Complete Marriage And Cohabitation History Data example essay topic

The Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics was established to promote "Coordination, collaboration and integration... of Federal data on child and family issues and conditions". To carry out that mission, the Forum publishes its annual report, America's Children, and initiates other activities to improve federal statistics on children and families. The Forum's Data Collection Committee undertook a detailed review of federal statistics on marriage, divorce, remarriage, and cohabitation, holding a conference on "Counting Couples: Improving Federal Statistics on Marriage, Divorce, Remarriage, and Cohabitation", on December 13, and 14, 2001. The purpose of the review was to understand what is being collected on these topics, and how the quality and comparability of this information can be improved. This report is a summary of the conference, the recommendations made by its participants, and the rationale for those recommendations. We hope that this report will be helpful to the Forum's member agencies, their staffs, and other interested parties, as they improve the measurement of marriage, divorce, remarriage, and cohabitation, and their effects on the well-being of men, women, and children in the United States.

Over the past several decades, dramatic changes have reshaped America's families. Young adults have delayed marriage. Cohabitation before marriage has become more commonplace. One in three women giving birth is now unmarried, up from 5% in 1960. The proportion of children under 18 living in single parent families rose from 23% to 31% between 1980 and 2000, reflecting increased rates of both non marital childbearing and divorce. The transformation in U.S. families has profound implications for policy-makers.

It is clear that family trends have had important effects - both positive and negative - on the lives and well-being of children and adults and on the ways in which families function. Effective economic and social policy depends in part on the ability to understand and address the changing shape and needs of American families. This, in turn, requires valid and reliable data on marriage, divorce, remarriage (hereafter included in the term marriage), cohabitation, and the family situations of children over time at the national, state, and local levels. Statistical data are used in the policy arena for a variety of purposes. They are used to provide basic point-in-time descriptive data on the current composition of families and households in the United States; to map trends in family formation and structure; and to understand the causes of family change and how they impact the well-being of children. They are used for developing and targeting policies and intervention strategies, such as those currently envisioned to strengthen marriage, and for evaluating whether programs and strategies are working properly and meeting intended goals.

In December 2001, the Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics convened the Counting Couples conference to assess how some of the major agencies in the federal statistical system were meeting the need for data on marriage, divorce, and cohabitation. Over 90 professionals from Federal and State statistical agencies, policy organizations, and academic and research organizations participated. On the first day, participants reviewed information needs of policy-makers and academic researchers and the adequacy of data available through existing data collection activities to address these needs. On the second day, participants divided into seven discussion groups to identify the most critical needs and the best strategies for short- and long-term improvements. This report summarizes the presentations, the recommendations of the discussion groups, and the consensus of conference participants developed through the integration of group recommendations. These recommendations are suggestions for improvements and are not meant to be taken as a mandate for action.

Conference participants overwhelmingly agreed that the federal statistical system can and should improve the consistency and accuracy of measuring family structure and family transitions such as marriage, divorce, and cohabitation. Basic information is needed not only at the national level, but also at the state and local levels where responsibility for policy-making is increasingly shared. Participants also emphasized the need to better understand why family change occurs and the consequences it has for the well-being of families, couples, and children. They called for improved data on several topics related to this need, including the role and presence of fathers in the family, the relationship between family structure and child well-being, the quality of couple relationships, family attitudes and norms, and the causes and consequences of family change. A set of 14 specific Targets of Opportunity for improving data on marriage, divorce, and cohabitation and on the causes and consequences of union formation, dissolution and family change were identified through a synthesis of the discussions of conference participants held in several independent working groups. A list of these Targets of Opportunity can be found on the inside cover of this report.

The Targets of Opportunity varied with respect to the resources required for implementation and the degree to which the seven discussion groups uniformly endorsed them. Four targets were both highly endorsed (by at least five of the groups) and required substantial investments to accomplish. These include: o Develop cost-effective systems using vital registration and / or survey methods for providing marriage and divorce data at the national, state and local levels (Target of Opportunity 1). At present, no data on marriage and divorce are reliably available at the state and local level.

Two approaches for filling this gap are possible. One relies on universal vital registration of all marriages and divorces, and one relies on surveys designed to produce estimates at the state and local levels. A feasibility study should be conducted to assess the relative costs and benefits of vital registration and survey methods for tracking trends in marriage and divorce and providing data at the state and local levels. Cost-effective data collection systems should be put in place in accordance with the study's findings. o Collect full marital and cohabitation histories (Target of Opportunity 4). The ability to measure trends in marriage, cohabitation, and family formation behaviors is seriously limited by the lack of representative data on individual histories of marriage and cohabitation. Collecting complete marriage and cohabitation history data in, for example, the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) would permit analyses of cohabitation histories in conjunction with rich history data on fertility, marriage, work, income, and program participation.

Similarly, complete marital and cohabitation history data on the National Survey of Family Growth (N SFG) would allow research on these behaviors in relation to births and pregnancies, contraception, and other reproductive behaviors. o Obtain information for all fathers and mothers in studies of children (Target of Opportunity 11). Studies of the influence of family structure and family interaction on child development and well-being currently paint an incomplete portrait of children's experiences because they seldom collect information from more than one parent in the household (usually the mother). To the extent possible, surveys that collect information on parental-child interaction should collect it for all parents or guardians in the household and for absent parents. Immediate opportunities for implementing this recommendation are available through the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Birth Cohort (E CLS-B) and SIPP. o Develop a plan for a new family study to examine the causes and consequences of family change (Target of Opportunity 13). Sound research on the causes and consequences of family change is essential to inform policy. However, the federal government does not currently support any major data collection program designed to improve our understanding of the causes of changes in family forms, union formation and stability over time.

While there is broad consensus among researchers and policy makers that a data collection program is necessary to fill this void, the exact nature of the study needs careful consideration. Therefore, a planning initiative is recommended to develop a plan for this study and to assess its feasibility. In some respects, the conference that was held, and the resulting proceedings, represent the easy part of the challenge we face. Improving the state of data about couples will require the dedication of financial and human resources, and a strong commitment to follow through in our efforts, as recommendations get turned into real improvements in the data systems throughout the federal government.

The cost of transforming recommendations into realities will not be small, but these changes constitute necessary enhancements to improve our understanding of the state of families and their children in an ever-changing society.