What Did the "Illegitimacy Bonus" Reward?

Korenman Sanders (), Joyce Ted (), Robert Kaestner and Walper Jennifer ()
Additional contact information
Korenman Sanders: Baruch College, CUNY and NBER
Joyce Ted: Baruch College, City University of NY
Walper Jennifer: Baruch College, CUNY

The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, 2006, vol. 6, issue 1, 36

Abstract: The Out-Of-Wedlock Birth Reduction Bonus ("Illegitimacy Bonus"), part of the 1996 welfare reform legislation, awarded up to $100 million in each of five years to the five states with the greatest reduction in the non-marital birth ratio. Alabama, Michigan, and Washington D.C. each won bonuses four or more times, claiming nearly 60% of award monies. However, for these bonus winners, changes in the racial composition of births accounted for between one-third and 100% of the decline in the non-marital birth ratio. The non-marital birth ratio fell most in D.C., averaging 1.5 percentage points per year over the award period. Declines in non-marital birth ratios in Michigan and Alabama were slight. But the non-marital birth ratio fell in D.C. in large part because the number of black children born there fell dramatically, and a decline in the black population alone accounted for one third of the decline in black births. Within-race changes in non-marital birth ratios raised the overall non-marital birth ratio 0.5 percentage points in Alabama, and lowered the non-marital ratio by one percentage point in Michigan, and by about three percentage points in Washington D.C. Because it was based on unadjusted changes in states' aggregate non-martial birth ratios, the Illegitimacy Bonus rewarded racial/ethnic compositional changes at least as much as it rewarded declining non-marital birth ratios within major racial/ethnic groups.

Keywords: Illigitimacy bonus; birth-ratios; birth-reduction bonus (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2006
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.2202/1538-0653.1402 (text/html)
For access to full text, subscription to the journal or payment for the individual article is required.

Related works:
Working Paper: What Did the "Illegitimacy Bonus" Reward? (2004)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bpj:bejeap:v:topics.6:y:2006:i:1:n:8

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.degruyter.com/journal/key/bejeap/html

DOI: 10.2202/1538-0653.1402

Access Statistics for this article

The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy is currently edited by Hendrik Jürges and Sandra Ludwig

More articles in The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy from De Gruyter
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Peter Golla ().