 2005; Knox, Miller, and Gennetian 2000). The actual mechanisms that explain this effect are difficult to unearth, but evidence from experimental studies suggests increased income is at least partly responsible. Klerman (2005) reports little consistent evidence that mandatory work requirements affect family formation but more generous earnings disregards are positively related to marriage. It is difficult to know how marriage rates will respond to welfare reform in the long term. Bitler et al. (2004) find weak evidence of fewer new marriages, and two studies (Knox, Miller, and Gennetian 2000 and Gennetian and Knox 2004) conclude that marital stability improved primarily among long-term welfare recipients due to increased income. 8
Several studies attempt to determine the net effect of TANF on fertility, and the research is largely inconclusive (Klerman 2005; Joyce, Kaestner, and Korenman 2003; Moffitt 2003; Blank 2002; Kaushal and Kaestner 2001). Scholars have also explored the effects of family caps on fertility, and the results are mixed (Blank 2002; Moffitt 2003), with Horvath-Rose and Peters (2001) and Sabia (2008) concluding family caps reduce nonmarital birthrates particularly for black women. Other studies find that family caps do not alter fertility (Dyer and Farlie 2004; Joyce et al. 2004; Kearney 2004; Romero and Agénor 2009). The MPPs were also expressly adopted to reduce teenage childbearing, and this policy does seem to be efficacious in reducing teenage childbearing (Kaestner, Korenman, and O’Neil 2003; Lopoo and DeLeire 2006; Offner 2005).
Welfare reform could have affected the residential location of children. Here again, the research literature is small and inconsistent. Bitler, Gelbach, and Hoynes (2006) define “major welfare reform” as a state having implemented a welfare waiver or TANF and compare changes in children’s living arrangements in states with a major welfare reform to changes in children’s living arrangements in states that did not have a major welfare reform. They find that children are less likely to live with an unmarried parent, more likely to live with neither parent, and just as likely to live with married parents in the reform states, which will increase family complexity. Dunifon, Hynes, and Peters (2009) also assess welfare’s effect on children’s living arrangements, but rather than considering welfare reform as a set of major welfare changes, they disaggregate welfare policies into different components, including time limits, sanctions, income disregards, and the eligibility of married parents. Very few robust relationships emerge, but they do find that among white and African American children, time limits make single-parent households more likely arrangements than those in which parents live with another, nonspouse adult.
Medicaid
The Medicaid program, created in 1965, was originally designed to provide health insurance for low-income, single-parent families as well as the blind, disabled, and elderly. 9 Today, pregnant women and children are covered by the program, and more than one-third of all births in the United States are financed through the Medicaid program (Center on Budget and Policy Priorities 2008). Medicaid might affect nonmarital fertility through two primary channels: a health insurance effect and a family planning effect. The RAND Health Insurance Experiment showed that providing free medical coverage for pregnant women, both prenatal and postnatal care as well as well-child visits, reduces the cost of childbearing and can have large fertility effects, particularly influencing when women give birth during their lifetimes (Leibowtiz 1990). Low-income, pregnant women who are eligible for Medicaid may also become less inclined to obtain an abortion because most of the birth costs will be covered by Medicaid (Bitler and Zavodny 2010). In addition, Medicaid enrollment makes one eligible for family planning services that provide free and confidential access to a large number of birth control options, pregnancy tests, sterilization, as well as breast and cervical cancer screenings. Theoretically, access to these services and supplies should reduce the likelihood of nonmarital childbearing.
With respect to the family planning services effect, a number of studies have shown that eligibility for family planning services both increases contraceptive use and reduces the likelihood of birth (Kearney and Levine 2009; Lindrooth and McCullough 2007). Studies of Medicaid’s net effect show no statistically significant relationships between Medicaid and the overall fertility of women and no fertility effect for most subgroups (Bitler and Zavodny 2010; DeLeire, Lopoo, and Simon 2011; Joyce, Kaestner, and Kwan 1998). There is some evidence, however, that the health insurance effect may dominate the family planning effect for low-income women (Lopoo and Raissian 2012).
