The Future of Children: Fall 2005: Marriage and Child Wellbeing

This second volume of The Future of Children examines family formation and child well being, with a particular focus on marriage. The authors look at the history of marriage in America, the changes in family formation and the effect of these changes on economic and social outcomes for children, and the effect of marriage policy on specific subgroups such as low-income, minority, and homosexual families. The volume also provides a review of programs that have tried to increase and stabilize marriage as well as the impact of tax and transfer policies on marriage.

Contents

Introduction and Overview, Sara McLanahan, Ron Haskins, and Elisabeth Donahue

The Emergence of Marriage as a Public Issue, Steve Nock, University of Virginia

American Marriage in the Early Twenty-First Century, Andrew Cherlin, Johns Hopkins University

The Impact of Family Formation Change on Family Income, Isabel Sawhill, Brookings Institution, and Adam Thomas, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University

The Impact of Family Formation Change on the Cognitive, Social and Emotional Wellbeing of the next Generation, Paul Amato, Pennsylvania State University

Family Formation Choices of Low-Income and Minority Families, Kathryn Edin, University of Pennsylvania and Joanna Reed, Northwestern University

Marriage Initiatives: What Might Work?, Robin Dion, Mathematica Policy Research

Gay Marriage, Same-Sex Parenting, and America's Children, Jonathan Rauch, National Journal and the Brookings Institution, and William Meezan, University of Michigan

Tax and Transfer Policy", C. Eugene Steuerle, Urban Institute

Sara McLanahan is professor of sociology and public affairs at Princeton University, where she is also director of the Center for Research on Child Wellbeing. She is coauthor of Growing Up with a Single Parent (Harvard, 1994). Elisabeth Donahue is associate editor of The Future of Children and a lecturer at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton. Ron Haskins is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a senior consultant at the Annie E. Casey Foundation. A former adviser to the President for welfare policy, he spent 14 years on the staff of the House Ways and Means Human Resources Subcommittee, first as welfare counsel to the Republican staff, then as the subcommittee's staff director. He is the author of Work over Welfare: The Inside Story of the 1996 Welfare Reform Law (Brookings, 2006) and coeditor, with Rebecca Blank, of The New World of Welfare (Brookings, 2002).