Marriage: Fighting the War on Poverty
DISCLAIMER: For today’s post I’m going to introduce a little research into the demographic value of marriage. While this obviously mostly refers to heterosexual marriage, I have no idea how homosexual marriage comes in on this topic and for the purposes of this article I’m going to pretend it doesn’t exist.
(Above: The International Symbol of Marriage. But marriage is a good thing.)
Ronald Reagan once said that the best social program is a job. It’s possible marriage is number two. One of the central focuses of Mitt Romney’s failed 2008 Presidential campaign was the value of marriage and the American Home. But what are the statistics? Does marriage actually hold up to its reputation?
And if it does, what’s the point of most anti-poverty legislation?
John Stossel’s column today says that The Sky Isn’t Falling and it’s not even a reference to Global Warming. He’s talking about the effects of the sexualization of pop culture:
Sometimes [Peter] Sprigg’s group [The Family Research Council] reaches far to make a point. It issued a press release lamenting bad news from the Centers for Disease Control about an increase in out-of-wedlock teenage pregnancies.
But that increase was a one-year aberration from the 10-year trend. I told Sprigg his release was deceitful.
His answer was telling: “It has been going down, and the rate[s] of out-of-wedlock births and of teen births have been going down. But until they go down to zero, we have to keep trying to promote these positive values in our culture.”
So going from hearing the word “pregnant” on TV being controversial to a culture where celebrities can get famous for having sex tapes hasn’t, according to Stossel, ruined things.
Fair enough, another argument for people to stop regulating what we see and hear.
But what does determine things like child poverty and teenage pregnancy rates? There are correlations that suggest marriage might.
According to a 1999 study, women fare much better economically if they’re married, even if they got pregnant before they were:
The economic status of women who marry after they give birth closely resembles that of women who were married at the time they gave birth. The most economically disadvantaged women are those who never marry.
Obviously, having married parents who can support a child’s socialization (our public education system is a piece of horrendous flaming bleep) and upbringing is an advantage. Good for the mom, good for the kid, good for society.
Linda Chavez has been married some 40+ years and says:
Marriage is one of the most effective anti-poverty programs there is. The poverty rate for black children overall has been stuck at about 40 percent for decades, but only 13 percent of black children being raised by both parents live in poverty, and this rate has been going down over the years, even though it is still higher than the national average.
That’s quite a difference. Let’s see welfare change the poverty rate for black children that much.
It’s not just black kids:
The poverty rate for all children in married-couple families is 8.2 percent. By contrast, the poverty rate for all children in single-parent families is four times higher at 35.2 percent.
Okay, you get the point. Having married parents makes you more likely to be economically stable. But that doesn’t imply causality. But really, being married says some things about you:
- You can afford a wedding.
- You can afford a wife. Ha ha!
- You’ve found someone in the world who doesn’t mind making a life-long commitment that says they’re going to hang out with you.
A healthy marriage is something to be achieved, not something that automatically comes with life in the middle or upper class. Maybe marriage isn’t for everybody, but it’s hard to deny that it’s good for civilization as a whole.
Kind of like that other great social program: a job.
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