WELFARE BENEFITS AND BIRTH DECISIONS OF NEVER-MARRIED WOMEN

For some time now, the out-of-wedlock birthrate has been increasing ra pidly in the United States. This has prompted several states to propos e (and in some cases, enact) legislation to deny access to higher AFDC benefits for families in which the mother gives birth while receiving AFDC. The authors investigate whether AFDC benefit levels are systema tically related to the family-size decisions of never-married women. U sing a bivariate probit model with state and time fixed effects, appli ed to Current Population Survey data for the years 1980-1988, it is fo und that the basic benefit level for a family of two (one adult and on e child) and the incremental benefit for a second child positively aff ects the family size decisions of black and Hispanic women, but not of white women. The effects are concentrated among high school dropouts (no effects are found for high school graduates). The authors conclude that rather than to uniformly deny benefits to all AFDC women that be ar children, a better targeted policy might be to alter the AFDC benef it structure in such a way as to encourage single mothers to complete high school. However, being a high school dropout might be a proxy for some other underlying characteristic of the woman, and encouraging wo men to complete high school who otherwise would not might have no effe ct whatsoever on nonmarital births.