Generous unemployment benefits improve family stability, according to a 2025 study from Georgia Tech’s School of Economics.
The paper, published by Jason Lindo, a professor in the School of Economics, and co-authors Krishna Regmi and Isaac D. Swensen, finds that men living in states with high unemployment payments have a lower risk of divorce and separation when unemployed than those living in states with low unemployment insurance, or UI, benefits.
“Family stability is typically considered a good thing, and the results of this paper show that more generous income support for individuals losing their jobs can help families stay together,” Lindo said.
Unemployment Benefits Make a Difference
Healthy marriages are good for the economy because it’s easier for partnered people to meet their economic needs — by sharing rent, for example, or by pooling financial risk. It’s also good for childbearing, which is linked with long-term economic growth, Lindo explained.
To conduct this research, the group looked at data from 1990 to 2010. They found that:
When men are laid off in the U.S., their likelihood of divorce rises by 2.6 percentage points. However, every $100 increase in unemployment insurance above average erases a third of a percentage point — meaning an additional $800 would eliminate that risk.
In addition, laid-off men are nearly 3 percentage points less likely to have children. But every $100 increase in unemployment insurance above the baseline erases two-thirds of a percentage point.
On the other hand, married women who lose their jobs face the opposite situation — they are 2.6 percentage points more likely to have a child. (Why? This is because having a child is suddenly less costly when they are no longer trading their income for it.) But in the same way, every $100 increase in unemployment insurance reduces that back down to baseline by half a percentage point.
Finally, the researchers reported that increases in separation for both men and women were mitigated by higher unemployment benefits.
“These results demonstrate that the structure of UI benefits can have profound effects on families,” the researchers wrote. “More-generous benefits prevent families from dissolving and moderate the effects of job loss on childbearing.”
Read more in The Review of Economics and Statistics at https://doi.org/10.1162/rest_a_01304
Lindo is the director of the Health Economics and Policy Innovation Collaborative. He studies how economic circumstances and government policies are linked to family dynamics.
