TY - JOUR
T1 - Employment and Marriage among Inner-city Fathers
AU - Testa, Mark
AU - Astone, Nan Marie
AU - Krogh, Marilyn
AU - Neckerman, Kathryn M.
N1 - Funding Information:
Financial support is gratefully acknowledged from the Ford Foundation, the Carnegie Corporation, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the Institute for Research on Poverty, the Joyce Foundation, the Lloyd A. Fry Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Spencer Foundation, the William T. Grant Foundation, and the Woods Charitable Fund. Support was provided to Nan Astone by the National Institute for Aging under grant no. AG00129-02.
PY - 1989/1
Y1 - 1989/1
N2 - This article uses data from the Urban Poverty and Family Structure Survey of inner-city residents in Chicago to examine the effect of employment on the likelihood that single fathers marry. Our results show that employed fathers are twice as likely as nonemployed fathers to marry the mother of their first child. These results run contrary to Charles Murray's argument that welfare discourages employed, low-income men from marrying. They are consistent with William Julius Wilson's hypothesis that the rise in male joblessness is linked to the rise in never-married parenthood in the inner city. Our analysis also shows that couples are more likely to marry when the woman is a high school graduate. In this population, the enhanced earnings potential of a woman increases, not decreases, the likelihood of marriage. This result is inconsistent with the hypothesis that the closer a woman's earnings potential is to a man's, the less likely the couple is to marry. Neither employment nor education fully accounts for the racial and ethnic differences we observe in the marriage rates of fathers in inner-city Chicago.
AB - This article uses data from the Urban Poverty and Family Structure Survey of inner-city residents in Chicago to examine the effect of employment on the likelihood that single fathers marry. Our results show that employed fathers are twice as likely as nonemployed fathers to marry the mother of their first child. These results run contrary to Charles Murray's argument that welfare discourages employed, low-income men from marrying. They are consistent with William Julius Wilson's hypothesis that the rise in male joblessness is linked to the rise in never-married parenthood in the inner city. Our analysis also shows that couples are more likely to marry when the woman is a high school graduate. In this population, the enhanced earnings potential of a woman increases, not decreases, the likelihood of marriage. This result is inconsistent with the hypothesis that the closer a woman's earnings potential is to a man's, the less likely the couple is to marry. Neither employment nor education fully accounts for the racial and ethnic differences we observe in the marriage rates of fathers in inner-city Chicago.
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U2 - 10.1177/0002716289501001005
DO - 10.1177/0002716289501001005
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84932118918
SN - 0002-7162
VL - 501
SP - 79
EP - 91
JO - The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science
JF - The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science
IS - 1
ER -