How Marital Status and Children Affect Social Safety Net Participation

Are married- or unmarried-couple households more likely to receive benefits from government programs? Does the presence of children affect social safety net participation by household type?

These questions and more can be answered using the U.S. Census Bureau’s updated interactive data tool on social safety net participation. The resource now offers users new data and features from the recently released 2021 Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP), which provides data on calendar year 2020 and the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. It includes:

• Expanded age categories that allow users to explore relationships between age and specific social safety net programs.
• A new measure of household composition that lets users study the connection between marital status, the number of adults in a household and participation in the social safety net.

We highlight some findings from the new measure to illustrate how this update adds to the existing capabilities of the tool.  

In 2020, married-couple households with at least one child present were less likely than one-adult households with at least one child present to receive social safety net benefits such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), energy aid, or rental subsidies.

For example, 1.2% of married-couple households with at least one child received rental subsidies, compared to 12.8% of one-adult households with at least one child present.

These differences remained even when we limited comparisons to those with household income below the federal poverty threshold, suggesting group differences beyond those due to income eligibility alone.

In 2020, unmarried-couple households with at least one child present had higher program participation rates than comparable married-couple households for all programs the tool covers except Medicare.

However, the differences in program participation between unmarried-couple households with at least one child present and one-adult households with at least one child present were generally smaller: the differences were not statistically significant for SNAP, free or reduced-price school meals, TANF, Social Security or Medicare.

These patterns suggest that in households with at least one child present, unmarried couple households were more similar in their social safety net participation to one-adult households than to married couple households.

The examples presented here represent only a small number of the new groups available to explore.