The issue is no longer making welfare recipients work, they say, but preventing them from having out-of-wedlock births.

There were only two out-of-wedlock births, and both girls married the guys.

Finally, defining the issue as one of marriage misses the real problem: out-of-wedlock births.

Studies elsewhere have found that changing benefit levels has no effect on out-of-wedlock births.

Provides extra money to states where the out-of-wedlock birth rate declines.

Maybe society is changing the way it thinks about out-of-wedlock births.

Three people are involved in every out-of-wedlock birth: a father, a mother and a child.

"That's probably because out-of-wedlock birth is so much more accepted now than it was in the 1960s and 1970s."

With this in mind, the 1996 welfare law offered states financial incentives to reduce out-of-wedlock births.

No longer would the bill provide a bonus to states if their rate of out-of-wedlock births fell.