Do government programmes promoting marriage actually do any good, and specifically do they help to reduce poverty? A new study seems to indicate the answer is ‘no’, and if that is so then pro-marriage programmes lose much of their justification.

However, Professor Brad Wilcox in this blog challenges the study.

Wilcox says the study makes two basic points. The first is that, when single mothers marry, neither they nor their children seem to benefit from marriage, especially if they marry someone besides the children’s father;

Secondly, evaluations of government projects to strengthen marriage indicate that most programmes did not succeed in strengthening the quality and stability of family life among poor married and unmarried families.

But as Wilcox points out, neither of these findings is especially surprising, and neither contradicts the social science research indicating that children do better in marriage.

Wilcox writes: “[M]en, women, and children are much more likely to enjoy a stable and supportive family life when they sequence marriage before parenthood.  

“As Ron Haskins and Isabel Sawhill at the Brookings Institution pointed out in their book Creating an Opportunity Society, young adults who put education, work, marriage, and parenthood in the right order—first finishing high school (or college), then getting a job, then marrying, and then having a baby—face very low odds of poverty.”

He also rebuts the notion that just because pro-marriage policies haven’t worked yet, they should be scrapped.

Wilcox argues that, “while it is true that most of the federally funded programs designed to strengthen relationships among low-income couples with children have not achieved success, this is a common pattern for new policy initiatives”.  

“It usually takes some time for policymakers to figure out the best strategy to address a critical public policy challenge. Heck, almost fifty years after Head Start was launched, the evidence suggests the federal government still has not figured out how to make Pre-K (preschool education) effective for poor children—and yet, given preschool’s potential benefits, lawmakers remain determined to make the programme work.”

Government should stick with marriage initiatives, Wilcox says, because “the marriage divide between the rich and the poor in America—where the educated and affluent now get and stay married, and the poor largely do not—is one important driver of child poverty and family inequality”.  

Children who do not have access to the incomes, kin, and friends of two stably married parents “are much more likely to end up poor,” he adds.

And he points out that such policies are “entirely consistent with the values and aspirations of ordinary Americans, be they poor, rich, or middle class”.

Wilcox says: “The vast majority of Americans want to marry (and will marry), as sociologist Andrew Cherlin has noted. So the question is: Is there a balanced mix of policy, civic, and cultural measures—not limited to encouraging single mothers to marry—that we can take to increase the odds that all Americans will be able to realise their dreams of marriage and a stable and supportive family life?

“The alternative to this kind of policy experimentation is accepting a world where the rich enjoy reasonably stable and supportive families centered around marriage, and the poor are stuck in unstable families unable to give children the support they need to flourish. Is that really the kind of family inequality the Council on Contemporary Families wishes to make its peace with?”