In 1996, the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) was passed in the US, ushering in a series of reforms to the cash assistance programme previously available to poor families. ‘Welfare reform’ included a number of efforts to encourage work among unemployed single parents. More important, the law extended the government's interest in regulating social behaviours such as marriage and reproduction. This paper reviews states' efforts at developing programmes that encourage marriage and discourage child-bearing, then offers a review of the empirical evidence on the effectiveness of these approaches to date. Implications for the future of welfare reform are provided.