Sawhill, I. (2001). What Can Be Done to Reduce Teen Pregnancy and Out-of-Wedlock Births? Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution. (Online Policy Brief)

Executive Summary: When welfare reform was enacted in 1996, Congress placed high priority on reducing out-of-wedlock births and encouraging the formation of two-parent families. These goals remain somewhat controversial, but there is an emerging consensus that if we knew how to achieve them, children's lives would be improved. This brief argues that one of the least controversial and most effective ways of achieving these goals is to focus on preventing teen pregnancy. Almost everyone is in favor of reducing teen pregnancy and new evidence suggests that a variety of programs have achieved this objective. For this and other reasons, teen pregnancy and birthrates have declined during the 1990s, which in turn has contributed to the leveling off of the proportion of all children born to unwed mothers. When Congress reauthorizes the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reform Act in 2002, it should build on this success by providing additional funds for teen pregnancy prevention efforts while maintaining the emphasis on work and child support enforcement. The evidence suggests that this emphasis, rather than any of the more specific provisions of the law, is the reason for recent progress in reducing unwed childbearing.