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Title: Longitudinal Patterns of Welfare Use Among Young Mothers
Resulting in 1 citation.
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Crowley, Joan E. |
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Longitudinal Patterns of Welfare Use Among Young Mothers Presented: [S.L.], Tenth Annual Conference on Feminist Psychology of the Association for Women in Psychology, 1985 Cohort(s): NLSY79 Publisher: Association for Women in Psychology Keyword(s): Adolescent Fertility; Age at First Birth; Aid for Families with Dependent Children (AFDC); Childbearing; First Birth; Minority Groups; Mothers; Racial Differences; Transfers, Public; Welfare Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher. Using data from the NLSY, this paper examines welfare patterns of young women who had become mothers by 1983. It was found that welfare receipt of all types is highly concentrated among those young women who have borne a child. Almost half of the young mothers receive welfare at some point. As expected, the population of welfare mothers are likely to be less educated, to come from broken homes, to be from a minority group, and to have several children at an early age, relative to their non-welfare recipient counterparts. However, it is also clear that a number of women who receive welfare do not fit into these low privilege categories. Even among a population expected to have an overrepresentation of long-term recipients, most women are on welfare for a relatively short period. Pattern for welfare in general are not substantially different from patterns for AFDC specifically, despite differences in target groups and despite the fact that the AFDC group is roughly half the size of the inclusive welfare group. Although characteristics such as age at first birth, race, and education predict welfare receipt fairly well, they are less closely associated with the length of time that a young mother spends on welfare. The large degree of overlap on critical dimensions between welfare and non-welfare mothers points to the need for a greater understanding of the specific circumstances and combinations of circumstances which lead young women to become dependent on various government transfer programs, as well as the processes which lead young women to be able to leave the programs. In particular, the fact that a large proportion of welfare mothers are employed following the birth of their first child suggests that the keys to reducing welfare dependency will be found in the solution to the larger problem of how to increase the low earning power of young women. |
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Bibliography Citation
Crowley, Joan E. "Longitudinal Patterns of Welfare Use Among Young Mothers." Presented: [S.L.], Tenth Annual Conference on Feminist Psychology of the Association for Women in Psychology, 1985. |