Responding to Changing Family Organization How Has Policy Responded? How Has Family Organization Changed?

parent, generally their mother. Divorce rates rose dramatically in the 1960s and 1970s and have remained high. At the same time, more individuals are waiting to older ages to marry, or are not marrying at all, thus increasing the period during which women are at risk of a nonmarital birth. By the late 1990s, 26 percent of white children, 41 percent of Hispanic children, and 69 percent of black children were born to unmarried mothers. Although this proportion has leveled off in recent years, more than one-fourth of children lived with only one parent in 2000 (in 1970 only12 percent did so), and 84 percent of these lived with their mother (see Figure 1). Because children living in single-mother families are more than five times as likely to be poor as children living with a married couple, these changes are closely tied to the need for economic support policies.