THE BUNK BUSTER

Getting Hitched: Social-services advocates pooh-pooh the idea of promoting marriage among the poor. New research demolishes their arguments. (Iain Murray, 30 May 2003, City Journal)

Social-services advocates usually make two arguments against the idea of promoting marriage among poor single-parent families. First, they charge, poor urban communities, where such families disproportionately reside, suffer from a chronic shortage of "marriageable" males-the men are usually young, feckless, and hostile to the idea of marriage. Even those who are potential "husband" material in such communities are chronically unemployed, making so little money that they wouldn't raise the economic status of the mothers of their children even if they were to marry them. Second, the advocates say, marriages entered into because of a pregnancy or birth are likely to be much less stable than typical marriages. Given these realities, the advocates conclude, marriage promotion among the poor would be futile.

The first two arguments are pure bunk, as a new study from Robert Rector of the Heritage Foundation makes clear. The study, based on data from the "Fragile Families" database maintained by Princeton and Columbia researchers, estimates the economic and social situations of 225,000 children, extrapolating from interviews with 4,700 families-most of them headed by unwed parents. The study finds that more than 70 percent of the unmarried parents maintain a stable romantic relationship at the time of their child's birth (just under 50 percent are cohabiting). What's more, a full 82 percent of the fathers are employed at the time of their child's birth, and two-thirds of the dads have graduated high school. On average, the men are 25 years old and have worked for 50 weeks in the year before the birth of their baby. Only 2 percent are in any way violent, and just 12 percent have problems with drugs or alcohol. [...]

The Heritage study comes on the heels of a study from last year that sinks the advocates' second argument. The Urban Institute found that 70 percent of marriages entered into because of a child's birth or impending birth still endured 12 years later-not much worse than the figure for more traditional marriages where the ceremony occurred before pregnancy (85 percent). "Shotgun" marriages are less fragile than many believe.

As maddening as it may be to live in a time when the Left actually has to be convinced that marriage is useful, it's heartening to have folks like the estimable Iain Murray around to make the argument. Posted by Orrin Judd at June 1, 2003 4:37 PM