You Can End Child Poverty...HOW?!

Yesterday I was on the internet when an ad entitled “Obama wants mothers to go back to school” popped up. While I understand how educating single-parent mothers is important, however if we are striving to decrease child poverty the mothers’ education alone is not the answer.


You might be asking, how can that be? What else could decrease poverty besides education?


Try M-A-R-R-I-A-G-E.


Don’t believe me? Read the research below…


August 2, 2002
The Effects of Marriage and Maternal Education in Reducing Child Poverty
by Robert Rector and Kirk A. Johnson, Ph.D.

Maternal education without marriage is generally ineffective in reducing child poverty. The poverty levels of children raised by never-married mothers remain high even if the mother has a high-school or college degree.

Specifically, the analysis reveals the following facts:

• On average, a child raised by a never-married mother is nine times more likely to live in poverty than a child born and raised by two parents in an intact marriage. (see graph below and click to enlarge)

• Overall, nearly 80 percent of long-term child poverty occurs to children raised in some type of broken family or by a parent who never married.


• Raising a child in an intact marriage is roughly two and a half times more effective than adding four years to a mother's education in reducing child poverty. (see graph below and click to enlarge)





• On average, a child raised by a never-married mother with a four-year college degree is three and a half times more likely to be poor than is a child born and raised in an intact married family by a mother who has only a high-school education.


• Children raised in intact married families whose mothers are high-school dropouts spend about the same amount of time in poverty as children raised by never-married mothers who have a four-year college degree.


• Marriage has a significant effect in reducing child poverty, even if the marriage does not last throughout a boy's or girl's entire childhood. Being raised in a married two-parent family for just half of one's childhood reduces poverty as much as adding four years to a mother's education does.

In conclusion the authors note that: the current analysis indicates that, operating together, both marriage and maternal education can play a significant role in reducing child poverty.

The most effective public policy to reduce child poverty would encourage young women both to complete high school and enter into a healthy marriage before they have children. By contrast, a policy that focuses on maternal education exclusively and is indifferent or hostile to marriage is not likely to be successful.

Has anyone told President Obama this?


To read the study in full, http://www.heritage.org/research/family/cda02-05.cfm