Research from 16,652 individuals shows that divorce affects not only children’s ability to earn but reduces their wealth by 46% on average.

People in Australia who experience the divorce or separation of their parents during childhood accumulate 46% less net wealth, on average, than do people whose parents do not separate when they are children.

Wealth is defined as the net difference of all assets and debts. Assets include real estate, business assets, financial assets, savings, life insurances, private pension savings, cash, vehicles and other durables, and collectibles such as art. Debts include mortgages, loans, business debts, credit card debt and overdue bills.

Other studies have found links between experiencing parental separation during childhood and adult earning, but earnings are only a part of wealth. Wealth brings real and psychological safety nets in a way that income alone does not. Wealth, like health, represents the cumulative impact of many factors over time.

The research used data on 16,652 individuals from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia survey (HILDA, 2001-2014).

The timing of the parental separation – whether it occurred when the child was zero to five years old or six to 14 years old – made little difference to later wealth.

The researchers went on to examine what pathways may explain the association between childhood experience of parental separation and lower adult wealth.

They found that 21% of the link can be attributed to something rarely measured before in research on the impact of parental separation on children: a shorter ‘financial planning horizon’, which is how far into the future the individuals plan for their financial savings. A possible explanation of this link is that parental separation increases uncertainty for children, leading them to put higher value on the present and near future than on the far future. Other research has shown that people who think longer-term tend to save more money.

Another 20% of the link can be attributed to lower educational achievement, measured by the number of years of education completed. There are multiple ways that parental separation may disrupt education. It can reduce economic resources for the family; having less wealth means parents taking less risk with educational options for their children; and less consistent parenting may disrupt education as well.

A further 10% of the link can be attributed to more unstable family structures in adulthood for those who have experienced the separation of their parents in childhood. The measures used in this research were ‘how many years in a first marriage?’ and ‘how many co-residential and married partners?’ A strong link between family stability in adulthood and experience of parental separation in childhood has been found in other research. Family instability hampers wealth accumulationy. Also, children who have experienced the divorce of their parents are less likely to get married in the first place, and wealth accumulation is lower in cohabiting families than in married ones.

One thing the researchers predicted, but which did not show up in the statistics, was a link between less wealth and reduced wealth transfers from separated parents compared to married parents. Separation reduces parents’ wealth, leaving them less wealth to pass on to their children. Separation may lead to weaker parent-child bonds, particularly with fathers, which may also lead to less transfer of wealth, as well as less financial advice. But this pathway was not demonstrated in the research. It could be that when children move into blended families, new wealth transfers take place from nonbiological parents.

Unsurprisingly, the researchers found a link between reduced wealth and less income, accounting for 17% of the link between childhood experience of separation and adult wealth.

In Australia, about one-third of marriages end in divorce. Separations between cohabiting parents are more frequent.

Another study from the USA, in 2019, found an even bigger differential in wealth between adults who had experienced parental separation in childhood and those who had not. Perhaps the bigger difference in the USA is explained by the fact that less support is available for separating families than in Australia.

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A team of researchers, including José Alberto Molina from the University of Zaragoza in Spain, examined data from the American National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979, which interviewed 12,686 young people every year between 1979 and 1994, and every two years (in even-numbered years) since then.

The challenge was to distinguish the causal effect of conceiving children before and after marriage from an effect in the other way direction: namely, happier couples may be both less likely to divorce and more likely to have more children. The researchers dealt with this problem by using a statistical approach which identifies variables that might affect how many children a couple will have but not their propensity to divorce.

The research team offers an economic explanation for its findings: individuals divorce if their expected gains from marriage fall short of their expected utility outside the current marriage. The presence of children conceived within the marriage increases the value of the marriage, more so than the disruptive effect that children are known to have on many couple relationships. The effect of children conceived before and within marriage is different because they may be valued differently by their parents–parents who conceive children within marriage can be expected to place more value on the institution of marriage, and may therefore place more value on marital investments such as children. Thus the disruptive effect of children conceived before marriage is higher.

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Scarcity of middle-skill jobs spurs couples to have their first child out of wedlock.

