A large number of aged Americans depend on Social Security benefits to stay out of poverty. Those who have very small Social Security checks, or who have none at all, rely heavily on the Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program for much of their income. Most aged SSI recipients have earnings histories to explain their lack of adequate Social Security benefits. Information on these histories w...

This study draws from agenda-setting and issue priming theories to develop hypotheses about how state-level ballot propositions may affect presidential elections. We propose that ballot measures prime voters to evaluate candidates in terms of policy questions placed on their state ballot. We test if concerns about gay marriage in 2004 had greater salience for voters in states where proposals to...

Japan is one of few developed countries in which marriage and higher earning potential among women are negatively associated. As the proportion of births occurring outside of marriage remains low in Japan, fertility is still significantly influenced by marriage trends, which are in turn influenced by societal expectations regarding the marriageability of educated women. Previous studies have su...

Many studies have established that married people fare better than their never-married counterparts in terms of psychological well-being. It is still unclear, however, whether this advantage is due primarily to beneficial effects of marriage or to the selection of psychologically healthier individuals into marriage. This study employs data from both waves of the National Survey of Families and ...

Although support for same-sex marriage has grown dramatically over the past decade, public opinion remains markedly divided. Here, we propose that the political divide over same-sex marriage represents a deeper divide between conflicting mating strategies. Specifically, we propose that opposition to same-sex marriage can be explained in terms of (a) individual differences in short-term mating o...

Previous research has found a positive relationship between marriage and infant health, but it is unclear whether this relationship is causal or a reflection of positive selection into marriage. We use multiple empirical approaches to address this issue. First, using a technique developed by Gelbach (2009) to determine the relative importance of observable characteristics, we show how selection...

China's sex ratio imbalance and the surplus of males have received a great deal of attention, but measures of the extent of the marriage squeeze do not take into account the marital status of population. In this paper, we devise an index of the marriage squeeze for the never-married population and use it to project the male marriage squeeze from 2000 to 2060. From the predicted population and n...

The landscape of union formation has been shifting; Americans are now marrying at the highest ages on record and the majority of young adults have cohabited. Yet little attention has been paid to the timing of cohabitation relative to marriage. Using the National Survey of Families and Households and 4 cycles of the National Survey of Family Growth, the authors examined the timing of marriage, ...

This article focuses on lesbian and gay couples and families and the politics of same-sex marriage. Drawing from the literature on same-sex couples, same-sex marriage, and queer theory’s concept of heteronormativity, we argue that gay and lesbian couples and families both affirm and challenge heterosexual and gendered family forms. First, we review literature that discusses how same-sex relatio...

In the United States, low marriage rates and high divorce rates among the poor have led policymakers to target this group for skillsand values-based interventions. The current research evaluated the assumptions underlying these interventions; specifically, the authors examined whether low-income respondents held less traditional values toward marriage, had unrealistic standards for marriage, an...