Against the Tide

Hill, Holzer, and Chen examine the effects of household structure on youth and young adults and how these effects might have contributed to the negative trends in outcomes observed for young minorities over time. They take into account several measures likely to affect outcomes, including human capital enrichment in the home; neighborhood environment, especially safety; and parental behavior and the home environment. They then consider the extent to which these measures are responsible for the observed effects of household structure on youth and young adult outcomes, and whether they account for significant effects among the full sample, for all blacks, for black males, and for black females. For young people from low-income and single-parent families to be successful, the authors recommend policies that promote healthy marriages or more positive noncustodial fatherhood, higher incomes for working single parents, better schooling or employment options and safer neighborhoods for poor youth, and better child care and parenting among single parents.