FAMILY AND MARRIAGE: Little is known about how to promote marriage or strengthen families through welfare policies.

Promoting marriage and supporting two-parent families are two of the four expressly stated goals of TANF. Yet states have all but ignored these, preferring instead to focus on TANF's goals to increase work and reduce welfare dependency, in part because little was known about what works to promote and sustain marriage among single individuals. But what about the indirect effects of state reform practices on marriage and families? The few findings in this area are tantalizing but not definitive.

Few programs increased the likelihood that a single parent would marry. Intriguingly, however, one earnings supplement program did have a large and lasting effect on the likelihood that two-parent families would stay together.  Evidence from studies of welfare reform programs with mandates and time limits showed no effects on marriage among long-term welfare recipients who were single parents; and in programs with earnings supplements, marriage effects were few and inconsistent. As shown in Figure 7, Minnesota's program, for example, produced a small increase in marriage among single parents: Three years after random assignment, 11 percent of MFIP enrollees were married, compared with 7 percent of control group members. Canada's earnings supplement program, in contrast, generated a small increase in marriage in one province and a small decrease in marriage in the other, producing no overall effect. For the mandatory employment services programs, no consistent pattern of effects was discerned — one of the Riverside programs appeared to increase cohabitation slightly; one of the Grand Rapids programs reduced divorce and separation a bit; and the Portland program may have reduced the fraction of program group members who were married and living with a spouse. More encouraging results were found for two-parent families in the Minnesota program: 67 percent of two-parent families in the program group were married three years later, compared with 48 percent of the control group families. Publicly available divorce records used to conduct a longer-term follow-up showed that MFIP persisted in holding two-parent families together, although the effect was substantially smaller. Among two-parent families, MFIP's earnings supplements increased income even though the second earner cut back on his or her work effort, the combination of which may have helped to reduce stress on the family. Although MFIP's effects on marriage and divorce are encouraging, no other program involving two-parent caseloads has been tested. Back to family and marriage summary Several programs reduced the incidence of domestic violence experienced by female single-parent household heads, who make up about 90 percent of all adult welfare recipients - possibly because work meant less reliance on others or less time spent at home or because welfare systems are now offering more services for victims of domestic violence.  Significant reductions in domestic violence were found across a wide range of welfare reform programs that successfully increased employment. Between 15 percent and 30 percent of welfare recipients in the control groups of the evaluations examined here reported that they experienced at least one episode of domestic violence in the past year, including harassment and physical or other abuse by intimate partners. The Minnesota program decreased these rates of domestic violence by 12 percentage points, and six of the NEWWS programs produced reductions of 3 to 6 percentage points. Three explanations have been offered for these results: More work afforded more independence; more employment meant more time spent outside the home, thus restricting opportunities for abuse to occur; and caseworkers made more referrals to support services. Back to family and marriage summary Noncustodial parents, most of them fathers, have an important role to play in efforts to increase the self-sufficiency and well-being of families with wel-fare-dependent children. A program that combined employment services and peer support for noncustodial fathers with more responsive child support rules increased child support payments and, for less employable and less involved fathers, raised employment and parental involvement, respectively.   Under TANF, states have an interest in reaching welfare-dependent children's noncustodial parents. Through their child support payments, noncustodial fathers can help states re-coup the costs of providing welfare benefits to their children and, provided some of the support is passed through directly to custodial families, potentially help improve their children's well-being. When custodial parents leave welfare, the entire child support payment goes to the family — a payment that can make an important difference in family income. In MDRC's demonstration program Parents' Fair Share, operated in the late 1990s, noncustodial fathers with child support orders who were not working and not paying owed child support were required to receive employment services and to participate in peer support groups focused on parenting and personal responsibility. Partly by increasing enforcement and uncovering previously unreported employment and earnings, partly by making the child support system more responsive to the actual ability of fathers to pay, and partly by increasing the employment of some fathers, the program increased the overall percentage of fathers who paid child support. Among the fathers who initially had the most barriers to employment and had been least involved with their children, Parents' Fair Share also increased employment and parental involvement. Nevertheless, the gains were small, suggesting that more intensive programs are needed. Back to family and marriage summary