Marriage and Family Formation Among Low-Income Couples: What Do We Know From Research?

Conference main page | Agenda and conference papers

Overview

This event - the National Poverty Center's inaugural research conference - brought together over 150 scholars, policy analysts, and practitioners who work on issues related to marriage, cohabitation, and family functioning among the low-income population.

Participants included family demographers, economists, welfare researchers, sociologists, psychologists, policy analysts, agency staff, and practitioners.

Goals

• To synthesize what is known from a variety of academic disciplines about the formation and dissolution of couple relationships among low-income populations, implications for child well-being, and efforts to strengthen marriage.
• To increase and enhance dialogue between social science researchers, policy analysts, and practitioners
• To set directions for future research

Agend and conference papers

Full agenda and conference papers.

Sponsors and organizers

This conference was sponsored by the National Poverty Center with funding from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation & the Administration for Children and Families.

Pamela Smock (Associate Professor, Dept. of Sociology; Senior Associate Research Scientist, ISR/Population Studies; Associate Director, Institute for Social Research) and Kristin Seefeldt (Research Investigator, Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy) were the conference organizers for the National Poverty Center.

After the event

See the agenda page to access papers and discussant comments from the conference.

Smock and Seefeldt have prepared a comprehensive paper integrating the research and commentaries presented at the conference for submission to a major academic journal. .

Finally, the conference events are expected to generate additions to the NPC Working Paper Series and NPC policy briefs.