Policymakers interested in promoting healthy adult marriages need to understand how adolescent romantic relationships – particularly those of low-income youth – function, and the role they play in the development of adult marriages. This report evaluates the current theory, research and interventions addressing those roles.
Drawing on existing literature and interviews with relationship education practitioners, the authors examine theories from a range of disciplines and suggest future directions for research and intervention. The authors note that nationally representative data sets include substantial numbers of low-income adolescents, and that analyses of these data would be relatively inexpensive and could yield valuable information for policies that target low-income youth.
Free, 156 pages. (310) 393-0411, www.rand.org/pubs/technical_reports/2007/RAND_TR488.pdf.
