Although most children raised by single parents fare well, on average, they are at greater risk of living in poverty and experiencing health, academic, and behavioral problems than children growing up with married biological parents. If interventions can improve the quality of unmarried parents’ relationships and increase the likelihood that they remain together, these interventions might also improve the well-being of their children. One possible approach to improving child well-being is thus strengthening the relationships of low-income couples through relationship skills education.

The Building Strong Families (BSF) project, sponsored by the Administration for Children and Families (ACF), U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, has been evaluating this kind of approach. The project developed, implemented, and tested voluntary programs that offer relationship skills education and other support services to unwed couples who are expecting a child or who have just had a baby. Eight organizations volunteered to be part of a rigorous evaluation designed to test a new strategy to improve the lives of low-income families. These organizations implemented BSF programs around the country, complying with a set of research-based program guidelines. (author abstract)

In 2002, the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) instituted the Community Healthy Marriage Initiative (CHMI) evaluation to document operational lessons and assess the effectiveness of community-based approaches to support healthy relationships and marriages and child well-being. A component of the CHMI study involves implementation research on demonstrations approved by the Office of Child Support Enforcement (OCSE) under authority of Section 1115 of the Social Security Act. The goals of the demonstrations are to achieve child support objectives through community engagement and service delivery activities related to healthy marriage and relationship (HMR) education programs.

A series of reports is being produced on the implementation of the Section 1115 projects. A total of 14 programs are included in the CHMI evaluation implementation study. Earlier reports covered the implementation of demonstrations in five locations: Boston, MA; Chicago, IL; Grand Rapids, MI; Jacksonville, FL; and Nampa, ID. This report focuses on the demonstrations in Minneapolis, MN; Lexington, KY; New Orleans, LA, Atlanta, GA; and Denver, CO. The report examines community engagement efforts, the design and implementation of service delivery (healthy marriage and relationship training workshops and related services), and links with child support. It does not present estimates of program impacts or effectiveness. The report is based on site visits conducted from November 2008 to June 2009, a time when the sites were in various stages of program implementation—demonstrations in Denver and Minneapolis were each in the last year of funding, whereas the other three demonstrations were in earlier stages of implementation.(author abstract)

This report explores the effects of employment-related outcomes (namely, average hours worked per week and average earnings per week) on the likelihood of marriage. The key challenge in estimating the effects of various employment-related outcomes on men’s or women’s likelihood of marriage is to account for the possibility that family status may affect employment outcomes (reverse causation) and that men and women with particular unobserved traits that make them more likely to be successful in the labor market may be more likely to marry (selection). Burstein (2007) in a recent article noted that in order to meet this challenge “one would need to randomly assign single men to a treatment group that had the effect of increasing their employment and earnings, and then look for the impact on their marital union formation.” This report applies precisely that strategy to generate consistent estimates of the effects of men’s and women’s employment and earnings on their likelihood of marriage.

Data from an experimental evaluation of the Job Corps program, which found statistically significant positive effects on the employment outcomes of both male and female participants, have been the basis for generating the estimates in this report. The random assignment of eligible applicants to program and control groups created the opportunity for a source of variation in employment and earnings that is independent of family structure or the background characteristics of program participants. By applying the instrumental variable (IV) method, we used this exogenous variation in employment and earnings created by the Job Corps intervention to identify causal effects of these employment-related outcomes on the likelihood of marriage for disadvantaged individuals in their twenties.

The most prominent finding of this study is that an increase in employment and earnings via the Job Corps program increases the likelihood of marriage for young women with economically disadvantaged backgrounds. Since the estimates account for the possibilities of reverse causation and unobserved selection (by using IV estimation), the results suggest that for disadvantaged young women, an increase in employment and earnings leads to an increase in marriage rates. The positive effects on women’s likelihood of marriage may be regarded as reflecting the benefits of women’s economic independence as well as the “good-catch” effect in the marriage market. (author abstract)

The Rural Welfare-to-Work (WtW) Strategies Demonstration Evaluation rigorously assessed the effectiveness of innovative programs for the rural poor. This final report presents 30-month impact and benefit-cost analysis findings for Building Nebraska Families (BNF), an intensive home visitation and life skills education program for hard-to-employ Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) clients in rural Nebraska. The findings point to the effectiveness of BNF in increasing employment and earnings and reducing poverty among a subgroup of very hard-to-employ (“more disadvantaged”) TANF clients who faced substantial obstacles and skill deficiencies.

BNF took an indirect approach to helping low-income people move from welfare to work and self-sufficiency. Offered in addition to Nebraska’s regular TANF program, BNF provided individualized education, mentoring, and service coordination support with the goal of improving TANF clients’ basic life skills, family functioning, and overall well-being. During interactive, home-based teaching sessions, master’s-level educators used research-based curricula to enhance clients’ life skills and family management practices. Low caseloads of between 12 and 18 clients allowed for intensive, individualized services.

Mathematica Policy Research, Inc. (MPR) and its subcontractor, Decision Information Resources, Inc., conducted the evaluation with funding from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families. Using a random assignment experiment, people eligible for limited program slots were assigned to a program group (which was offered BNF) or a control group (which was not offered BNF, but which could access all other available services). Given the use of random assignment, the evaluation’s key findings—highlighted below—provide rigorous evidence of BNF’s effectiveness. (author abstract)