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The Daily Signal
Marriage Won’t
End Poverty. But It Will Help (A Lot).
Rachel Sheffield
July 31, 2014
Marriage isn’t the answer to poverty. That’s the argument made last
week in The New Republic by Carter Price, who asserts conservatives are
too preoccupied with marriage in anti-poverty efforts.
Price takes particular issue with a Harvard study by Raj Chetty and
colleagues that suggests children, regardless of whether they come from
a single- or married-parent family, have greater social mobility when
raised in a community with a higher share of married parents. Price
notes that some areas of the country with high shares of single mothers
are doing better (or worse) than Chetty’s study would predict. In other
words, marriage doesn’t explain everything. But neither does any other
factor.
Price restates the common progressive argument that poverty leads to
marital breakdown rather than the other way around. Yet, even Harvard
professor William Julius Wilson, whom Price cites in his article, can
see this is false. Wilson, who is no conservative, makes the case in
his book When Work Disappears: The World of the New Urban Poor that
economic factors aren’t solely to blame for marital decline,
specifically among African Americans.
“Although there is a strong association between rates of marriage and
both employment status and earnings at any given point in time,
national longitudinal studies suggest that these factors account for a
relatively small portion of the overall decline in marriage among
African-Americans,” Wilson says. Economic and cultural norms work
together, he says. “The weaker the norms against premarital sex,
out-of-wedlock pregnancy, and nonmarital parenthood, the more that
economic considerations affect decisions to marry.”
There is a strong connection between the breakdown in marriage and
child poverty. Living with two working parents raises household income.
Children in single-parent homes are more than five times as likely to
be poor, regardless of parental education level. They also are more
likely to drop out of high school, spend time in prison, abuse drugs
and alcohol, and have an unwed birth.
Price actually has it backwards. While the War on Poverty has paid too
little attention to marriage over the last 50 years, marital breakdown
and unwed childbearing have soared, particularly in low-income
communities. Today, more than 40 percent of children are born to single
mothers, up from less than 10 percent in the under 10 percent in the
1960s.
Of course other factors matter. In fact, The Heritage Foundation’s 2014
Index of Culture and Opportunity examines the multiple factors that
contribute to opportunity: a strong economy, a thriving work ethic,
access to quality education, as well as strong families. These factors
work together, not independently of each other.
A sound anti-poverty strategy must include: self-sufficiency through
work, implementing policies to encourage job creation, improving access
to quality education, and taking steps to restore a culture of
marriage. Combining these efforts will help create a society where more
individuals have the opportunity to succeed and flourish.
Read this and other articles with links at The Daily Signal
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