There has been a considerable amount of work on the relationship between AFDC benefits and family structure in the US The evidence to date which uses cross-state variation in welfare benefits and family structure often with state fixed effects indicates that there is some nonzero effect of those benefits on marriage and fertility although there is disagreement on the magnitude of the effect However it is undisputed that time series trends in family structure are not correlated in the direction that the cross-state evidence would suggest for real benefits have been falling even relative to wages in aggregate time series This paper reexamines the time series evidence with particular attention to the role of wages in explaining trends in headship and notes that the correct specification includes both male as well as female wages When both are controlled welfare benefits have a slight positive impact on female headship even in time series The results demonstrate the importance of labor market factors in explaining trends in female headship
Download Info
To our knowledge, this item is not available for
download. To find whether it is available, there are three
options:
1. Check below under "Related research" whether another version of this item is available online.
2. Check on the provider's web page
whether it is in fact available.
3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be
available.
Publisher Info
Paper provided by The Johns Hopkins University,Department of Economics in its series Economics Working Paper Archive with number
434.
References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
Cited by: (explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.)