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α: calibrated so average coauthorship-adjusted count equals average raw count
There is some current public concern about the effects of welfare programs on participants' decisions about marriage and divorce or having children. This paper discusses one way in which family composition may be affected by income maintenance program benefits, through what are called "price effects." After discussing price incentives hypothetically, the paper presents measures of the price incentives in our current welfare system and in the cash component of President Carter's welfare-reform proposal. No income maintenance program can be entirely marriage-neutral, but it is found that the reform generally reduces the destabilizing incentives of the current system.