Food Stamp Program / Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program
SNAP provides vouchers to low-income families to purchase food items for a nutritionally adequate diet. Parenthood is not a prerequisite for participation, but benefits increase with the number of children. If SNAP improves fetal health, one might find increases in fertility among the low-income population but worse health among newborns (Almond, Hoynes, and Schanzenbach 2011). Using data on the rollout of the FSP, where counties within the same state initiated their FSP at different times, Almond, Hoynes, and Schanzenbach (2011) found no effect of FSP on fertility. Similarly, Curtis and Waldfogel (2009) found no relationship between SNAP and high-order births among unmarried mothers.
Earned Income Tax Credit
A variety of marital incentives are embedded within the U.S. Tax Code for cohabiting couples with children. For two low-earning partners who cohabit, marriage often increases their tax liability, a phenomenon many refer to as the marriage penalty. For example, two individuals with children who cohabit rather than marry can deduct more from their adjusted gross income, which lowers their tax liability (Acs and Maag 2005). Alternatively, cohabiting couples with large disparities in income may benefit from the EITC, a refundable tax credit for low- to moderate-income families established by the 1975 Tax Reduction Act. If a nonparent earns substantially more than a parent with a child and they marry, they may qualify for the EITC, which will increase their income (Dickert-Conlin and Houser 2002; Acs and Maag 2005). In addition, while married couples have the same maximum credit as single filers, they have much higher adjusted gross income thresholds before the tax credit begins to phase out, which could create incentives for marriage. Of course, for some women, marriage may push them over eligibility thresholds (Dickert-Conlin and Houser 2002). To date, the limited number of studies on the EITC and its impact on marriage show little to no economic impact of the program (Ellwood 2000; Dickert-Conlin and Houser 2002; Herbst 2011a).
Initially, the EITC was available only for families with children, but the program has expanded over time and now tax filers without children can qualify. There is a considerable difference in the magnitude of the credit between those with and without children. For example, in tax year 2012, the maximum credit for a filer without children was $475, while filers with one child received a maximum credit of $3,169. Theoretically, this income effect should increase fertility regardless of the marital status of the filer, all else equal. At the same time, the credit is available only for those who work, which could reduce an individual’s incentive to have children, creating ambiguity in the predicted effect. The evidence to date suggests that the EITC has few fertility effects (Baughman and Dickert-Conlin 2009; Herbst 2011b).
Child Support Enforcement
The CSE program was designed to ensure that nonresidential parents, usually fathers, provided financial resources to improve their children’s well-being. While the program is now universally available to any custodial parent, TANF recipients must participate in CSE and the state may retain their child support payments as welfare reimbursement. Due to the program’s original intent, the unique CSE rules for families receiving public assistance, and the potential importance of this money for families living below or near the poverty line, much of the literature and our review focuses on the effect of CSE on low-income families.
Because the nonresidential parent (typically the father) is required to make payments, the program unequivocally increases the cost of fatherhood, which should reduce nonmarital childbearing (Garfinkel et al. 2003; Pirog and Ziol-Guest 2006; Plotnick et al. 2004). One might also expect CSE to encourage fathers to coreside with their children in the event of a birth, all else equal. If fathers are well informed about the payment structure, this may further encourage them to coreside with their children to ensure resources are not diverted away from their children.
From the maternal perspective, however, CSE may increase the monetary resources available to women who do not coreside with their child’s father. CSE might, therefore, increase nonmarital births and the number of children living with only one biological parent as these women are more capable of providing for their children (Cancian, Meyer, and Cook 2011; Curtis and Waldfogel 2009). While the economic theory for mothers is pretty straightforward, the actual program could reduce the resources available in practice. Without CSE, we know that fathers pay for many things informally, such as diapers and gifts for the child (Garasky et al. 2009; Meyer and Cancian 2001). With a formal obligation, fathers have fewer resources to make these informal contributions. In many instances, especially among the TANF population where the government retains CSE payments, a mother and her child will be worse off with a CSE obligation.
