Premarital Childbearing and Welfare Receipt: The Role of Mothers' Receipt

Abstract

This study uses the 1968–91 Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) to examine the relationship between mothers' receipt of Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) welfare benefits and their daughters' premarital childbearing and welfare receipt. The results for black females suggest that black daughters from welfare-recipient households were more likely to become adult welfare recipients than were black daughters from non-welfare-recipient households, but that there was only a weak relationship between mothers' welfare receipt and daughters' premarital childbearing. These results suggest that premarital childbearing was not an important variable mediating intergenerational transmission of welfare use in black families. Other results call into question previous findings using PSID data that suggest the existence of intergenerational welfare transmission among non-blacks. Specifically, it appears that the sample of non-black daughters in the PSID is insufficient to provide a satisfactory answer to the question of welfare transmission for that group.

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