In areas with more middle-skill jobs, young adults are more likely to choose marriage before having their first child. And in areas with fewer of these jobs, they’re more likely to have their first child out of wedlock.

We study how equality and inequality impact the daily lives of families, particularly within the context of first births. We’ve found that income inequality in the areas where families live is correlated with whether they have children outside the framework of marriage. Income inequality is directly related to the availability of “middle-skill” jobs, those that are accessible to someone with a high school education and pay above-poverty wages. Our research suggests that the availability of these types of jobs affects the decisions that young adults make about starting families.

Decent jobs make people more prone to marry

We looked at a national sample of 9,000 young adults whose information is publicly available from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, 1997 Cohort. They were first interviewed in 1997 when they were 12 to 16 years old and have been interviewed every year since. We used data through 2011, when they were 26 to 30 years old.

“In general, if you have children, you should strive to be in a stable partnership.”

The probability that young adults (ages 18 to 30) will have a child outside marriage is highest in their early to mid-twenties. We wanted to know whether members of the study cohort got married before having their first child.

We added US census data on household income inequality in the area where each person lived, taking into account variation between highest and lowest household incomes. Using statistical models, we tried to tease out causal effects of income equality on marital status before a first child’s birth.

We also factored in another piece of information gleaned from census data—the prevalence of middle-skill jobs (for example, sales clerk, security guard, machine operator, or bus driver). We wondered if the availability of decent jobs for people without a university education affects whether people marry before starting families. We found that young adults who live in areas with better job opportunities are more likely to marry before having their first child. Much of the apparent effect of household income inequality on first births seems to be accounted for by the prevalence of decent jobs for high school graduates. Thus economic considerations influence people’s decisions to have a child outside of marriage.

High levels of income inequality are associated with a lesser likelihood of marrying before first births. It appears that a hole in the middle of the job market — that is, a lack of middle-skill jobs — is what spurs couples to have children out of wedlock.

Why marriage matters

Why do we care if couples are married or not? In the US, marriage breeds stable partnerships, which are better for children.

In general, if you have children, you should strive to be in a stable partnership. In the US, people in stable partnerships tend to be married. Marriage is more highly valued in the US than elsewhere as a symbol of a successful personal life. The battle over same-sex marriage has been fiercer in the US than in other countries because marriage is considered desirable here and everyone wants a piece of it.

“Even if the majority of first children among unmarried people are unplanned, the decision to marry is affected by the job market.”

In Europe, where it’s common to have stable, long-term cohabiting partnerships, we might not care whether couples are married when they have their first child. In the US, we haven’t seen a similar trend toward long-term cohabiting relationships. Most cohabiting couples in the US live together for no more than three years, after which about half break up and half get married. If the US someday becomes more like Europe, we might become less concerned about marriage.

In the US, marriage creates stability

US parents who cohabit rather than marry tend to have a series of partners, which creates unstable family lives that can harm children’s wellbeing. The coming and going of parents and partners can be difficult. A number of studies suggest that instability has negative consequences for children’s behavioral development. Research ties absent fathers to higher levels of aggression. Children born to married parents appear to be less aggressive both in and out of school.

Most births outside marriage are unplanned

One potential criticism of our approach is that in surveys, most people who have had a child outside marriage say their pregnancy was unintended.

But we contend that even if a pregnancy was unplanned, the choice to marry may well be a rational decision. Even if the majority of first children among unmarried people are unplanned, the decision to marry is affected by the job market.

What’s unique about this research

Much of the research on the consequences of income inequality hasn’t looked at individual data; instead, it has looked at counties or states. We’re taking lofty macro-level research on income inequality down to the individual level of young adults. We’re suggesting that income equality, rather than affecting marriage decisiosns directly, is an indicator of the health of the middle of the job market.

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Many victims of abuse go on to enjoy happy marriages, finds study of links between partner characteristics and relationship satisfaction.

Having a warm, loving partner typically won’t save you from the reduced relationship satisfaction that springs from having experienced child abuse, according to our three-year study of hundreds of newlywed couples.