The CSE literature lacks consensus regarding the effect of CSE on family structure. Nixon (1997) finds that these policies reduce the likelihood of divorce, but Heim (2003) suggests that CSE had no effect on divorce rates. Carlson et al. (2004) examine the effects of welfare and child support on union formation and report that greater child support enforcement discourages marriage; however, this result is not robust and is only weakly significant. Acs and Nelson’s (2004) research is “generally consistent with the idea that fathers are more likely to live with their children in states that are good at collecting child support” (p. 284). The findings from empirical research regularly suggest that nonmarital fertility declines as CSE increases and that when men do have children, they tend to partner with mothers who are more likely to invest in their children (Aizer and McLanahan 2006; Garfinkel et al. 2003; Plotnick et al. 2004). This result is consistent with other evidence that males are less likely to have multiple-partner fertility given the financial consequences of a birth (Cancian, Meyer, and Cook 2011). At the same time, CSE is positively associated with multiple-partner fertility for mothers (Curtis and Waldfogel 2009)
Programs That Provide Information and Services Related to Family Formation and Family Complexity
Healthy marriage initiative and responsible fatherhood grants
The 2005 Deficit Reduction Act (DRA) allocated $150 million annually for five years to fund healthy marriage promotion activities and responsible fatherhood grants to organizations throughout the United States. In 2006, the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) Office of Family Assistance selected 226 grantees to implement the DRA healthy marriage and responsible fatherhood activities at the local level and funded three multiyear, multisite evaluations (Bir et al. 2012). Two of the programs, Building Strong Families (BSF) and Supporting Healthy Marriage (SHM), targeted low-income couples and used curricula designed to improve relationship quality and to promote and sustain healthy marriages. ACF also funded community-wide organizations to increase awareness of the benefits of marriage, and ACF provided a grant to evaluate the funded Community Healthy Marriage Initiative (CHMI). Researchers from Mathematica Policy Research asked if BSF increased the likelihood that unwed, biological parents would marry, improved father involvement and coparenting, increased economic well-being, and reduced intimate partner violence. Results from the BSF evaluation largely show no impact at 15 months and at 36 months (Wood, McConnell, et al. 2012; Wood, Moore, et al. 2012). The SHM program had small positive impacts on a number of relationship measures, such as marital happiness, support, and positive communication, but it did not have a statistically significant impact on the likelihood of remaining married one year after program completion (Hsueh et al. 2012). In general, the CHMI evaluation found there were no impacts of these community-based interventions in terms of romantic relationships or marriage; nor was there a change in relationship quality, infidelity, or violence levels for any of the sites (Bir et al. 2012).
Title X
The Title X Family Planning Program started in 1970 as part of the Public Health Service Act. In 2011, Title X provided family planning and related preventive health care services to more than 5 million low-income or uninsured men and women at more than 4,400 community-based health care clinics throughout the United States. 10 Researchers from the Guttmacher Institute have simulated the impact of Title X and estimate that between 1980 and 1999, 20 million pregnancies have been averted due to Title X (Gold 2001). 11 Bailey (2012) used data from the 1964 Economic Opportunity Act through the early years of Title X and estimates that these family planning programs reduced the fertility of the low-income population dramatically—between 19 and 30 percent.
Abstinence-only education
With the passage of Title V, Section 510 of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (PRWORA), federal funding expanded to emphasize abstinence curricula, mentoring, counseling, and adult monitoring to promote abstinence from sexual activity outside of marriage for youths (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families, n.d.). Abstinence education programs must teach that abstinence from sexual activity is the only way one can avoid pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases. Furthermore, these programs may not teach about the efficacy or use of contraceptives except to provide failure rates (Santelli et al. 2006). The most comprehensive study, one that uses a randomized experimental design, that investigated the impact of abstinence education on fertility found no statistically significant impacts for abstinence, contraceptive use during first intercourse, contraceptive use in the last 12 months, pregnancy, or childbearing (Trenholm et al. 2008).
Discussion and Conclusion
We have reviewed a large body of research investigating the effects of social policy on family complexity in the United States, concentrating on legislative changes in divorce and child custody law, means-tested social welfare programs, and programs that provide both information and services related to family formation. We report some evidence that the TANF program may discourage divorce, that the CSE program likely reduced nonmarital fertility, and that publicly provided family planning services, both through Medicaid and Title X, reduce fertility. However, it may be fair to say that the most noteworthy finding is that the majority of the studies show no relationship between social policies and family complexity in the United States. When a relationship is reported, the findings are often weak at best.
