This Brookings Institute Policy brief reviews federal and state initiatives that promote family formation and health marriages. The article tells how to identify effective programs to promote marriage, which benefits the overall wellbeing of families and children.

The proportion of married African-American couples has declined over the past years. This report seeks to identify the potential consequences to African-American families due to these low marriage rates and compare the consequences of marriage to Caucasian families.

This article outlines marriage penalties and the effect these penalties can have on low-income families. Despite recent policy reforms, these penalties still remain for mostly low-to-moderate income families. Authors offer suggestions for reducing these marriage penalties such as setting a maximum marginal tax rate for lower-income individuals and providing wage subsidies to low-income workers.

This report describes a meeting that took place in Charleston, WV, on November 3, 2004, sponsored by the Administration for Children and Families (ACF). The meeting was a follow-up to a a Healthy Marriage Forum that took place in Charleston, WV, on June 9, 2004.

This resource reviews the Administration for Children and Families' Healthy Marriage Initiative, which was designed to support President Bush's goal of increasing healthy marriages by focusing attention and action on strengthening marriages and preparing interested individuals and couples for healthy marriages. This publication showcases some of the programs that organizations have developed using ACF grants and demonstrates how these programs are helping to create successful marital partnerships. This publication also provides insight into some of the lessons learned along the way that other agencies and organizations can use to promote healthy marriages in their communities.

To help provide information on states' experiences related to the goal of reducing nonmarital births, and the factors that helped shape state policies, this study examines, in two parts, state perspectives and experiences regarding nonmarital birth policy since the passage of PRWORA.

BSF works with state/local partners to develop or refine interventions to promote healthy marriage among interested unwed parents at or near the birth of their child.

Authored by Hope Corman, Rider University, National Bureau of Economic Research; Nancy E. Reichman, Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey; and Kelly Noonan, Rider University, National Bureau of Economic Research. In this report, the authors estimate the effect of poor child health on the labor supply of mothers post welfare reform, using a national sample of mostly unwed parents and their children-a group at high risk of living in poverty. The researchers address the potential endogeneity of child health and find that having a young child in poor health reduces the mother's probability of working by eight percentage points and her hours of work by three per week when she is employed. These results suggest that children's health problems may diminish their families' capacity to invest in their health.

This research brief outlines the "Building Strong Families" project, which aims at helping new, unmarried parents gain the skills necessary to build healthy marriages. The project was created with expected outcomes to enhance the wellbeing of children in low-income families.

The ACF West-Central Hub sponsored a conference entitled “Outreach to Faith and Community: Renewing Our Commitment,” May 14-16, 2002, in New Orleans, Louisiana. This event was designed to support the President Bush's White House Initiative on Rallying the Armies of Compassion and the DHHS/ACF initiative to remove barriers to full participation of faith-based and community services in the delivery of government-funded social services. The conference also showcased ACF’s national initiatives in relation to strengthening families through promoting healthy marriages, parenting skills, and responsible fatherhood or male involvement in support of child well-being.