We found that being married to a loving partner didn’t alter a well-documented association between childhood experiences of abuse and lower relationship satisfaction in adult life.

“The study challenges the expectation that a good marriage will diminish or offset the impact of abuse during childhood.”

The study challenges the expectation that a good marriage will always diminish or offset the impact of abuse during childhood. However loving a couple’s relationship is, we found that childhood abuse remains linked to lower relationship satisfaction. At the same time, our study shows that, among people who eventually marry, those who experience a difficult and abusive childhood can and do enjoy fulfilling relationships.

Effects of childhood abuse on relationships aren’t large

Childhood abuse doesn’t mean that a person is destined to have an unhappy marriage. It wouldn’t be accurate to conclude that such individuals will eventually become dissatisfied with their marriages or seek divorce. The effects of abuse on marriage satisfaction are statistically significant, but they aren’t large. In practical terms, this means that some abused individuals actually experience levels of satisfaction that are higher than those of some people who were never abused. That’s because, for both groups, there is a continuum of marriage satisfaction, with some people experiencing more happiness than others in their couple relationships.

Ours is among the first studies to examine how partner characteristics affect the relationship satisfaction of people who report having experienced childhood abuse. More than 400 heterosexual newlywed couples, married in Los Angeles, participated in our study. On four occasions, every 9 months, beginning soon after their marriage, we interviewed them at home about their relationships. We also videotaped them during private conversations, which we later coded for positive communication (such as levels of warmth and empathy) and negative communication (such as angry coercion and contempt).

Aggressive partners didn’t worsen impact of earlier abuse

When we analyzed the association between one partner’s earlier childhood abuse and relationship satisfaction, it grew neither stronger nor weaker when the other partner was supportive and warm. And it may surprise you that the association typically also remained constant when the partner was more hostile.

“Our findings, though some people may find them disheartening, show that couples need to have realistic expectations when they form relationships.”

Our findings, though some people may find them disheartening, show that couples need to have realistic expectations when they form relationships. For example, a non-abused partner whose husband was abused may risk becoming disillusioned. She might say, “Gosh, we’ve been together for a while now, but he still doesn’t trust me. What do I have to do? What’s going wrong? Will he ever feel less sensitive or moody?” Our findings help explain such problems, and suggest a stance that favors accepting the partner rather than trying to change him or her. Other studies, notably by Jim McNulty and Ben Karney, show that having high expectations of relationships can be damaging if couples lack the ability to achieve them.

Findings support acceptance-based therapies

Some people tend to think of marriage as a transformative experience, a fertile environment for self-improvement, more than as a place of unconditional acceptance. Some hope that their partner can change them – or that they can change their partner, regardless of his or her upbringing. Our findings add to growing evidence in favor of acceptance and commitment-based therapies for couples. Therapies such as Integrative Behavioral Couple Therapy (IBCT), for example, focus on acceptance. Acceptance doesn’t mean resigning yourself to a diminished life in the face of problems. Rather, it means accepting that differences between spouses exist naturally and that such differences need not be changed. Instead, reactions to these differences can be changed. In this way, couples can let go of the struggle, stop using their energy fruitlessly, and try to change what traits they can.

An interesting but surprising finding concerned couples in which both partners had experienced childhood abuse. In these cases, we found that having a partner who also experienced abuse did indeed temper the impact. Our data don’t give us enough information to explain this result, but we can speculate. Could it be that partners found it easier to disclose rather than hide their pasts when both had been abused? Did their similar experiences give them empathetic skills to tackle the other’s past traumas? Future research should look into such questions.

Overall, our study may be a reality check for couples in which one member was abused as a child, as well as for counselors and therapists. They should be wary of thinking that a loving partner can and should resolve the impact of abuse on relationship satisfaction. Perhaps this can happen in some relationships, but in our study such beneficial effects were not the norm. It’s worth remembering that certain psychological tools, including emerging forms of acceptance-based therapies for individuals and couples, though they may not be able to neutralize the past, may nonetheless help people with difficult childhoods thrive in the future.

