BOCYF Projects

The Effects of Welfare on the Family and Reproductive Behavior

Publications: Welfare, the Family, and Reproductive Behavior: Report of a Meeting (1998); Welfare, the Family, and Reproductive Behavior: Research Perspectives (1998)

Over the last decade, welfare reform has figured prominently in the policy agenda at both the state and the federal levels. One of the most important issues in the policy debate concerns the effect of welfare programs on individual demographic behaviors. Some of the possibilities most frequently mentioned are that welfare programs affect labor force participation rates, living arrangements, migration patterns, and reproductive behavior, with perhaps the biggest fear being that welfare programs encourage out-of-wedlock childbearing, particularly among teenagers.

In an attempt to clarify some of the issues both for the policy debate and for setting research priorities, in May 1996 the Board on Children, Youth, and Families and the Committee on Population of the National Research Council organized the Workshop on the Effects of Welfare on the Family and Reproductive Behavior. Its purpose was to bring together experts in demographic and family studies, along with researchers and officials familiar with the welfare programs, to assess what is known about effects of welfare on marriage, fertility-related behavior, and the family, especially children.

A workshop report, Welfare, the Family, and Reproductive Behavior: Report of a Meeting, was published in 1998. Some of the papers prepared for the workshop were published in a separate volume entitled Welfare, the Family, and Reproductive Behavior: Research Perspectives.

The workshop was funded by the Annie E. Casey Foundation and by the Kellogg Fund of the National Academies Governing Board.