Volume 9, Number 3 (Summer) 1974
Honig, Marjorie. 1974. "AFDC Income, Recipient Rates, and Family Dissolution." Journal of Human Resources 9(3):303-322.
The AFDC program contains incentives for family dissolution, as well as the usual incentives regarding work effort inherent in transfer programs of its type. The research discussed below attempts to determine the extent of the impact of these incentives. Cross-section analyses of SMSAs in 1960 and 1970 are presented, relating the proportion of female-headed families and the proportion of the female population receiving AFDC assistance to the size of the AFDC payment and related variables. The results indicate that both female-headship rates and AFDC recipient rates are significantly affected by the relative size of AFDC payments in white and nonwhite populations alike.
The author is Director of the Division of Basic Research, Bureau of Research and Planning, National Insurance Institute, Jerusalem, Israel. Parts of this study were taken from a doctoral dissertation submitted to Columbia University in 1971. I am especially grateful to Jacob Mincer for numerous suggestions and criticisms and to Gary S. Becker for encouragement in the early phases of the study. Journal referees made many valuable suggestions, as did Robert I. Lerman of the Joint Economic Committee, Subcommittee on Fiscal Policy. The research also benefited from the comments of members of the Labor Economics Workshop of Columbia University and the Human Capital - Public Finance Workshop of the Hebrew University. The study was supported by a grant from the Manpower Administration, U.S. Department of Labor, and the Rutgers University Research Council.
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