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The researchers, Jarl Mooyaart and Aart Liefbroer of the Netherlands Interdisciplinary Demographic Institute, checked to make sure that the effect wasn’t due just to the child’s own level of education. They found that for each level of the children’s education, the parents’ education still made a difference.

Children of more educated mothers or fathers are also more likely to cohabit rather than marry, compared with children of less educated parents. Among people born since 1960, two-thirds of women and three-quarters of men with less-educated parents cohabit in their first union; over 80 percent of both women and men with better-educated parents cohabit in their first union.

Mothers’ education shows a slightly greater correlation than the education of the father with all the effects except one: the timing of a first marriage.

Mooyart and Liefbroer’s study adds to the growing evidence that parents’ education has a long-term influence on the lives of the next generation.

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Schools should focus on sensitive treatment for the dominant legacies of family instability – disruptive behaviour and anxiety.

Increasing family instability, caused by divorce and remarriage (as well as the formation and dissolution of cohabiting unions), is having a major influence on children’s social-emotional development, especially among boys, according to latest research.

Education policy should address the impacts of instability and expand beyond its focus on improving test scores, which, for many children, is too narrow an approach for securing long-term success. It must also tackle the mix of aggression, anxiety and other long-term mental health problems, particularly among boys, that can be dominant legacies of family instability.

“Early support would be better than coming down hard on misbehaving children, particularly boys, which can turn them against school so they fall behind, leading to damaging spill over effects.”

These difficulties undermine development of so-called “non-cognitive skills,” such as the ability to pay attention and persist with a task, as well as self-confidence and the ability to get along with peers, which may be just as important as test scores in the long run. A policy shift is urgent because recent increases in family instability have put more and more children at risk of missing out on developing important social-emotional skills.

These recommendations spring from our research in the United States examining the causal effects of different types of family instability on children. We found that divorce and separation play a limited role in shaping children’s cognitive abilities, such as language and mathematical skills, which are tested in conventional school examinations. Maternal education and poverty are much more important in this area. In contrast, family instability plays a much bigger role than mothers’ education or poverty in the development of “social-emotional” skills. For example, family instability has twice as much influence as poverty does on whether children develop aggressive behavior. It is on par with poverty in causing childhood anxiety and shyness.

Our findings show that losing a biological father when parents break up is generally worse for children’s development than the arrival of a stepfather in their lives. The breakup of a two-parent family also typically has a more negative emotional impact for white children, whereas the entrance of a stepparent has a more negative impact for Hispanic children.

The significant role that mental health or social-emotional skills play in individual success is becoming better understood. For example, the U.S. Perry Preschool program for three- and four-year-olds from disadvantaged families was designed in the 1960s to improve “cognitive” scores in language and math tests. It was initially deemed a failure because early gains in test scores faded over time. However, when researchers looked at these children 40 years later, they found that those who participated in the program were more likely to finish high school than their peers and more likely to have positive outcomes in adulthood, notably more stable relationships and less criminality. Many people now believe that the program, which was designed to enhance cognitive skills, actually affected children’s social-emotional skills. This seems to have conferred lifelong benefits that perhaps outweigh those that might have sprung from the sought-after but unachieved higher test scores.

All this means that policy makers need to consider how to better prevent children from being handicapped by emotional or behavioural problems such as aggression, shyness and anxiety. Children should be supported properly as they go through the now common experience of family instability. Teachers should know more about the part that family disruption can play in childhood difficulties. Schools should have mental health counsellors and identify children at risk. When children have a fever or a broken arm, they receive expert help. Likewise, schools should be sensitive to how children typically react to family breakdown and reorganization. Early support would be better than coming down hard on misbehaving children, particularly boys, which can turn them against school so they fall behind, leading to damaging spill-over effects.

It is important to understand the role of gender in these issues. Emotional wellbeing appears to be much more compromised by family instability among boys than it is among girls. The impact of instability on “non-cognitive” skills is two to three times greater for boys, we found.

