NO ONE ADVOCATES FOR DIVORCE AND ABORTION BECAUSE THEY CARE ABOUT PEOPLE:

Divorce hinders poorer children (Cheryl Wetzstein, 5/22/10, Washington Times)

"Divorce is particularly harmful for children's [economic] mobility," Thomas DeLeire and Leonard M. Lopoo said in their report, "Family Structure and the Economic Mobility of Children."

The two academics examined more than 30 years of data on some 2,200 families. In addition to tracking the incomes of parents and their now-adult children, the researchers looked at parental marital histories.

The data showed that parental divorce was a serious impediment to children's upward mobility.

Among children of low-income parents, only 26 percent of those whose parents divorced managed to climb into the middle or top income levels when they reached adulthood.

In comparison, half of the children raised by their married parents climbed out of poverty. Even children of poor unwed mothers did better than children of divorce - 42 percent of low-income children born to single moms eventually exceeded their mothers' incomes.

And it's not just poverty--children from "bad" marriages also do better than children from divorces.

Posted by Orrin Judd at May 22, 2010 9:12 PM