family

Providing financial support is one of the many important things that fathers do for children. Even with more mothers working in the United States today, fathers’ earnings remain the primary source of income for most couples with children. The chances of children growing up in poverty are much greater when fathers earn too little, or do not contribute adequate child support to children not living with them.

Low wages make it hard for fathers to support their families, but so do the problems of unemployment, insufficient hours of work, and inability to get year-round work or hold a steady job. Our research on the impact of these factors helps policymakers and citizens better understand how patterns of employment differ across fathers in various family situations – and what the various patterns of work can mean for children’s wellbeing. more...

The United States is sending more and more people to prison—at an extraordinary rate compared to other western countries and our own past. U.S. incarceration rates have risen dramatically, from the imprisonment of about one hundred of every 100,000 Americans in 1970, to the imprisonment of more than 500 out of every 100,000 people in 2010.

So what? Haven’t most prisoners committed destructive crimes? Many have, of course, yet increases in imprisonment are no longer simply tracking crime rates. During the late 1970s and 1980s, incarceration rates did rise roughly in parallel to increases in crime. But crime rates have declined since 1990, while rates of incarceration have continued their upward march.

When observers express concern about “mass incarceration” or the contemporary U.S. “prison boom,” they are thinking not only of the fast-rising rates of imprisonment disconnected from crime rates. They are also worried about the disproportionate impact on racial minorities and the most economically disadvantaged Americans. Remarkably, for black men with low levels of education, going to prison is a more typical life event than attending college or entering the military. more...