Introduction
Out-of wedlock births cause significant economic and social problems and
have been increasing in the last several decades. In light of these facts,
it is important to ask if our economic policies promote these premarital
or nonmarital births. Extensive research has been conducted on the subject
and the result is not a simple yes or no. Child support enforcement policies
appear to decrease nonmarital birthrates while welfare initiatives seem
to promote out-of wedlock births. The relative contribution of each of these
policy spheres determines the effect of our economic policies' affects on
nonmarital birthrates. Much has been done to reduce the prevalence of out-of
wedlock births, but the problem is still deserving of additional attention.
This paper will be divided into four further sections. The first will characterize and give historical perspective to the issue of nonmarital births. The second section will examine the effects of child support enforcement (ECS) legislation and implementation on the birthrates of unmarried women. The third section will look at the role of welfare payments, specifically the AFDC and EITC, in promoting nonmarital births. The fourth and final section will propose policy recommendations of this work and summarize the findings of this paper.
Nonmarital Births
The birthrate among unmarried women in the United States of America is lower
than that among married women, though the relatively high rate of childbirth
among those unmarried women in their late teens and early twenties is cause
for concern. In addition to negative effects on a child's development, empirical
studies have shown that childbirth among unmarried parents can reduce the
potential for economic success later in life (Huang, 2002). Adding to this
problem, nonmarital birthrates have risen in early and mid to late-twenties
women between 1996 and 2000 (Aassve, 2003). Higher birthrates among unmarried
African American young women add a racial component to the already socioeconomic-laden
etiology behind this problem (Ratcliffe, 2002) (Huang, 2002) (Aassve, 2003).
Child-Support Enforcement Legislation
Child Support Enforcement (CSE) is the set of laws and administrative entities
that seek to hold fathers financially responsible for their children. The
first major development in this field was the establishment of the Child
Support Enforcement Program in 1975. This initiative was designed to augment
state's efforts to "locate absent parents, establish paternity, establish
child-support orders, and obtain child-support payment". Additional
reforms have been made to this policy in most years following it implementation
with the intent of strengthening the enforcement of child support (Huang,
2002). This legislation operates on the assumption that stricter child support
enforcement will deter males from impregnating females to whom they are
not married (Huang, 2002). Several studies have shown that this economic
policy is effective in reducing out-of wedlock births.
A major overhaul of the system occurred in 1996 with the signing of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) (Huang, 2002). This reform changed the system from a largely discretionary one to a automatic and compulsive one where payment can be withheld from the father's paycheck (Huang, 2002). Six measures of child support enforcement legislation include genetic testing, paternity establishment, state income tax intercept, universal wage withholding, wage withholding in new cases, and wage withholding in cases of delinquency (Huang, 2002). States with stronger child support enforcement programs based on these criteria have lower rates of nonmarital births among those receiving AFDC funds (Huang, 2002).
Despite the overall increase in nonmarital birthrates between the years of 1980 and 1996, increased efficacy of child support enforcement policies appear to have decreased nonmarital birthrates by approximately 6% - 9% (Garfinkel et al., 2003). Major indicators of this phenomenon include two to threefold increases in paternity establishment rates and collection rates over this time period (Garfinkel et al., 2003). The study that elucidated these facts noted that this data was robust and indicative of a significant effect of child support enforcement legislation on nonmarital birthrates. The effects of these economic policies do not promote out-of wedlock births, but rather, seem to be cause for their decline.
A major cause of this efficacy seems to lie in the demographics of nonmarital births. Young African American women have some of the highest rates of out-of wedlock births (Aassve, 2003) (Huang, 2002). Importantly, child support laws have a larger effect on nonmarital birthrate reductions in African Americans than they do in whites (Huang, 2002). Additionally, almost two thirds of nonmarital births occur in women over the age of 20 (Huang, 2002). The fact that this age group is more responsive to changes in child support enforcement policy indicates the importance of this reform (Huang, 2002).