The reasons are not well understood. It may be that the loss of a biological father is more important to boys than to girls. Possibly, the loss is a marker for a lot of other sources of instability – new men moving in and out, the arrival of half-siblings, a more complex household – to which boys may be more sensitive.

Whatever the reasons, it is worth asking whether this greater emotional sensitivity among boys helps explain their increasing difficulties in school. The gender gap between girls’ and boys’ achievement in school, which has opened up in the US and other Western countries since about 1980, has coincided with a great deal of family instability.

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Does marriage lead to good or successful parenting, or are people with the traits of good parents more likely to marry?

Plenty of research shows that children who are raised by their married, biological parents tend to be healthier (both mentally and physically) and do better in school, than children who are not raised within marriage. But why?

Is the reason that married couples tend to have more resources, both financially and otherwise? That they can run a household more efficiently by specializing in different tasks and coordinating their efforts? That together they have a larger social network to rely on for support when things get tough? In short, what are the mechanisms through which marriage operates to enhance children’s wellbeing?

“The advantages of marriage for children’s wellbeing will be hard to replicate through policies other than those that bolster marriage itself.”

And beyond these mechanisms, is there something intrinsic to marriage itself that directly leads to better outcomes for children? At a time when so many American children are growing up with single or cohabiting parents, that’s an important question. What’s the best way to help all children thrive? Is it through policies that will help unmarried parents and families take advantage of the same mechanisms that married parents enjoy and thereby help their children have better life outcomes? Or through policies that encourage parents to get married and stay married?

When we look at the relationship between marriage and children’s wellbeing, the question of causality looms large. If children of married parents receive better parenting, for example, does that mean that marriage leads to good or successful parenting, or does it mean that people with the traits of good parents are more likely to marry?

Researchers call this a selection problem; that is, it’s possible that married parents tend to select marriage because they have certain qualities—higher incomes, more education, larger social networks—that also tend to produce better outcomes for children. Sophisticated statistical techniques can help sort out this problem. Though I won’t go into the technical details, researchers have used such techniques to examine the mechanisms through which marriage might improve children’s lives, looking for causal effects.

For a recent issue of the Future of Children, I reviewed research on a variety of mechanisms that might explain why children of married parents fare better than other children. Some of the mechanisms have been well studied, including parents’ income, fathers’ involvement with their children, parents’ physical and mental health, parenting quality, health insurance, home ownership, parents’ relationships, and family stability. Others have received less attention, including net wealth, constraints on borrowing, and informal insurance through social networks.

All of these mechanisms tend to vary by family structure (that is, whether the children have married parents or live in another family arrangement). All of them may affect some aspect of children’s wellbeing, such as health or educational attainment. Yet when researchers study them, they typically find that a given mechanism explains some but not all of the relationship between family structure and children’s outcomes.

For example, a recent study hypothesized that higher household income and greater access to health insurance might explain why children of married parents generally have better health than other children. The authors confirmed that family structure was associated with income and insurance, and that income and insurance were in turn associated with children’s health; however, even among children with similar household income and similar access to health insurance, those whose parents were married were also healthier. Thus, although the researchers found support for their hypothesis that differences in income and insurance produced differences in children’s health, they also found that family structure had other associations with health beyond income and insurance. This pattern of partial explanation is repeated across many, many studies.

The principal exception to this pattern comes from studies of family stability. When researchers measure instability by the simple number of transitions between different family arrangements (for example, from living with married to parents to living with a single parent after a divorce to living in a stepfamily), they find that instability often accounts for most if not all of the associations between family structure and children’s outcomes. So stability could be the mechanism through which marriage improves children’s wellbeing. Still, it could also be that these studies haven’t really explained why family structure matters; rather, they may have just found that counting the number of transitions is the best way to measure family structure.

What can we conclude from the fact that almost wherever we look, mechanisms such as higher income, more education, better access to health insurance and so on don’t fully explain the association between American children’s wellbeing and marriage? One reasonable conclusion is that the advantages of marriage for children’s wellbeing will be hard to replicate through policies other than those that bolster marriage itself. While helping unmarried parents increase their incomes, spend more time with their kids, find better child care, etc., would surely benefit children, these are likely to be, at best, only partial substitutes for marriage itself. The advantages of marriage for children appear to be the sum of many, many parts.