With such a diverse body of literature that draws data from many sources, covers different time periods, and uses a variety of estimation techniques, it is not surprising that we often find inconsistent results across the studies. If there were a large body of research on each social policy, it would be easier to understand where the differences lie. Because these research areas are so sparse—often the entire body of work on a topic is one or two articles—it is usually difficult to pinpoint what accounts for the discrepancies. Theory can be helpful in this regard, but the theory is ambiguous in many of these policy areas as well. Unquestionably, more detailed research that accounts for the differences among studies would help to provide some nuance in the findings.
While the policy effects of many branches of literature are not well understood because each topical area needs more attention, there are many related subjects that to date are completely absent from this literature, and yet are crucial to our understanding of how social policy might affect family complexity. For example, much of this literature assumes that the population studied has more knowledge about the program than is reasonable to expect (Nam, Cancian, and Meyer 2009). For individuals to respond to a policy, they must not only be aware of the policies and programs in place but also understand subtle details of the program. Where are the notches in the EITC benefit schedule? Which health care services does the Medicaid program cover? How likely is a young mother to get caught if she does not abide by the MPPs in the TANF program? Empirical research on welfare and Child Support Enforcement recipients suggests that most program participants have very limited knowledge of these programs (Nam, Cancian, and Meyer 2009). Yet most of the policy research ignores this issue and moves straight to looking for an effect (Nam, Cancian, and Meyer 2009). Program participants’ lack of awareness regarding these programs could explain the small and insignificant fertility effects for the EITC and Medicaid programs or even the mixed results observed for family caps. A null result that surfaces because the policy does not influence family complexity is very different from an insignificant result due to participants’ lack of program knowledge. We know, for instance, that both potential and actual program recipients become more aware of program rules over time (Meyer, Cancian, and Nam 2007). If there are real policy effects that are unobserved in periods before people understand or interact with the program, results from data prior to more universal knowledge are inappropriate for policy prescriptions.
Microeconomic theory also tells us that the larger the impact the policy change has on an individual’s budget constraint, the greater response one should expect from that change. In the very limited set of studies of FSP/SNAP, researchers do not find an effect on family formation. One potential explanation is that the very small benefit levels of SNAP minimally affect an individual’s budget, making effects indiscernible to the crude tools of policy analysis. However, a social program, such as the CSE, legally obligates nonresident fathers to make substantial contributions. In some states, it can be more than a third of the father’s income (Pirog and Ziol-Guest 2006). With such a noticeable reduction in a nonresident father’s discretionary income, one should expect this policy to have sizable impacts on family formation and composition.
When government provides programs or services that have close substitutes at the same cost, then these programs will probably have less impact on family complexity than programs without substitutes. Imagine a state that elects to reduce funding for a child care subsidy program. The impact that this policy decision has on low-income families will depend at least partly on the childcare other family members can provide, which is often available at little or no financial cost. Theory predicts services that have few substitutes at an equivalent cost, but that are in high demand, such as family planning services, are much more likely to affect family complexity.
Theoretically, there are many reasons to believe that social policy will affect family complexity; however, more detailed work within many topical areas is needed to understand where the discrepancies in the literature lie. Future work in this area should also begin to acknowledge potential heterogeneous effects across family types; for example, social policies may have different fertility effects for a single woman compared to a cohabiting couple. Asking about the impact of a bundle of policies that families typically receive rather than investigating policies separately is also a potentially fruitful avenue for new research. In addition, attention to the information that individuals have, the size of the change in one’s budget constraint due to a policy change, and the availability of substitutes would also add to our understanding of social policy and family complexity in the United States.
Footnotes
NOTE:
We are grateful to Marcy Carlson, Dan Meyer, Robert Moffitt, and Isabel Sawhill for helpful comments on an earlier version of this article. We also thank participants at the IRP Family Complexity, Poverty, and Public Policy Conference at the University of Wisconsin–Madison for their insightful questions and suggestions.
Notes
Leonard M. Lopoo is an associate professor of public administration and international affairs at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs and the director of the Center for Policy Research, both at Syracuse University. Lopoo’s research interests include fertility, marriage, maternal employment, and the social welfare policies related to these topics.
Kerri M. Raissian is an assistant professor of public policy at the University of Connecticut. Her research interests include child and family violence policy, family formation decisions, public policies targeted toward low-income families, and health policy.