Marriage as an Economic Stimulus?

Stephen Moore, chief economist at the Heritage Foundation and founder and former president of the Club for Growth, wrote a column in the Washington Times http://tinyurl.com/lp2hjeo entitled “Marriage, the Surest Economic Stimulus” in which he argues that marriage is the best anti-poverty program in America.

Moore correctly provides data that “poverty rates are very low among intact families” and that homes without a father experience higher rates of poverty. In addition, he explains that children who grow up in an intact family generally experience higher incomes and lower rates of poverty.

But then he takes a left turn.  He argues that it is irrefutable “that marriage with a devoted husband and wife in the home is a far better social program than food stamps, Medicaid, public housing or even all of them combined.”  He bases this conclusion on a report called the “Index of Culture and Opportunity” (“ICO”) by the Heritage Foundation.  Moore concludes by saying that a “national commitment to sturdy families” is needed to save our economy from “a path of decline”.

The ICO Report tracks trends in a variety of statistics from the marriage rate to the labor participation rate to crime statistics.  An overview that only includes some information is available at the following link: http://index.heritage.org/culture/overview-of-2014-index/. 

Notice that for all the economic data, including the labor force participation rate, self-sufficiency and the percentage of welfare recipients working, the trend analysis goes from an economic boom to a recession. During the Great Recession, unemployment increased, the poverty rate increased, the labor force participation rate decreased, and many other economic statistics decreased.  By choosing the Great Depression as the end of the trend analysis, one can make the figures appear to support the theory that lower marriage rates adversely affect the economy.

For example, marriage rates have been falling for half a century, and divorce rates have increased during that time as have out-of-wedlock births, but the economy and incomes have grown during that time, and the poverty rate has remained about the same.  The fluctuations of these statistics are more of a result of the economic cycle than the number of marriages per 1,000 single women.  But by carefully choosing the time period for the trend, the Heritage Foundation can make the data seem to support their pre-drawn conclusion.

There is, however, an undeniable correlation between standard of living and lifestyle choices at the family-unit level.  Families with two heads of household, i.e. married couples, generally have higher incomes and stability than families headed by one parent.  In addition, children growing up in households headed by married couples perform better in school and have higher incomes as adults than those who grow up in households headed by single parents.  There’s no questioning that.  But does correlation mean causation?

Years ago, educators noted that students with high self-esteem performed better in school and on standardized tests.  So an effort was made to raise the self-esteem of all the students thinking that they would thenceforth perform better in school.  The result was that we now have millions of American idiots with high self-esteem.  It wasn’t the high self-esteem that was causing the high performance in school.  Higher performance resulted in higher self-esteem.

In his book “Leviathan on the Right”, The Cato Institute’s Michael D. Tanner questions whether getting married causes prosperity or whether certain behavioral patterns result in stable relationships as well as prosperity.

For example, imagine Mother A who has is constantly late for school and work, gets bad grades, parties in lieu of studying, can’t hold a job and performs poorly when she does decide to show up for her job.  This pattern of behavior, if also extended to her relationships, is likely to lead to divorce and/or having a child out of wedlock.  Meanwhile, Mother B has good attendance, works hard to get good grades, has a job and shows up on time and works hard.  This type of person is more likely to be a good marriage partner and a good mother.

The fact is that getting married isn’t going to make Mother A more responsible, and it won’t make her a better mother.  It’s not going to lift the family out of poverty, and it certainly isn’t going to have much of an effect on the national economy.  There may be some benefit of having two adult wage earners in the household, but Stephen Moore’s conclusions that a commitment to sturdy families is going to save our economy from a path of decline.