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U.S. study shows health dangers even to traditional families from non-standard working hours and makes case for greater parental entitlements to flexible working and living wages.

Children of married mothers sometimes face significantly greater obesity risks than children in families where moms are single or cohabiting. That’s the unexpected finding from our study of childhood obesity in the United States, which highlights nutritional dangers for children when married moms work late night or weekend hours in addition to their regular day jobs.

These insights add a caveat to two key assumptions of U.S. family policy – that the wellbeing of children in low-income households is greatest when mothers are married and when they work.

“Our findings challenge the often unspoken assumption that social policy’s task is to fix marginalized or complex families and there is little to worry about in married families.”

Our study looked at how the likelihood of children being overweight or obese varied for different types of families when mom had a second job—such as cleaning, nursing or waitressing—that required her to work some nights or weekends. This meant that the she might not be at home for mealtimes or at bedtime.

Previous studies have generally found that children are more likely to be obese when their mothers work longer hours. A small number of studies have also found higher obesity risks for children whose mothers work non-standard shifts. We found that, when compared to children whose mothers worked only standard week day hours (6am-6pm), children were more likely to be obese when their mothers worked a combination of non-standard hours in a second job alongside normal hours in a primary job. But this was true only for children living with married biological parents. We found no increased risk for children living with unmarried biological parents or single moms. Fathers’ work schedules were not associated with children’s likelihood of being overweight or obese.

Our findings stand as a warning to social policy makers not to assume that children of married mothers are immune to risk. They challenge the often unspoken assumption that social policy’s task is to fix marginalized or complex families and that there is little to worry about in married families. And they also indicate that the modern labor market, which increasingly requires non-standard hours, particularly from low-wage workers, can pose threats to children’s well-being in all types of families—even those with married parents, which are, understandably, regarded as generally sound places for child-rearing.

This research has implications for how policy makers might construct work support for families. Most U.S. policy discussions about maternal employment focus on whether parents should or should not work. In contrast with many European countries, little attention has been directed in the U.S. toward helping families to establish healthy work-family balance and avoid disruptions to family resources and processes, which may in turn damage child health and well-being. This study strengthens the case for focusing more on how programs and entitlements might help working families cope with irregular hours of work, which are increasingly common.

Why might children of married parents uniquely face this particular nutritional risk when mom has a second job with irregular hours? Previous studies have indicated that non-standard working hours disrupt children’s routines. We expected children in single-mother families to be most affected, because they have fewer resources. However, given our findings, it may be that married biological families are less able than single-mother and cohabiting families to cope with these irregular hours. Single-mother and cohabiting families may be more accustomed to being flexible around mothers’ availability.

The stability of married-parent families, which is normally an asset, may actually make them less able to adapt to the types of stress posed by the complicated work shifts to which cohabiting and single-mother families often become habituated. One reason might be that married biological parents may be characterized by more traditional gender roles, so that dads are less likely to take responsibility for providing healthy meals when mom is absent.

Whatever the reasons for these increased risks, parents clearly need better options to avoid the difficult choice that some currently must make between securing family income and maintaining their children’s nutritional health. They would benefit from greater access to flexible work policies, such as being able to choose their shifts, as well as access to generous family and medical leave. Wage policies are also important: parents are often forced to make these choices because their first wage is insufficient to support their families. This research shows that all families need such supports, even those led by married biological parents. For some parents, their job choices are creating risks to their children’s health.

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Policy should recognize that the impact on child poverty of having married parents has reduced since the 1970s. Having working parents is more important.

Politicians are putting too much emphasis on marriage as a solution to child poverty. Since 1974, in the United States, marriage’s effectiveness in protecting children from poverty has fallen by more than half. At the same time, the impact of parental employment on reducing child poverty has more than doubled. Policy makers can best cut child poverty by boosting both the numbers and the incomes of adult earners in households with children.