Welfare Payments
Several studies have demonstrated that increased welfare generosity can
lead to increased nonmarital birthrates (Hoffman and Foster, 2000) (Baughman
and Conlin, 2003) (Garfinkel et al., 2003). The underlying philosophy behind
this effect is that increased costs, both real and opportunity, associated
with having a child before marriage, are ameliorated by tax credits and
welfare payments (Aassve, 2003). The focus on the economic policies of welfare
payments with respect to out-of wedlock births includes the Aid to Families
with Dependent Children (AFDC) payments and the Earned Income Tax Credit
(EITC). While there has been some disagreement about the relationship between
AFDC payments and their likelihood to promote nonmarital births, analysis
of the EITC shows that this tax credit provided to parents that are either
married or unmarried has an effect on fertility rates (Hoffman and Foster,
2000) (Baughman and Conlin, 2003) (Garfinkel et al., 2003).
Study of the Earned Income Tax Credit indicated that there is a racial component to economic policies affecting tax rebates on childbirth (Baughman and Conlin, 2003). The EITC had a much more significant on married women than unmarried ones, but among the unmarried women, this credit had a bigger effect on the fertility rates of African American women than white ones (Baughman and Conlin, 2003). This statistically significant observation suggests that the EITC plays an important role in the fertility choices made by nonwhite women, a group which has traditionally had high overall rates of nonmarital birth (Baughman and Conlin, 2003) (Ratcliffe, 2002) (Huang, 2002) (Aassve, 2003). The author notes though that the overall contribution of the EITC to welfare payment's effects on nonmarital fertility rates is quantitatively small compared to that of AFDC payments (Baughman and Conlin, 2003).
Prior to the work done by Hoffman and Foster, which replicated the work of Rosenzweig, indicated that there was a relatively weak and unclear causal relationship between AFDC payments and nonmarital birthrates (Hoffman and Foster, 2000) (Aassve, 2003). In contrast to earlier reports, when these researchers controlled for state and cohort effects, and extended the age of the population in study through age 22, they found a statistically significant and quantitatively large positive correlation between welfare payments and nonmarital births (Hoffman and Foster, 2000). Another study has suggested that state AFDC levels positively correlate with nonmarital childbearing, lending support to the findings of Hoffman and Foster (Aassve, 2003). Additionally, the effects that welfare receipt has on the fertility choices of daughters of parents receiving AFDC may play a role in explaining why welfare payments increase the rate of nonmarital childbirth (Ratcliffe, 2002). Those mothers receiving AFDC payments were much more likely to have a premarital birth by age 25 than their non-welfare receiving counterparts (Ratcliffe, 2002). Coupled with the fact that daughters born to unmarried parents were more likely to collect AFDC benefits themselves (>50%), this information suggests that welfare receipt perpetuates a cycle of dependence and nonmarital birth.
Despite these results, Ratcliffe reasoned that welfare receipt is only part of the story affecting nonmarital birthrates (Ratcliffe, 2002). Over the same time period that nonmarital birthrates dropped by 6-9% due to increases in child support enforcement legislation, it has been estimated that decreases in welfare benefits led to a decline in out-of wedlock births by only 2% - 4% (Garfinkel et al., 2003). Estimates by Aassve have predicted that a 60% reduction in AFDC levels would result in a 5% decrease in nonmarital birthrates (Aassve, 2003). These results are much more modest than effects that Hoffman and Foster would predict (Aassve, 2003) (Hoffman and Foster, 2000).
Policy Recommendations and Conclusions
While the effects of child support enforcement legislation and welfare payments
appear to play a role in affecting the rate of out-of wedlock births, they
cannot explain the entirety of the phenomenon (Aassve, 2003, Ratcliffe,
2002). Despite the inability for these economic policies to wholly explain
nonmarital births, they are useful examples in examining whether or not
our economic policies promote out-of wedlock births. The relatively large
effect of child support enforcement legislation on birthrates among unmarried
women overshadows the debated topic of welfare payment's role on nonmarital
birthrates. Coupled with the ethical complications of changing either, this
would suggest that future policy reform should focus on improving the nationwide
CSE index via the six policy measures outlined above, with particular attention
to genetic determination of paternity and compulsory payment of support
In conclusion, we do observe an effect of our economic policies on nonmarital birthrates. Some policies, such as welfare payments, have positive effects on out-of wedlock births. Others, like child support enforcement legislation, have negative effects on nonmarital births. The relative importance and efficacy of each of these policies would indicate that our economic policies do not promote net increases in out-of wedlock births, though there are many unexamined and complicating factors that need to be fully elucidated before we can make a concrete statement as to whether the entirety of our economic policies promote nonmarital births.
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