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Working Paper

Fertility and Welfare Participation

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Despite the attention that the fertility of welfare recipients has received recently, surprisingly little is known about it. This paper answers some basic questions about the phenomenon of welfare births. Among the findings from the March 1987 Current Population Survey are that 13.4 percent of all births are into the 7.3 percent of families receiving Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) and that (unadjusted) fertility rates of welfare recipients exceed those of other groups. Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, I find that nearly 60 percent of women who use AFDC in one or more years of the sample period have at least one "AFDC birth." I do not find prima facie evidence supporting the notions that women use AFDC to begin families earlier and that mothers use AFDC to realize their desires for large families.
12.01.1995ISSN 2573-7953 WP 95-16DOI 10.26509/frbc-wp-199516

Working Papers of the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland are preliminary materials circulated to stimulate discussion and critical comment on research in progress. They may not have been subject to the formal editorial review accorded official Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland publications. The views expressed in this paper are those of the authors and do not represent the views of the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland or the Federal Reserve System.

Suggested Citation

Powers, Elizabeth. 1995. “Fertility and Welfare Participation.” Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, Working Paper No. 95-16. https://doi.org/10.26509/frbc-wp-199516