ABSTRACT
The logic behind linking welfare reform and marriage promotion seems to be as follows. Data from several national surveys, most recently the National Survey of Family Growth, indicate that rates of marriage are significantly lower and rates of divorce are significantly higher in neighborhoods with higher rates of poverty and lower household incomes. Longitudinal data reveal associations between marital disruption and declines income for women, and have demonstrated long-term negative outcomes for children dissolved marriages. Although these findings have all been correlational, it has nonetheless been thought that they indicate the presence of causal relationships from marriage to poverty. Thus, promoting stable marital unions has been held as means of simultaneously preventing declines that lead families to rely on welfare and allowing low-income couples and their children to raise themselves up out of poverty. Among low-income families, marital distress may be a particular concern because these couples face the sorts of chronic and acute stressors that make marital distress more likely.
