Jobs, poverty, and family breakup: the impacts of unemployment and poverty are contributing substantially to dissolution of American families.

• Author: Hernandez, Donald J.

ECONOMIC STRESS can be a major factor in the breakup of two-parent families. When households dissolve, low income and fathers' joblessness often are part of the picture. Consequently, many separated and divorced mothers who are poor came from two-parent families that already were impoverished before the breakup.

Most transitions into poverty occur to continuing families--those that continue to be maintained by the same person or married couple. These families fall into poverty because they experience a drop in the number of hours they work or because the amount of money that they make per hour fails to keep pace with inflation.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau's systematic analysis of the social and economic conditions under which households were created and dissolved during the last decade, poor two-parent families were nearly twice as likely to break up as those with income above the poverty line. About 13% of two-parent families that existed at the beginning of a typical two-year period in the mid 1980s no longer did two years later, mainly because the spouses separated. Usually, the result was that a new single-parent family came into being. Among non-poor two-parent families, just seven percent broke up within two years.

For whites, the figures are about the same. Poor two-parent families (12%) were more likely than non-poor ones (seven percent) to discontinue within two years. The difference was even larger for blacks, where the chances of two-parent families breaking up within two years were 21% if they were poor, compared with 11% if they were not. These results suggest that the economic stresses and insecurity associated with having very low family incomes contribute substantially to marital separation and the discontinuation of two-parent families.

Moreover, the lack of secure full-time employment contributes substantially to family breakup. Two-parent families with fathers who did not have jobs were about twice as likely to break apart as those where he was employed. Among families where neither spouse worked or only the mother did, 13-16% discontinued within two years. Among those where the father was employed, seven percent broke up, regardless of whether or not the mother had a job.

The same pattern held true for white families--13-15% broke up if the father was not working, compared to seven percent if he was (again, regardless of whether the mother had a job). The pattern for black families was quite different, with a...