Conventional wisdom and considerable social science research hold that children who live with their married biological or adoptive parents fare better on a host of indicators and outcomes than children in any other living arrangement. In public policy circles, this happy convergence of ideology and research has given momentum to the """"""""marriage movement""""""""--policy makers who believe that government should actively promote healthy marriages in order to improve the well being of children. Yet, for several reasons, it may be unreasonable to expect that children in """"""""marriage promoted"""""""" families will fare as well as their counterparts already living with married parents. First, the adults in these families may have weaker socio-economic characteristics than currently married parents. Second, the quality of the adult unions in these families may be poorer than average, and poorly matched parents may create an adverse home environment for children. And third, even a change from living with a single parent to a married couple family represents a disruption for children, and this turbulence in living arrangements may have negative consequences that offset some of the benefits of marriage. This project examines the relationships between living arrangements and child well-being using data and methods that account for the quality of adult unions as well as the effects of turbulence on children. The National Longitudinal Survey of Youth's Mother-Child files provide the ideal data for this investigation because they contain detailed measures of child well being, living arrangements and other socio-economic information, and these factors are measured at several points in time. Thus, when examining the correlation between children's outcomes and their living arrangements at a given point in time, one can also include measures of prior living arrangements to detect turbulence as well as measures of subsequent living arrangements to capture the quality of adult unions. Ultimately, this research will lead to an improved understanding of the impacts of living arrangements and family dynamics on multiple measures of child well being. It will also inform the debate about the potential benefits of marriage promotion policies.
