Not yet, anyway. All the more reason, common sense suggests, that it's time to try something more effective. Especially because another installment of the same three-city study of welfare families ("Welfare Reform: What About the Children?") released this January found that mothers' marital status appeared to have a large effect on child well-being, explaining much of the difference between outcomes in families that left welfare vs. families that remained.
One difference marriage may make: While a stressful marriage can be hard on women, mothers who are not married are often in a churning romantic maelstrom that may have negative effects on the mothers' careers as well as children's well-being. Within just 16 months, 42 percent of poor cohabiting moms had broken up with their partners, compared to 18 percent of poor married moms.
Yes, there are a lot of fragile marriages out there. Poor couples need help building healthy relationships. Better jobs for poor husbands would not hurt, either. A Minnesota welfare initiative that effectively subsidized male wages (allowing poor, overworked, married moms to cut back a bit at work) dramatically reduced the divorce rate in poor couples.
But before we can find out how to do welfare better, we have to admit that jobs alone are not enough: If it is children's welfare we care about, there is just no substitute for marriages that work.