Session Alignment

Many critics of the current welfare system argue that existing welfare regulations foster family instability .

They maintain that those regulations , which exclude most poor husband and wife families from assistance grants , contribute to the problem of family dissolution .

Thus , they conclude that expanding the set of families eligible for family assistance plans or guaranteed income measures would result in a marked strengthening of the low - income family structure .

If all poor families could receive welfare , would the incidence of instability change markedly ?

The answer to this question depends on the relative importance of the largest group of potential welfare recipients .

That is the unhappily married couple who remain together out of a sense of economic responsibility for their children , because of the high costs of separation , or because of the consumption benefits of marriage .

The formation , maintenance and dissolution of the family are in large part a function of the relative balance between the benefits and costs of marriage as seen by the individual members of the marriage .

The major benefit generated by the creation of a family is the expansion of the set of consumption possibilities .

The benefits of such a partnership depend largely on the relative dissimilarity of the resources or basic endowments each partner brings to the marriage .

Persons with similar productive capacities have less economic " cement " holding their marriage together .

Much of the variation in marital stability across income classes can be explained by the variation in costs of dissolution imposed by society , e.g. , division of property , alimony , child support and the social stigma attached to divorce .