The Institute for American Values and the Georgia Family Council have just released a sobering study titled “The Taxpayer Cost of Divorce and Unwed Childbearing.” The study notes that while the debate on marriage usually focuses on its social, moral, and religious qualities, marriage is also an “economic institution.” It is a “powerful creator of human and social capital.”
In other words, healthy marriages produce the kind of people who are better able to take care of themselves and their families.
Unfortunately, as the report documents, there are fewer healthy marriages in America now than there were 25 years ago. Between 1970 and 2005, the percentage of children being raised in two-parent families dropped from 85 to 68 percent.
The principal causes of this drop were the high divorce rate and the increase in the number of out-of-wedlock births. While the number of divorces has declined slightly in recent years, the percentage of children born to unmarried mothers has continued to grow.
As I said earlier, the costs of this family fragmentation are not limited to the children. As one expert wrote, “Divorce and unwed childbearing create substantial public costs, paid by taxpayers.”
How much? A minimum of $112 billion a year. That is more than a $1 trillion a decade in “increased taxpayer expenditures for antipoverty, criminal justice . . . education programs,” and lost tax revenues.
What is more, the “human and social capital” lost from family fragmentation has an economic impact that goes far beyond government expenditures.
Even if you set aside the social, cultural, and moral dimensions of marriage, it is clear that government has a vital interest in promoting healthy marriages. Even modest increases in the number of “stable marriages” could save taxpayers a lot of money.
Thus, the report recommends increased spending on “marriage-strengthening” programs, like the marriage-skills classes offered by the state of Oklahoma.
The release of the report coincides with Pope Benedict’s visit to Washington and his meeting with President Bush. The subject of marriage in America is expected to be on their agenda.
I will not presume to speak for the Pope or the president, but I think that they would agree that the most important thing government can do to fight family fragmentation is to stop promoting marriage substitutes.
What I told “BreakPoint” listeners about Britain yesterday is also true of the United States. In both instances, a decline in marriage and an increase in family fragmentation coincided with the introduction of legally sanctioned substitutes for traditional marriage (like civil unions and, now, same-sex marriages).
The Pope has called these substitutes “dangerous and counterproductive as they inevitably weaken and destabilize the legitimate family based on matrimony.”
Even the best “marriage-strengthening” program can not compete with the message “marriage doesn’t matter.”
That is why, if you want to make a dent in the social and economic costs of family fragmentation, the first order of business is to promote and strengthen traditional marriage and accept no substitutes!
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From BreakPoint®, April 16, 2008, Copyright 2008, Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with the permission of Prison Fellowship Ministries. All rights reserved. May not be reproduced or distributed without the express written permission of Prison Fellowship Ministries. “BreakPoint®” and “Prison Fellowship Ministries®” are registered trademarks of Prison Fellowship
Comments
Both my children were conceived with a lie, e.g. the mothers got pregnant on purpose. Both mothers already knew the systems in place to "help" themselves, e.g. most of those programs mentioned in the article. Both knew they would get free 'help' from the state attorney general,(AG), in my case, Texas, to undermine and destroy any continuing relationship a father, me, would have with his children. Both knew they would not be questioned as to their fitness-to-parent by this same AG. Both knew a father would be put into financial bondage because of their actions.
Funny, it has taken this long, especially taking a rear view of the so called Welfare Reform Act of 1996, for numbers of this sort to appear. (But we already knew that among those who are getting pregnant, those whose age is at or above 25 and unwed is the highest! Again true for both the mothers of my daughters. They were 36.) This act failed to account for the government's own role in the destruction of family and humanity. Government has failed to account for and own the indoctrination to the commodification of babymaking, instead in its DENIAL, chose to coin a new term, the "Deadbeat DAD", and thus fan fires of hatred for men and fahters and shame him putting posters on billboards, cereal boxes, and pizza trays.
Some solutions to reversing this part of the end of America are simple. The government should assure that half the childs time and life will be offered to its father. A lot of pregnancy would then cease, especially those who had money as a motive.
We should fight the further erosion of marriage by fighting the establishment of civil unions. Civil unions may not be the cause of the current disastrous state of marriage, but they will certainly grease the skids of further decline. In most states, it is now harder to get a driver license than a divorce. Marriage used to be serious business involving a life time commitment, but now people give more thought to picking out a car than their decision to divorce. You can only stretch something so far before it breaks. We first stretched the definition of marriage to rid it of the view of marriage as a life time commitment and now it is being proposed we stretch it some more to include marriage as something some thing other than a union of a man and woman. You cannot keep redefining something and expect it to retain it's original meaning.
"What I told “BreakPoint” listeners about Britain yesterday is also true of the United States. In both instances, a decline in marriage and an increase in family fragmentation coincided with the introduction of legally sanctioned substitutes for traditional marriage (like civil unions and, now, same-sex marriages)."
Once again (as in his article on the decline of marriage and birth rates in Britian) Mr. Colson would have us believe that correlation implies causation - or in other words, the introduction of civil unions is causing familty fragmentation. Again, he is mating (apologies for the pun) two unrelated statistics.
In this country, there are 4 states allowing civil unions, 6 that allow domestic partnerships (California has both so it's inflating the statistic a little), and Hawaii has something called Reciprocal Benificiary Relationships. Only Massachusetts allows marriage of same sex couples. Of these states, only two allow opposite-sex couples to participate in anything other than a traditional marriage and both of those only allow this where at least one of the couple is over the age of 62. Clearly the insinuation that civil unions have a causal relationship with the decline in marriage rates is false.
Also, these facts call into question the Pope's statement which Mr. Colson quotes:
"The Pope has called these substitutes “dangerous and counterproductive as they inevitably weaken and destabilize the legitimate family based on matrimony.”
I'm not arguing with Mr. Cohen about the cost to taxpayers caused by unwed mothers and divorce, and this can be defined as "family fragmentation" as Mr. Colson does:
"The principal causes of this drop were the high divorce rate and the increase in the number of out-of-wedlock births. While the number of divorces has declined slightly in recent years, the percentage of children born to unmarried mothers has continued to grow.
As I said earlier, the costs of this family fragmentation are not limited to the children. As one expert wrote, 'Divorce and unwed childbearing create substantial public costs, paid by taxpayers.'
What you can't conclude is that by removing these "marriage substitutes", you will have had a positive finacial effect on the cost of family fragmentaion - as unwed mothers and the "married" couples that are getting divorced are not participating in these alternatives.
"...the most important thing government can do to fight family fragmentation is to stop promoting marriage substitutes."
"That is why, if you want to make a dent in the social and economic costs of family fragmentation... accept no substitutes!"
The only financial cost relating to the fragmentation of the family I can see here would be if we spent money to fight the unrelated civil-union legislation only to discover that we were throwing money away in the fight to abolish civil unions that could be helping educate young women and married couples.