by Isabel V. Sawhill

About the author: Isabel V. Sawhill is president of the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institute, a private research and education organization.

Iappreciate the opportunity to testify on this important topic. Both as President of the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy and as a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution, I have become convinced that early out-of-wedlock childbearing is bad for parents, bad for society, and especially bad for the children born into such families. However, the views I express today are my own and should not be attributed to a particular institution with which I am associated.

Out-of-Wedlock Childbearing Causes Poverty

Three years after the enactment of welfare reform in 1996, the new law is being hailed as a great success. Caseloads have declined dramatically since...