TY - JOUR AU - Korenman,Sanders AU - Joyce,Ted AU - Kaestner,Robert AU - Walper,Jennifer TI - What Did the "Illegitimacy Bonus" Reward? JF - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series VL - No. 10699 PY - 2004 Y2 - August 2004 UR - http://www.nber.org/papers/w10699 L1 - http://www.nber.org/papers/w10699.pdf N1 - Author contact info: Sanders Korenman School of Public Affairs Baruch College City University of New York One Bernard Baruch Way Box D-901 New York, NY 10010 Tel: 646/660-6782 Fax: 646/660-6770 E-Mail: sanders.korenman@baruch.cuny.edu Theodore J. Joyce Baruch College & Graduate Center, CUNY 365 Fifth Ave, 5th Fl New York, NY 10016-4309 Tel: 212/817-7960 Fax: 212/817-1597 E-Mail: theodore.joyce@baruch.cuny.edu Robert Kaestner Institute of Government and Public Affairs University of Illinois 815 West Van Buren Street, Suite 525 Chicago, IL 60607 Tel: 312/996-8227 E-Mail: kaestner.robert@gmail.com AB - The 'Illegitimacy Bonus,' part of 1996 welfare reform legislation, awarded $100 million in each of five years to the five states with the greatest reduction in the nonmarital birth ratio. Three states — Alabama, Michigan, and Washington DC — won bonuses four or more times each, claiming nearly 60% of award monies. However, in none of these three states was the decline in the nonmarital birth ratio linked to increases in proportions married, and only in Michigan was it linked to declines in nonmarital (relative to marital) fertility within demographic groups, behavioral changes that the Illegitimacy Bonus was presumably intended to reward. Shifts in the racial composition of births accounted for 1/3 (Michigan), 2/3 (DC) or all (Alabama) of the decline in the nonmarital birth ratio. The non-marital birth ratio fell most in DC, averaging 1.5 percentage points per year over the award period. However, the number of black children born in DC fell by nearly one half from 1991 to 2001. Changes in population composition alone primarily a decline in the number of black women aged 15 to 34 can account for the entire decline in the nonmarital birth ratio in DC between 1990 and 2000. ER -