These recommendations stem from my recent study that examines how marriage and work, respectively, influenced child poverty in the U.S. from 1974 to 2010. I found that marriage still benefits children economically, but less than in the past. Having working adults in the household matters more than before, and the balance of importance has shifted considerably towards work.

“Marriage still benefits children economically, but less than in the past. Having working adults in the household matters more and the balance of importance has shifted considerably towards work.”

These results align with data showing that the child poverty gap between unmarried and married households has narrowed. They are likewise consistent with a widening poverty gap among children living in no-earner, one-earner, and two-or-more-earner households.

A political focus on marriage, in any case, isn’t having much impact on how couples operate. Whereas a married couple with children was once the norm, more children are now born out of wedlock and more are living in single-parent households. Divorce rates increased during the period and remain relatively high; cohabitation levels are increasing; and more Americans are choosing to marry later, if at all. Overall, marriage has become a less universal institution.

Even if unmarried parents get married, their children won’t necessarily be lifted out of poverty. For example, Wendy Sigle-Rushton and Sara McLanahan found that almost half of unmarried mothers would continue to live below the federal poverty line even if they were to marry.

Clearly, the U.S. needs more effective policy tools. The nation has failed to reduce child poverty significantly over the past few decades and has unusually high child poverty rates relative to other rich countries. Greater support for work in families could be part of the answer, particularly given the challenges that many parents face. For example, from 1974 to 2010, median wages stagnated; earnings inequality worsened; well-paid blue-collar work declined alongside growth in part-time, low-wage jobs; and job insecurity increased.

Why has work become a better tool than marriage for tackling child poverty? Traditionally, marriage has been seen as a strong defence against child poverty, because married households have had two potential earners, can pool their resources, and can save more, making them better able to withstand economic shocks. However, as more children have lived in cohabiting households, the characteristics of families in unmarried households have also changed. The typical number of earners in unmarried households increased from 1974 to 2010, while it actually decreased in married households. Thus, increased cohabitation and work in unmarried households may have weakened the poverty penalty for children who don’t live in a married household.

Work skills in unmarried households have also increased. Among children in unmarried households, the percentage of heads of household with less than a high school degree fell by half, from 45.31% in 1974 to 20.91% in 2010. Meanwhile, the percentage with four or more years of college almost doubled, from 7.29% to 14.55%. Single-parent families also became less uniformly disadvantaged: employment rose among single mothers, among whom an increasing number are well educated and have access to higher-earning jobs. The number of single fathers, who are more likely to have greater incomes and cohabitate than single mothers, also rose.

Meanwhile, work has gained greater importance as a means of alleviating childhood poverty. This is partly because economic and labor market trends increased the pressure for families to have more than one earner in the household to stay financially stable. In addition, dramatic decreases in welfare receipt and the value of welfare transfers, following the 1996 U.S. welfare reforms, made families increasingly reliant on their paid earnings. And the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), which requires recipients to be employed, has expanded to become the largest family assistance program in the U.S. This transition from work-free welfare to social assistance that requires work may have increased the need for employment for avoiding child poverty.

Employment is essential for families’ economic security, and work supports such as work tax credits and child care subsidies can potentially have the largest impact on a country’s child poverty rate. Yet this fact has been relatively neglected in American discussions of poverty policy, which have often focused on simply getting people to work and cultivating their work ethic.

It is equally important to have policies that help families maintain work. Single-parent households are more vulnerable to child poverty and are less likely to have multiple earners. Thus policies should facilitate gainful and secure employment for single parents. Christina Gibson-Davis has shown that increased earnings not only improve children’s economic well-being, but may also increase the probability of financially stable marriages among low-income mothers, which in turn, could help further reduce child poverty.

Even though employment is essential, it doesn’t guarantee an escape from poverty. Poverty rates among working people remain relatively high in the United States. Therefore, boosting wages for low income workers and expanding work supports such as tax credits would also help to effectively reduce child poverty. Yet two very important and broadly supported work supports, the EITC and the Child Tax Credit, are set to expire at the end of 2017 if they are not made permanent. According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, letting these credits expire could push 8 million children into, or deeper into, poverty.

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