Kathryn Edin

Why Don't They Just Get Married? Barriers to Marriage among the Disadvantaged

Kathryn Edin and Joanna Reed review recent research on social and economic barriers to marriage among the poor and discuss the efficacy of efforts by federal and state policymakers to promote marriage among poor unmarried couples, especially those with children, in light of these findings.

Parenting as a "Package Deal": Relationships, Fertility, and Nonresident Father Involvement Among Unmarried Parents

Fatherhood has traditionally been viewed as part of a “package deal” in which a father’s relationship with his child is contingent on his relationship with the mother. We evaluate the accuracy of this hypothesis in light of the high rates of multiple-partner fertility among unmarried parents using the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study, a recent longitudinal survey ofnonmarital births in large cities. We examine whether unmarried mothers’ and fathers’ subsequent relationship and parenting transitions are associated with declines in fathers ’ contact with their nonresident biological children. We find that father involvement drops sharply after relationships between unmarried parents end. Mothers’ transitions into new romantic partnerships and new parenting roles are associated with larger declines in involvement than fathers’ transitions. Declines in fathers’ involvement following a mother’s relationship or parenting transition are largest when children are young. We discuss the implications of our results for the well-being ofnonmarital children and the quality of nonmarital relationships faced with high levels of relationship instability and multiple-partner fertiliy.

Moving teenagers out of high-risk neighborhoods: how girls fare better than boys.

Moving to Opportunity (MTO) offered public housing residents the opportunity to move to low-poverty neighborhoods. Several years later, boys in the experimental group fared no better on measures of risk behavior than their control group counterparts, whereas girls in the experimental group engaged in lower-risk behavior than control group girls. The authors explore these differences by analyzing data from in-depth interviews conducted with 86 teens in Baltimore and Chicago. They find that daily routines, fitting in with neighborhood norms, neighborhood navigation strategies, interactions with peers, friendship making, and distance from father figures may contribute to how girls who moved via MTO benefited more than boys.

Surviving the Welfare System: How AFDC Recipients Make Ends Meet in Chicago

Much of the literature on the underclass alleges that welfare induces dependency. The author uses data from intensive interviews with 50 Chicago-area mothers on welfare to show that welfare pays too little to entice recipients into a life of passive dependence. The women interviewed all supplemented their AFDC and food stamp benefits with at least one of two sources of unreported income: assistance from family, friends, boyfriends, or absent fathers, and income from work

The durability of gains from the Gautreaux Two residential mobility program: a qualitative analysis of who stays and who moves from low-poverty neighborhoods∗

This paper examines mobility in the Gautreaux Two Housing Mobility Program, which attempted to alleviate poverty concentration by offering vouchers to residents of highly distressed Chicago public housing developments. In contrast to the original Gautreaux program, placement moves in Gautreaux Two have proven far less durable – most families quickly moved on from their placement neighborhoods to neighborhoods that were quite poor and very racially segregated. Based on in-depth interviews with 58 Gautreaux Two participants and their children, we find that the primary factors motivating secondary moves included substandard unit quality and hassles with landlords. Other factors included feelings of social isolation due to poor integration into the new neighborhood, distance from kin, transportation difficulties, childrens negative reaction to the new neighborhood, and financial difficulties. Policy implications include the need for further pre- and post-move housing counseling for families in mobility programs.

Rising Extreme Poverty in the United States and the Response of Federal Means-Tested Transfer Programs

This study documents an increase in the prevalence of extreme poverty among US households with children between 1996 and 2011 and assesses the response of major federal means-tested transfer programs. Extreme poverty is defined using a World Bank metric of global poverty:

The Private Safety Net: The Role of Charitable Organizations in the Lives of the Poor

2 or less, per person, per day. Using the 1996–2008 panels of the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP), we estimate that in mid-2011, 1.65 million households with 3.55 million children were living in extreme poverty in a given month, based on cash income, constituting 4.3 percent of all nonelderly households with children. The prevalence of extreme poverty has risen sharply since 1996, particularly among those most affected by the 1996 welfare reform. Adding SNAP benefits to household income reduces the number of extremely poor households with children by 48.0 percent in mid-2011. Adding SNAP, refundable tax credits, and housing subsidies reduces it by 62.8 percent.

After Moving to Opportunity How Moving to a Low-poverty Neighborhood Improves Mental Health among African American Women

Abstract As welfare reform unfolds, nonprofit social service agencies will increasingly be called upon to help fill the gap between what unskilled and semiskilled mothers can earn in the low‐wage labor market and what they need to meet their monthly expenses. This article draws on in‐depth interviews with low‐income single mothers and multiyear observational studies of two nonprofit social service agencies. Using these data, the authors show what kinds of resources these agencies provide low‐income single mothers, how mothers mobilize the resources available, to what degree agencies actually contribute to mothers’ cash and in‐kind resources, how agencies distribute their resources, and what effect agencies’ distribution practices have on these women. The analysis shows that although nonprofit social service agencies are a crucial part of many low‐income mothers’ economic survival strategies, they cannot come close to substituting for the eroding public safety net.

The Role of Earned Income Tax Credit in the Budgets of Low-Income Households

A large body of nonexperimental literature finds residing in a disadvantaged neighborhood is deleterious for mental health, and recent evidence from the Moving to Opportunity (MTO) program—a social experiment giving families living in high-poverty neighborhoods the opportunity to move to low-poverty neighborhoods—suggests a causal effect of moving to a low-poverty neighborhood on adult mental health. We use qualitative data from 67 Baltimore adults who signed up for the MTO program to understand how moving to a low-poverty neighborhood produced these mental health benefits. First, we document the vast array of mental health challenges, traumatic experiences, and stressors reported by both experimentals (those who received a housing voucher to move to a low-poverty neighborhood) and controls (those who did not receive a voucher). We then explore how changes in the physical and social environments may have produced mental health benefits for experimentals. In particular, experimentals reported the following: improved neighborhood and home aesthetics, greater neighborhood collective efficacy and pride, less violence and criminal activity, and better environments for raising children. Notably, we also document increased sources of stress among experimentals, mostly associated with moving, making the positive effects of MTO on adult mental health all the more remarkable. These findings have important implications for both researchers and policymakers.

Dignity and Dreams What the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) Means to Low-Income Families

The annual receipt of large tax refunds, primarily due to the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), provides households with unusual opportunities to pay old bills and build assets. To examine these opportunities, the study surveys 194 black, Latino, and white parents who received EITC refunds of at least