| Many critics of the current welfare
system argue that existing welfare regulations foster family instability. They
maintain that those regulations, which exclude most poor husband and wife
families from Aid to Families with Dependent Children assistance grants,
contribute to the problem of family dissolution. Thus, they conclude that
expanding the set of families eligible for family assistance plans or guaranteed
income measures would result in a marked strengthening of the low income family
structure. If all poor families could receive welfare, would the incidence of
instability change markedly? The unhappily married couple, in most cases, remain
together out of a sense of economic responsibility for their children, because
of the high costs of separation, or because of the consumption benefits of
marriage. The formation, maintenance, and dissolution of the family is in large
part a function of the relative balance between the benefits and costs of
marriage as seen by the individual members of the marriage. The major benefit
generated by the creation of a family is the expansion of the set of consumption
possibilities. The benefits from such a partnership depend largely on the
relative dissimilarity of the resources or basic endowments each partner brings
to the marriage. Persons with similar productive capacities have less economic
"cement" holding their marriage together. Since the family performs certain
function society regards as vital, a complex network of social and legal
buttresses has evolved to reinforce marriage. Much of the variation in marital
stability across income classes can be explained by the variation in costs of
dissolution imposed by society, e. g. division of property, alimony, child
support, and the social stigma attached to divorce. Marital stability is related to the costs of achieving an acceptable agreement on family consumption and production and to the prevailing social price of instability in the marriage partners social economic group. Expected AFDC income exerts pressures on family instability by reducing the cost of dissolution. To the extent that welfare is a form of government subsidized alimony payments, it reduces the institutional costs of separation and guarantees a minimal standard of living for wife and children. So welfare opportunities are a significant determinant of family instability in poor neighborhoods, but this is not the result of AFDC regulations that exclude most intact families from coverage. Rather, welfare instability occurs because public assistance lowers both the benefits of marriage and the costs of its disruption by providing a system of government subsidized alimony payments. |