Could the wedding of Prince William
to Kate Middleton next week give the institution of marriage in the UK a boost?
One prominent family policy expert certainly hopes so.

Jill Kirby, chair of the Family
Policy Group at the Centre for Policy Studies, suggests in this piece in the Daily Telegraph that marriage there could
badly do with a shot in the arm.

Kirby writes that marriage rates in
England and Wales “have recently fallen to an all-time low and 46 per cent of
our children are now born outside wedlock”.

And this lack of formal family
structures is without historical precedent, according to a new Centre for
Social Justice (CSJ) report.

According to the report children
born in the UK today have only a 50 per cent chance of reaching the age of 16
in an intact household.  But interestingly, the main driver of this figure
“is not divorce but fragile cohabitation,” Kirby says.

She goes on to make the point that
unstable families harm children’s futures, “making it much more likely that
they will fail at school, start using drugs and struggle to get jobs”.

But she also criticises the
coalition for their weak response to the problem so far. As opposition leader,
David Cameron repeatedly made tackling family breakdown a priority. However,
since coming to office, his approach to the issue has been “uncertain”, Kirby
says.

She writes: “On the positive side,
Iain Duncan Smith’s welfare reforms will reduce the current bias in the
benefits system which penalises poor couples who bring up children together.
This should make it easier for some of the worst-off parents to marry and to
stay together.

“But it does not amount to a
coherent and sustained family policy. The Conservative promise of a tax break
for married couples, most likely in the shape of a transferable allowance, has
yet to be spelled out, or given a date for implementation. Since this promise
appeared in the list of Coalition pledges specifically not endorsed by the
Liberal Democrats, few Conservatives expect action any time soon.

“In the meantime, the tax and
benefit treatment of families in Britain continues to diverge from our European
counterparts. Last month, the pro-family charity Care published a review of
comparative taxation across OECD countries which showed that in Britain
one-earner middle-income families pay 20 per cent more tax than the EU average,
mainly because of the lack of family-based allowances.”

Given the seriousness of the issue,
and the repeated pledges made by Mr Cameron in respect of addressing the
importance of encouraging marriage, those who supported him on that basis are
entitled to ask when he will start to back up his rhetoric with action.