Poverty among Children Born Outside of Marriage

Assessing the New Federalism is a multiyear Urban Institute project designed to analyze the devolution of responsibility for social programs from the federal government to the states, focusing primarily on health care, income security, employment and training programs, and social services. Alan Weil is the project director. Researchers monitor program changes and fiscal developments. In collaboration with Child Trends, the project studies changes in family well-being. The project aims to provide timely, nonpartisan information to inform public debate and to help state and local decisionmakers carry out their new responsibilities more effectively.

Key components of the project include a household survey, studies of policies in 13 states, and a database with information on all states and the District of Columbia, available at the Urban Institute's Web site. This paper is one in a series of discussion papers analyzing information from these and other sources.

The project has received funding from the Annie E. Casey Foundation, the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, the McKnight Foundation, the Commonwealth Fund, the Stuart Foundation, the Weingart Foundation, the Fund for New Jersey, the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, the Joyce Foundation, and the Rockerfeller Foundation.  The nonpartisan Urban Institute publishes studies, reports, and books on timely topics worthy of public consideration. The views expressed are those of the authors and should not be attributed to the Urban Institute, its trustees, or its funders.

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Contents

Introduction
Background
Data and Methods
A Preliminary Examination
Logit Results and Discussion
Conclusion
Notes
Appendix Table
References
About the Author

Introduction

An extensive literature examining the well-being of children growing up with a single mother concludes that these children fare worse than children from two-parent families (Garfinkel and McLanahan 1986; McLanahan and Sandefur 1994). This body of research has been used as evidence that children born outside of marriage are at a great disadvantage compared to children born to married parents. However, half of the children currently living in single-mother families were born into two-parent families that became one-parent families due to death, desertion, or divorce.¹ The question of whether children living in single-mother families who were born outside of marriage are at an even greater disadvantage than their peers who live with a single mother but were born into a two-parent family has not been the focus of much research. This paper examines whether nonmarital children, that is, children born to unmarried parents and who live with a single mother, are at greater risk of living in poverty than children who live with a single mother but were born within marriage. It also profiles the population of children living with a single mother by the mother's marital status at birth, using the National Survey of America's Families (NSAF), a newly released data source.

Notes

1. Author's tabulation.

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