Are State Marriage Initiatives Having an Eff ect ?An Initial Exploration of the Impact on Divorce and Childhood Poverty Rates

• Date: 01 September 2009
• Author: Kenneth Kickham,David A. Ford
• Published date: 01 September 2009
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-6210.2009.02034.x

Kenneth Kickham

David A. Ford

University of Central Oklahoma

Are State Marriage Initiatives Having an Ef‌f ect ?

An Initial Exploration of the Impact on Divorce and

Childhood Poverty Rates

Tough Public

Policy Choices

Confronting

America

846 Public Administration Review • September | October 2009

To our knowledge … this

analysis provides the f‌i rst

macro-level test of state policies

and programs intended to

promote healthy marriages.

 e central question addressed by this article is the

ef‌f ect of state-level marriage initiatives on divorce and

childhood poverty rates. State divorce rates have been

problematic for researchers because of variation across

states in the way they are compiled.  is research takes

a dif‌f erent approach, measuring instead the prevalence

of divorce rather than the number of divorces granted

in a given state or year.  e authors use this indicator,

derived from Current Population Survey data, as an

outcome measure in a test of marriage initiatives, and as

an independent variable in a childhood poverty analysis.

 e quasi-experimental design employs time-series and

cross-section regression analysis. Results show a signif‌i cant

negative ef‌f ect from marriage initiatives on divorce

prevalence, and a signif‌i cant positive association between

divorce prevalence and childhood poverty rates.

The topic of this paper must be seen as one

additional step in attempting to analyze the

impact of state policy changes brought about

by the expansive reforms in welfare law. We examine

the aspect of welfare reform focusing on strengthening

healthy marriages. Specif‌i cally, we ask whether there

is any signif‌i cant association between the imple-

mentation of marriage initiatives and the prevalence

of divorce. Among policy makers and social service

professionals, family structure is commonly viewed

as an important factor relating to child well-being.

 eoretical connections running from state-supported

marriage programs to strong, healthy marriages to

improved child well-being suggest the importance of

empirical research on the ef‌f ects of marriage initiatives

on divorce and childhood poverty. Birch, Weed, and

Olsen (2004, 500) examined county-level data on

community marriage initiatives and found a “modest”

negative ef‌f ect on divorce rates.

To our knowledge, however,

this analysis provides the f‌i rst

macro-level test of state poli-

cies and programs intended to

promote healthy marriages.

With welfare reform well into

its second decade, enough time

has passed to warrant an examination of whether its

desired ef‌f ects have begun to materialize.

In 1996, the Personal Responsibility and Work

Opportunity Reconciliation Act abolished the Aid

to Families with Dependent Children program and

replaced it with Temporary Assistance for Needy

Families, or TANF (Grogger and Karoly 2005, 2).  e

new program shifted the emphasis from entitlement

to introducing and strengthening new requirements,

including work-related activities and time limits for

receiving benef‌i ts. Other stated goals were to reduce

welfare dependency and to reduce the perceived

“childbearing incentive.”  ere was also an intent in

this initiative to promote successful marriages and to

maintain two-parent families. It is this latter aspect on

which the present research is centered.

Since the initial passage of the law, there has been

further legislative interest in this area. Rebecca

Schwalb reviewed a U.S. House resolution in 2004

dealing with strengthening the original law’s emphasis

on promoting marriage. She noted that the “theory

behind the bill is that by encouraging marriage, the

marriage rate will increase and the poverty rates will

go down and the individuals on welfare will decrease”

(2005, 1).  e original Welfare Reform Act linked

the decline in two-parent households to an increase in

poverty levels. Implicit in this discussion is a concern

with the dissolution of marriages, as ref‌l ected in the

divorce rate statistics for individual states and for the

nation as a whole. Divorce rates began to rise in the

1960s, peaking in 1981 at 5.3 per 1,000 and falling to

around 4 per 1,000 in 2000, and remaining some-

what stable since that time (Grogger and Karoly 2005,

16). Many states historically

have had higher rates than the

national average. Oklahoma,

for example, had a rate of 8

per 1,000 in 1985. While it

dropped to 5.9 per 1,000 in

2000, Oklahoma’s divorce rate

is still signif‌i cantly higher than

David A. Ford is a professor of sociol-

ogy and Chair of the Department of Sociol-

ogy/Criminal Justice and Substance Abuse

Studies. He has been in higher education

for over thirty years. His research interests

have been eclectic and include several years

as a consultant and program evaluator do-

ing applied research for a private non-prof‌i t

working in the areas of substance abuse

prevention and neighborhood coalition

building. This is his f‌i rst foray into public

administration research.

E-mail: daford@uco.edu

Kenneth Kickham is an assistant pro-

fessor in the political science department

at the University of Central Oklahoma. His

teaching and research interests focus on

public administration and social policy, par-

ticularly welfare reform and related issues.

He spent several years in state government

as a program evaluator, and recently served

as president of the National Association for

Welfare Research and Statistics.

E-mail: kkickham@uco.edu