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Welfare, the Family, and Reproductive Behavior Report of a Meeting (1998) / Chapter Skim
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Effects of Welfare on Marriage, Fertility, and Abortion
Pages 7-12

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From page 7...
... Nearly all the studies reviewed by Moffitt analyzed effects of changes, or cross-state differences, in the levels of AFDC benefits. However, new changes in state programs also deal with many other aspects of the system: removing limits on outside earnings, requiring work or training, limiting duration of benefits, eliminating benefit increases for later births, requiring that teenage recipients live with their parents, and so forth.
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From page 8...
... 8 o cq big .~ o a' .s a' be = o a' a' o cq c)
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From page 9...
... Leading candidates are a rise in the earning power of women, even low-income women, leading them to be able to support themselves and their children without the earnings of a husband; a decline in the incomes of less educated men, which could have decreased their attractiveness as marital partners; and a decline in the numbers of men available, a hypothesis suggested for disadvantaged blacks (Wilson, 1987~. There is considerable research on these other factors, but less research that compares welfare benefits to those facts and attempts to parcel out their relative influences (studies that have attempted to control for some of these other factors include Acs, 1995, 1996; Danziger et al., 1982; Darity and Myers, 1993, 1995; Duncan and Hoffman, 1990; Hoffman and Duncan, 1988, 1995; Lichter et al., 1996; Lundberg and Plotnick, 1990; Schultz, 1994~.
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From page 10...
... The debate at the workshop surrounding the probable effect of family cap provisions on abortions served as a reminder that abortion decisions can be affected by a large number of considerations and conflicting pressures. Jacob Klerman proposed a schema for categorizing and analyzing the sequential and interlinked choices facing an unmarried woman (Figure 3~.
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From page 11...
... The provider surveys show less underreporting but are usable only at the state level, and there are further problems in distinguishing the state of provision from the state of residence. Klerman reviewed six studies that used state-level data on welfare benefits and abortions to examine their relationship (with various methods for correcting for unobserved factors potentially affecting both abortion rates and AFDC generosity)
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From page 12...
... Pregnancy rates increased among participants in the Job Start and New Chance demonstrations. For New Chance participants, abortion rates rose sufficiently to offset the effect of the higher pregnancy rate, leading to lower birth rates, whereas in Project Redirection and the Teen Welfare Parent Demonstration, the abortion rate declined to such an extent that program rates had higher birth rates, even though repeat pregnancy rates had not increased (Maynard et al., 1997~.
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Key Terms

  • teenage parents
  • abortion rates
  • pregnancy rates
  • afdc benefits
  • family caps

  • cap provisions
  • family cap
  • welfare reform
  • getting pregnant
  • mixed pattern

  • repeat pregnancy
  • teen parent
  • fertility behavior
  • studies reviewed
  • job start

  • parent demonstration
  • parent health
  • birth rates
  • welfare parent
  • project redirection

  • afdc generosity
  • provides clues
  • teen welfare
  • darity believed
  • fertility rates

  • nonmarital fertility
  • unobserved factors
  • reviewed six
  • requiring work
  • repeat pregnancies


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