US children raised in homes with an absent father are far more likely to live in poverty, new census figures have revealed.

According to data for the year 2014, released by the country’s Census Bureau, fully one third of all those living in poverty in the United States were children, accounting for over 15 million people aged under 18 years.

However, of that figure, the census data reveals that children living in a home without a father outstripped those in marital homes by four to one. Overall, 46.5% of children in father-absent homes live in poverty, against 10.6% of children being raised in a home with married parents. Most striking of all, for children aged under six years, 55.1% are living in poverty.

Commenting on the figures in a blog for The Huffington Post, Christopher A. Brown, president of the US-based National Fatherhood Initiative said: “These disturbing, depressing numbers show that the mere presence of more married fathers in children’s lives will, from a population-based perspective, reduce child poverty.”

Acknowledging that marriage in the United States for people aged 18 to 32 has seen a dramatic downturn – from 65% to 26% in just four generations – Brown insists that “the only effective, long-term solution to increasing the proportion of children growing up with their married parents is to change cultural norms on the importance of living in a married-parent home for child well-being”.

Brown laments the fact that, for too many people, marriage has become an institution in which personal fulfilment is paramount and the primary if not sole role of marriage. Marriage has become

about ‘me’ and not ‘we’ or ‘us’, as in ‘family’.

However, Brown insists, “we can’t give up on marriage. We must start by looking at it in a different way – not as a zero-sum game between whether its role is personal fulfilment or to raise healthy children, but as an institution that can and should fulfil both roles.”

Christopher A. Brown’s blog can be found at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/christopher-a-brown/dads-hold-key-to-reducing-child-poverty_b_8154238.html