Dynamics of Families After a Nonmarital Birth

Abstract Despite known links between poverty rates and unmarried parenthood, we know little about how changes in family situations after a nonmarital birth affect poverty. This study explores Future of Families and Child Wellbeing Study data to document changes to the relationship status, employment status, and education level of a cohort of unmarried mothers who gave birth in urban areas in the late 1990s and the implications for poverty rates over a 15-year follow-up period. For children born to unmarried parents in urban areas, official poverty rates improved modestly in the 15 years after the birth, with maternal employment, education gains, and marriage corresponding to lower poverty rates on average over time. Using the success sequence as a framework, poverty rates were dramatically (and statistically) lower when mothers who were unmarried at the time of childbirth subsequently married, worked full-time, and had at least a high school education, suggesting the achievement of success-sequence milestones can lead to lower child poverty even after the birth of a child outside marriage. Read the PDF. Introduction In the 1990s, researchers at Princeton University and Columbia University initiated the Future of Families and Child Wellbeing Study, referred to in this report as the Future of Families Study, to provide insights into a poorly understood demographic group—unmarried parents and their children (Reichman et al. 2001). A significant surge in nonmarital childbearing in the prior decades increased interest in unmarried families, with births to unmarried parents increasing from 5 percent of total births in 1960 to 31 percent by 1993 (CDC 1995). Equally concerning was that children living with a single parent had poverty rates five times the rates for children in married families (Shrider and Creamer 2023). The rate of nonmarital births continued its upward trend post-1993, and although the rise has plateaued in recent years, almost 40 percent of children are currently born to unmarried parents (Stone 2018; Osterman et al. 2023). These children remain at a considerably higher risk of poverty compared to those born into married families. Public policies have sought to assist low-income families by offering financial support, with federal expenditures on means-tested programs doubling in real dollars since the late 1990s (Rachidi, Weidinger, and Winship 2022). However, questions remain over the extent to which safety-net policies help low-income families achieve self-sufficiency versus simply helping them tolerate poverty better. These unanswered questions underscore the need for a deeper understanding of the specific circumstances of unmarried families over time and the implications for them escaping poverty and achieving upward mobility. This report leverages longitudinal Future of Families Study data to gain a better understanding of families’ dynamics after a nonmarital birth by exploring changes to maternal relationship status, employment status, education level, and official poverty rates over a 15-year follow-up period. The Future of Families Study contains a representative sample of nonmarital births between 1998 and 2000 in urban hospitals (cities with populations over 200,000 in 1994), offering a robust dataset on the family dynamics of a cohort of unmarried families from childbirth through the child reaching age 15 (Future of Families and Child Wellbeing Study n.d.a.). My focus on three factors—education, employment, and relationship status—stems from a desire to understand how these crucial correlates of poverty evolve after a nonmarital birth and the implications for families’ escape from poverty. These factors are at the core of the success sequence, a finding in the social sciences showing that those who graduate high school, work full-time, and marry before having children are far more likely to avoid poverty in adulthood (Institute for Family Studies n.d.). Researchers have consistently demonstrated the effectiveness of those who follow the success sequence in averting poverty, with youth organizations recommending it as a means for young people to avoid poverty as adults (Inanc, Spitzer, and Goesling 2021; Goesling, Inanc, and Rachidi 2020; Institute for Family Studies n.d.). However, it seems plausible that at any point in time, achieving the success-sequence milestones could improve prospects for families even when not followed sequentially. For example, unmarried mothers—this study’s sample of interest—by definition did not follow the success sequence because they had a child outside of marriage, but it remains useful to understand the implications of improving their education, full-time work status, and rates of marriage as a potential poverty-reduction strategy for them and their children over time. Answering these questions also has implications for the current policy debate over ways to reduce US poverty. By most accounts, US child poverty rates have declined markedly since the start of the War on Poverty in 1964 (Burkhauser et al. 2021). However, much of the decline in poverty rates has come from increases in government transfers, which are costly and likely unsustainable as a strategy to reduce poverty even further given the federal government’s fiscal situation (Burkhauser et al. 2021). Moreover, even though child poverty rates have fallen, increasing upward mobility has been more challenging, leading to concerns that many government transfer programs improve immediate material conditions for low-income families but fail to address the underlying drivers of poverty and limited upward mobility (Winship et al. 2021). In the end, government transfer programs that reduce employment and discourage marriage might diminish the likelihood of self-reliance, escalating the need for even more government assistance as time goes by. Leveraging longitudinal data from the Future of Families Study, I found that the majority of children born to unmarried parents (almost 80 percent) experienced poverty (defined using the official poverty measure) at some point in their first 15 years. (For comparison, only 30 percent of children born to married families in the Future of Families Study experienced poverty in their first 15 years.) Even so, the overall average poverty rate for unmarried families declined modestly in each survey year, and the average poverty rate at the time of the age 15 survey was statistically lower than at the age 1 survey. Further, the data suggest that when the group of mothers who were unmarried at childbirth later transitioned into marriage, more employment, or a higher level of education between survey years, they experienced lower poverty rates on average. Conversely, when mothers transitioned away from marriage or full-time employment, they experienced higher poverty rates on average. The findings also show that mothers who were unmarried at childbirth who achieved all three success-sequence milestones at the time of the age 15 survey—marriage, full-time employment, and a high school education—had substantially lower poverty rates on average (9 percent) than did those who achieved none of these milestones (78 percent). Also notable, the majority of mothers who were unmarried at childbirth had at least a high school education (75 percent) and worked full-time in the previous year (53 percent) at the time of the age 15 survey, but only 30 percent were married. This suggests that marriage as a poverty-reduction strategy might be more challenging to achieve than full-time employment or education. Even so, among the group of mothers who remained unmarried by the age 15 survey, full-time employment and having at least a high school education led to dramatically lower poverty rates compared to mothers who did not achieve both milestones. In the following sections, I describe trends in poverty rates, relationship status, employment status, and education level for unmarried mothers who gave birth in urban hospitals in 1998–2000. In the first section, I describe the Future of Families Study and the measures I used to assess trends in employment, education, and relationship status across six survey waves (at the time of the birth and when the child was approximately age 1, 3, 5, 9, and 15). I used all available data from the mothers’ surveys and applied the surveys’ national weights so that the estimates represent all unmarried births that occurred in large US cities (population 200,000 or more) between 1998 and 2000 (Future of Families and Child Wellbeing Study n.d.c.). In the second section, I show trends in overall official poverty rates for the full cohort of mothers who were unmarried at the time of childbirth. Next, I show trends in relationship status, employment status, and education level for the cohort of mothers unmarried at childbirth across each survey year. Then, I show trends in average poverty rates by subgroup across each survey year separately and together using the success-sequence framework. In the fourth section, I explore changes in average poverty rates based on transitions into marriage, different employment statuses, and maternal education levels across survey years. In the final section, I summarize the conclusions and discuss the implications of the findings. Read the full report. References Burkhauser, Richard V., Kevin Corinth, James Elwell, and Jeff Larrimore. 2021. “Evaluating the Success of President Johnson’s War on Poverty: Revisiting the Historical Record Using an Absolute Full-Income Poverty Measure.” Working Paper. National Bureau of Economic Research. January. https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w26532/w26532.pdf . CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention). 1995.