ogc163
Superstar
Earlier this year, I was at a conference on fighting poverty, and a member of the audience asked a question that made the experts visibly uncomfortable.
“What about family structure?” he asked. “Single-parent families are more likely to be poor than two-parent ones. Does family structure play a role in poverty?”
The scholar to whom the question was directed looked annoyed and struggled to formulate an answer. The panelists shifted in their seats. The moderator stepped in, quickly pointing out that poverty makes it harder for people to form stable marriages. She promptly called on someone else.
I sighed. As an economist who studies inequality and families, I have often found myself in the same position as the questioner. I have suggested in similar settings that we need to consider how marriage and household structure affect children’s life outcomes, only to be met with annoyance or evasion.
Academics like me tend to be uncomfortable discussing these issues in policy conversations, because we don’t want to come across as shaming anyone, particularly single mothers. We find it much easier to talk about things like government-transfer programs, tax codes, wage subsidies, and public schools as opposed to marriage and family formation. Most of us don’t want to appear judgmental or meddlesome.
I am keenly aware that behind every data point is a person or a family, people with their own unique stories and experiences. Although economics is great for describing aggregate trends or identifying the cause and effect behind them, such analysis can fall short when it comes to acknowledging exceptions, including the nuance—both wonderful and messy—of people’s actual lives. Plenty of low-income single parents raise successful children, who go on to earn high wages and have families of their own. But as a whole, those children must overcome significant challenges that children raised by married parents do not. Denying that marriage has major consequences for the economic and social well-being of individuals and society is dishonest and counterproductive, especially when it comes to how children are being raised.
Children require a lot of time, money, and energy. In general, married parents are much more likely to live together with their children than unmarried parents, and two-parent households typically have more resources to take care of children than one-parent households do. Research shows that children from married-parent homes tend to exhibit fewer behavioral problems, get in trouble less often at school or with the law, achieve higher levels of education, earn higher incomes, and have higher rates of marriage themselves. These benefits do not simply reflect the fact that richer people tend to marry at higher rates. Children of married parents generally have better outcomes even when controlling for the age, race, and education level of the mother.
Still, there’s no denying that low-income adults are more likely to become single parents, making it more challenging for their children to climb the economic ladder. Two-parent households are now a luxury more commonly found among the college-educated. We can examine the social and economic factors that contribute to this reality without blaming single parents or diminishing the hard work they put into raising their children. U.S. children have the unfortunate distinction of being the most likely in the world to live with only one parent. We should treat marriage as a serious policy issue worth promoting, through both economic and social efforts.
“What about family structure?” he asked. “Single-parent families are more likely to be poor than two-parent ones. Does family structure play a role in poverty?”
The scholar to whom the question was directed looked annoyed and struggled to formulate an answer. The panelists shifted in their seats. The moderator stepped in, quickly pointing out that poverty makes it harder for people to form stable marriages. She promptly called on someone else.
I sighed. As an economist who studies inequality and families, I have often found myself in the same position as the questioner. I have suggested in similar settings that we need to consider how marriage and household structure affect children’s life outcomes, only to be met with annoyance or evasion.
Academics like me tend to be uncomfortable discussing these issues in policy conversations, because we don’t want to come across as shaming anyone, particularly single mothers. We find it much easier to talk about things like government-transfer programs, tax codes, wage subsidies, and public schools as opposed to marriage and family formation. Most of us don’t want to appear judgmental or meddlesome.
I am keenly aware that behind every data point is a person or a family, people with their own unique stories and experiences. Although economics is great for describing aggregate trends or identifying the cause and effect behind them, such analysis can fall short when it comes to acknowledging exceptions, including the nuance—both wonderful and messy—of people’s actual lives. Plenty of low-income single parents raise successful children, who go on to earn high wages and have families of their own. But as a whole, those children must overcome significant challenges that children raised by married parents do not. Denying that marriage has major consequences for the economic and social well-being of individuals and society is dishonest and counterproductive, especially when it comes to how children are being raised.
Children require a lot of time, money, and energy. In general, married parents are much more likely to live together with their children than unmarried parents, and two-parent households typically have more resources to take care of children than one-parent households do. Research shows that children from married-parent homes tend to exhibit fewer behavioral problems, get in trouble less often at school or with the law, achieve higher levels of education, earn higher incomes, and have higher rates of marriage themselves. These benefits do not simply reflect the fact that richer people tend to marry at higher rates. Children of married parents generally have better outcomes even when controlling for the age, race, and education level of the mother.
Still, there’s no denying that low-income adults are more likely to become single parents, making it more challenging for their children to climb the economic ladder. Two-parent households are now a luxury more commonly found among the college-educated. We can examine the social and economic factors that contribute to this reality without blaming single parents or diminishing the hard work they put into raising their children. U.S. children have the unfortunate distinction of being the most likely in the world to live with only one parent. We should treat marriage as a serious policy issue worth promoting, through both economic and social efforts.
