Assisting Young, Unmarried Mothers to Become Self-Sufficient: The Effects of Different Types of Early Economic Support

Abstract

This article examines a sample of young, unmarried mothers from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) and considers how different types of economic support received soon after their first child is born contributes to the later self-sufficiency of young, unmarried mothers. It expands conventional categories of income support-AFDC, food stamps, child support-to include shared housing and relatives' assistance. The model also contains various behaviors of young mothers after the birth of their first child. The findings suggest that certain economic supports assist these mothers and that life choices they make after their child's birth are important to self-sufficiency. Key Words: income support, self-sufficiency, teenage mothers, welfare. Recent Congressional proposals to reform the welfare system have focused attention on strategies for discouraging out-of-wedlock births, particularly among young parents. This attention is fueled by the belief that pregnancy outside of marriage is the cause of many other social ills. As Charles Murray (1993), a neo-conservative researcher writes: Illegitimacy is the single most important social problem of our time-more important than crime, drugs, poverty, illiteracy, welfare, or homelessness because it drives everything else. Some policymakers seem to have adopted this view, positing that if they reform the welfare system there will be fewer unmarried women having children, which, in turn, will reduce the other social ills. Yet social science evidence contradicts these beliefs. Research documents that income support from welfare programs such as Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) is not a cause of women bearing children outside of marriage (Duncan & Hoffman, 1988; Ellwood & Bane, 1985; Moffit, 1992). Instead, a host of demographic and social trends are producing lower rates of marriage, higher ages at first marriage, and greater incidence of divorce and separation. Married women of all races and classes are having fewer children at the same time that unmarried women are having more (Ellwood & Crane, 1990; Furstenberg & Brooks-Gunn, 1986; Mare & Winship, 1991; Wojtkiewicz, McLanahan, & Garfinkel, 1990). While reforming the welfare system is likely to do little to change these complex demographic trends, policymakers have seized on reform as a panacea and are paying scant attention to ways that reform could address other desirable goals, such as assisting low-income families become self-sufficient. Although policymakers rhetorically have expressed their concern for increasing self-sufficiency among the poor, little attention has been given to defining self-sufficiency or considering how it is best achieved. This research seeks to address both public concern about outof-wedlock childbearing and the desire to increase the self-sufficiency of young mothers. Using a nationally representative sample of young women who were unmarried when they gave birth to their first child, we examine how economic assistance helps women in this vulnerable position achieve economic self-sufficiency later in life. We examine existing types of economic support-both public and private-and predict how these sources of support affect young, unmarried mothers' chances of becoming economically self-sufficient by the time their first child enters school. We also seek to understand the process of achieving self-sufficiency by examining a number of factors that could mediate the effect of assistance on later self-sufficiency. PRIOR RESEARCH Consequences of Adolescent Childbearing Much research has been done in the last 20 years on the consequences of adolescent sexual behavior, pregnancy, and parenting. (See Hayes, 1987; Miller & Moore, 1990; and U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 1995, for reviews.) Although adolescent childbearing was at its peak during the baby boom, most young mothers at that time were married. …