Family Support Topics

• Strengthening Families
• Focusing on Youth
• Understanding TANF
• Clients

Looking at How Low-Income Couples Make Decisions

Many social service agencies sponsor a wide range of initiatives for low-income families to help improve their economic, health, educational, family, and social well-being. Services are often aimed not only at improving disadvantaged families' life circumstances but also at supporting them as they face key decisions, such as whether to work or go to school, cohabit or marry, bear children, or enroll a child in a child development program. Although eligibility is often based on characteristics of an individual parent, research shows that most low-income individuals are in meaningful couple relationships, and it is likely that their decisions are in some way affected by the influence, whether positive or negative, of their partners.

Mathematica's two-year descriptive study explored whether delivery and effectiveness of social services for low-income families might be improved by involving both partners in a couple. The study examined how contextual factors such as the resources each partner brings to the relationship affect decisionmaking, as well as how the dynamics of couple interactions influence individual decisions. An important goal was to learn whether systematic decisionmaking structures exist, and if so, how this information affects delivery of social services.

A literature review and focus groups identifyied decisions with which low-income couples frequently struggle and informed the research protocol. In collaboration with the Relationship Research Institute, data collection incorporated state-of-the art observational, physiological, and self-report methods to study the interactions of 40 couples engaged in decisionmaking. Analytic work included exploring multiple theories from both economics and psychology and then comparing their predictive value regarding research questions.

Publications:

"Exploring the Role of Partners and Spouses in the Decisions of Social Service Clients." Trends in Service Delivery, Issue Brief #1 (December 2010)
"Exploratory Study of Decision-Making in Low-Income Couples" (December 2010)