Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

Healthy Marriage and Relationship Education (HMRE) programs aim to provide couples with the tools they need to form and sustain healthy marriages and relationships. Federal initiatives to implement and evaluate HMRE interventions like the Supporting Healthy Marriage (SHM) initiative provide a wealth of information about the couples in these programs and their relationships. This is useful because changes in the structure of U.S. families have created challenges for programs serving low-income families. This is particularly the case for Hispanic populations, who don’t always conform to assumptions about what families in need look like. For example, although they have high levels of poverty, Hispanic families are more stable than other low-income families. Given this stability, Hispanic couples may benefit the most from HMRE programs. For this to happen, however, HMRE programs targeting Hispanics need to better understand the populations they are serving, as well as variation that exists within Hispanic couples. The large sample of Hispanics in the SHM study makes these data ideal for examining the relationships of low-income Hispanic families in depth.

The proposed presentation will focus on three research aims. For Research Aim 1, we document levels of marital stability and two of its most proximate determinants — marital quality and risk of dissolution — for the low-income Hispanic couples who participated in the SHM evaluation. Preliminary findings show that more homogeneous (i.e., couples in which both spouses are Hispanic vs. couples in which only one spouse is Hispanic) and less acculturated (i.e., neither spouse born in the U.S.) couples tend to have more stable relationships, higher marital quality, and lower risk of dissolution than other Hispanic couples.

For Aim 2, we determine whether a range of established predictors of marital stability, quality, and risk of dissolution apply to this sample of low-income Hispanics, and whether they do so differently for different Hispanic couple subgroups. Aim 3 focuses on how program characteristics are associated with marital stability among the Hispanic population. For example, we will use logistic regression to examine how time spent in SHM sessions, referrals to other services (including financial or public assistance services), the number of topics the couple experienced, and whether the couple participated in any supplemental activities are associated with marital stability. These variables will be constructed at the couple level to take into account how both partners experienced the program.

The goal of this research is to inform the broader literature on the relationships of low-income Hispanic couples, help family strengthening programs better meet the needs of their clients, and support the creation of culturally appropriate HMRE programs.