Publications on Family Structure

Nearly one quarter of low-income families do not have a checking or savings account, more than one-third do not own cars, 60 percent do not own a home, and 90 percent have no retirement account. In contrast, the typical middle-income family has checking or savings accounts, retirement accounts, owns a car and a home. This brief synthesizes current research on the assets and liabilities of low-income families into a variety of portraits and provides suggestions for future research and policy.

The increasing recognition of the importance of marriage for the social and economic well-being of children has led to demonstrations aimed at strengthening and stimulating healthy marriages. The next step is to ensure that factors closely linked with healthy marriages are addressed as well. This paper brings together research findings and policy ideas about the interactions between marriage, employment, and family functioning. It presents a framework and proposes several demonstrations aimed at improving employment and family outcomes for disadvantaged populations. The appendix reviews an extensive body of research on specific linkages between marriage, employment, and family functioning.

Children's mobility outcomes are a function of not only their parents' characteristics and resources, but also of the way parents transmit those characteristics and resources across generations. This review assesses the literature on the effects of family structure, resources, and childrearing styles on children's economic outcomes. Particular attention is paid to the challenge of disentangling the impacts of these determinants, which are often highly correlated: high socio-economic status individuals are better able to address their children’s material needs, but are also more likely to form stable, two-parent families and may even tend to employ more effective parenting strategies. (Review 3 of 11.)

This paper assesses the extent to which children living in cohabiting families would benefit if their mothers were to marry. Children whose cohabiting mothers marry have higher math and reading scores than children whose mothers either continue to cohabit or who dissolve their cohabiting relationships; marriage is uncorrelated with behavioral outcomes of these children. Interestingly, much of the difference between the test scores of children whose cohabiting mothers marry and those who do not actually predates the marriage. This suggests that the benefits of marriage for children living with cohabiting couples are smaller than they initially appear.

Discussion and debate about adoption and foster care by gay, lesbian, and bisexual (GLB) parents occurs frequently among policymakers, social service agencies, and social workers. Three states currently restrict GLB people from adopting and more are considering similar policies. This report provides new information on GLB adoption and foster care from several government data sources. It offers a demographic portrait of the estimated 65,500 adopted children and 14,100 foster children living with gay and lesbian parents. It also assesses the costs to child welfare systems of proposed bans on allowing GLB people to foster.