Is There a Causal Relation Between Welfare and Single Motherhood?

There are papers pointing out that there are areas with more generous welfare benefits for single mothers, and these areas have higher levels of sing single motherhood. However, as we all know, just demonstrating correlations between two variables does not necessarily imply causal relationship between them. In the case of welfare and out of wedlock birth specifically, there's good reason to think that this correlation may be spurious. This is because, among other things, t is reasonable to postulate that areas with more single mothers are are likely to pass more generous benefits available to single mothers in order to please the voter base. And areas which have cultures that are more accepting of single motherhood are more likely to passing more generous benefits

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