Volume 35, Number 2 (Spring) 2000
Hoffman, Saul D., and E. Michael Foster. 2000. "AFDC Benefits and Nonmarital Births to Young Women." Journal of Human Resources 35(2):376-391.
Following recent work by Rosenzweig (1999), this paper reexamines the effect of Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) benefits on nonmarital childbearing through age 22. Unlike most previous work, Rosenzweig finds a statistically significant and quantitatively large positive AFDC effect. Using data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, we replicate his analysis and explore the reasons his findings differ from earlier research findings. We are able to reproduce his main finding in a model that includes state and cohort fixed-effects; we find that control for state effects increases the estimated AFDC effect. When we examine fertility separately by age, we find no AFDC effect on teen non-marital births, but a large effect on the behavior of women in their early 20s.
Saul D. Hoffman is a professor of economics at the University of Delaware and E. Michael Foster is an associate professor at the Andrew Young School of Policy Studies, Georgia State University. The data used in this article can be obtained beginning December, 1999 through November, 2002 from Saul D. Hoffman, Department of Economics, University of Delaware, Newark, DE 19716. The research was supported by a grant from the Joint Center for Poverty Research at Northwestern University and the University of Chicago. The authors are grateful for suggestions and comments received from Mark Rosenzweig, David Neumark, Robert Moffitt, Rebecca Blank, Greg Duncan, and from seminar participants at the Harris School of the University of Chicago, the University of Delaware, and Colby College.
© 2002 by the Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System
US ISSN 0022-166X