Another goal of welfare reform was reducing what used to be called the “illegitimacy rate.” By removing society’s guarantee for single moms, its proponents used to say, we would change the incentives and give people a nudge, and soon everyone would get married before they had kids. That’s not what happened, though. In 1995, 32 percent of American children were born to unmarried mothers; today that number is 40 percent.14
