Harmony in Family

The Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics was established to promote
“Coordination, collaboration and integration...of Federal data on child and family issues and conditions.”
To carry out that mission, the Forum publishes its annual report, America’s Children, and initiates other activities to improve federal statistics on children and families.The Forum’s Data Collection Committee undertook a detailed review of federal statistics on marriage, divorce, remarriage, and cohabitation, holding a conference on “Counting Couples: Improving Federal Statistics on Marriage, Divorce, Remarriage, and Cohabitation,” on December 13, and 14, 2001.The purpose of the review was to understand what is being collected on these topics, and how the quality and comparability of this information can be improved. This report is a summary of the conference, the recommendations made by its participants, and the rationale for those recommendations. We hope that this report will ...