Fertility and Welfare Participation

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.