By James Pethokoukis

This is the third post in a mini-series on a recent AEI-Brookings report. (The first one can be found here, the second here.)

The following statement might sound controversial to some people, but the evidence suggests it really shouldn’t be. From “Rebalancing: Children First,” the recent consensus report of the AEI-Brookings Working Group on Childhood in the United States:

. . . on average, children who have (a) two parents who are committed to one another, (b) a stable home life, (c) more economic resources, and (d) the advantage of being intended or welcomed by their parents are more likely to flourish. In general, we believe that evidence suggests that marriage is the best path to the favorable outcomes highlighted above.

Why would such a relationship be causal? Lots of reasons (accompanied by numerous scholarly citations), according to the report. Among the individual factors that have been shown to have a positive impact on children’s well-being:

• Children in married-parent families have access to higher levels of income and assets.
• Children in married-parent families have more involvement by fathers.
• Children in married-parent families have better physical and mental health among both parents.

Again, from the report:

Even given equal levels of parental attention, income, family stability, and other factors, children in married-parent families tend to end up better off than those living in other types of family arrangements. The advantages of being raised in a married-parent family appear to be more than the sum of the inputs. As [Georgia State University economist David] Ribar concludes, “The advantages of marriage for children’s wellbeing are likely to be hard to replicate through policy interventions other than those that bolster marriage itself.

Of course, no report from a pair of Washington think tanks is going to ignore policy recommendations. And this one doesn’t: 

• Reduce marriage penalties in means-tested programs such as Medicaid, the earned income tax credit, and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.
• Strengthen career and technical education and apprenticeships since stable, decent-paying jobs remain a key ingredient for young adults considering marriage.
• Encourage young adults to be prepared before having children through a civic campaign focusing on the pursuit of education, work, marriage, and parenthood, in that order. “While the sequence has not been proven to exercise a [causal] role in adults’ economic lives, an extensive body of research indicates that each step — that is, education, work, and marriage — is associated with better economic outcomes for families with children.”

The post Updating America’s generational contract, part III: Looking at family structure and stability appeared first on American Enterprise Institute – AEI.