The leading hierarchical driver of poverty in America is marriage-absence.  Economic downturns and joblessness play a secondary role.  The following table, compiled by the Center for Marriage Policy from government data proves this is the case.

We see that poverty for married families has consistently ranged between about 5 and 7% since 1975 across five economic downturns. But poverty has averaged approximately 500% to 600% higher for unmarried female-headed households – closely following the unemployment rate.

Bicycles have two wheels for good reason, and fish do not ride them.  Married families consistently have income redundancy required to weather market cycles and the necessary built-in human resources to withstand illness, child-rearing, and retirement gracefully; while paying taxes.  We can no longer afford our failed cultural experiment propping up unicycles on the highway of life.

Marriage guarantees the lowest poverty rates regardless of economic conditions.  Marriage is the best pathway to upward mobility and economic success, most notably for individuals in lower income groups. 

The graph reveals other astonishing truths:

1. Significant reductions in poverty levels occurred during the economic boom prior to implementation of the first “Great Society” programs, when marriage rates were high. Programs implemented since 1964 have demonstrated no impact reducing poverty, but enabled growth of destructive cultural thinking deprecating marriage.
2. The “number of individuals in poverty” statistic widely recited in horror is misleading because it reflects population growth in addition to poverty. The “percent in poverty” is credible.
3. We are nowhere near the poverty level of 23% in 1959. Government programs have demonstrated little or no impact on this metric since 1970.
4. The number of individuals lacking health care coverage has hovered around 15% since 1986.  Lack of coverage is not the pandemic misused to ram National Health Care through Congress.
5. Poverty rates for unmarried women (most often with children) are approximately six times higher than for married women.  Recessions impact unmarried mothers more steeply than the general population, most likely due to the fact that these households have only one income stream.

Two related exponential trends are revealed that track in parallel.  Illegitimacy increased 1000% since 1959, and nearly doubled since 1986. Secondly, the percentage of households receiving some form of government assistance has increased 142% since 1986.

Welfare reforms enacted in 1996 are not a success.  Policy to reverse the trend of marriage-absence did not exist in 1996 and was not considered, but was called for in the PROWRA template.

We have spent 16-trillion on welfare since 1964, and another $953 billion this year.  Budgets must be cut, but only a scrooge would do it by throwing unmarried mothers on the street.  To get our economic house in order, our first priority must be to restore marriage as the structural social norm.

Teachers, lawyers, insurers, doctors, judges, hospitals, real estate companies, banks, Fannie, Freddie, and taxpayers have a profound stake helping restoring marriage.  Their greatest industry problems are substantially caused by marriage-absence.

Eighty-six percent of women, and two-thirds of men still believe in marriage.  Marriage is the most pressing contemporary women’s and children’s issue.  The majority of problems liberals, conservatives, Libertarians, and Constitutionalists abhor can be greatly resolved by restoring marriage.

The Center for Marriage Policy, founded this month, has created the “10 Marriage Values Policies” designed to complete welfare reform, improve the lives of millions of unmarried adults and children, balance budgets without raising taxes, reduce poverty, and restore our core social fabric.

American cannot afford to waste another election cycle multiplying past mistakes.  The time to restore marriage is now.

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David R. Usher is President of the Center for Marriage Policy.

• Poverty and across-the-board growth in runaway social entitlement and other spending attempting to artificially reduce the economic consequences of marriage-absence.
• A shrinking middle class and widening income gap due to transmogrification of two-income families to structurally-weak single-income families.
• Growing tax burdens and fewer taxpayers, driving class-warfare between rich and poor.
• Large numbers of single-income, unmarried individuals cannot afford health insurance, resulting in nationalization of the medical care industry.
• High taxes on businesses and subsequent loss of jobs and factories to foreign soil.
• Destabilization of the dollar due to high rates of home loan foreclosures, business bankruptcy and consumer loan defaults by economically-weak unmarried households.
• An overall moral decline affecting our nation at every level.
• A lack of consistency in legal jurisprudence.
• A false perception that spending massive sums for in-school parenting, discipline, and remedial education can somehow prepare large numbers of children to do well in school.
• Migration of large numbers of individuals into underground informal economies of crime and violence stimulated by and adjunct to the welfare-state apparatus.
• The highest incarceration rates in the industrialized world, at great public expense and loss of productivity.

The consequences of marriage-absence to individuals include:

• Growing numbers of struggling unmarried mothers requiring costly government husbandry and increasing numbers of unmarried men unable to support two households.
• A willingness to destroy unborn children and large numbers of out-of-wedlock pregnancies
• A proliferation of serious and often incurable sexually-transmitted diseases.
• An increase of child abuse, sexualizing of children, and child neglect.
• Participation in the underground economies of crime, drugs, gambling, prostitution, perversion, and pornography.
• Children’s psychological problems, poor school performance, involvement in gangs, the drug culture, teen pregnancy, incarceration, and failure to enter the workforce and advance to higher income levels.
• Insufficient assets for retirement.
• Emotional distress and insecurity for adults and children without intact families.

By David R. Usher

Phyllis Schlafly’s article “America Becomes a Two-Class Society” contains a breakthrough realization for conservatives: where 47% of citizens have a tax-free ride, the precipice of collapse is not far away.  I spoke with Phyllis and asked her if she knew who the two classes are.  Without hesitation, and as I expected, she said “Married and not married”.    After adjusting for disability, joblessness, and retirement, this remains an unequivocal truth.

Phyllis’s discovery proves my long-held hierarchical assessment:  “Marriage-absence is America’s greatest problem”.  Let us examine the reasons why this is true.

Social expenditures (which arise primarily due to marriage-absence) increased last year to perhaps $1-trillion – still the largest federal budget line-item for many years.

National health care – an additional $230-billion annual cost – came about predominantly because of marriage-absence.   Read:  National Health Care in some form, even if ObamaCare, would not be a problem if less than 20-percent of the population needed free health care.

Perhaps as much as 40% the home-loan default financial collapse was precipitated by marriage-absence.  46% of the poor own their own homes.  Two-income married households fare far better making ends meet when joblessness strikes home.

Nothing will painlessly balance government budgets and reduce poverty for women and children faster than restoring the institution of heterosexual marriage. At least forty percent of children live outside of marriage. Robert Rector pointed out that “Nearly two thirds of poor children reside in single-parent homes; each year, an additional 1.5 million children are born out of wedlock. If poor mothers married the fathers of their children, nearly three quarters of the nation’s impoverished youth would immediately be lifted out of poverty.” This, in turn, drives freewheeling social spending and class-warfare against those who are married.

In states I have studied, social expenditures are by far the largest line item expenditure followed by education – a fantastic policy paradox.

The restoration of marriage as the social norm is prerequisite to repairing our failing educational systems.  Children of intact married families are consistently better prepared and disciplined for school, and motivated to succeed. Much education funding is thrown at an elitist notion that schools can somehow become parents.    So we fire teachers-as-surrogate-parents unable to evoke suitable grade point averages in schools laden with unteachable children of marriage-absence.

Marriage-absence predicts the majority of criminal behavior in youth and adulthood.  Hundreds of billions in deadweight state and federal expenditures are incurred for interdiction, incarceration, and prosecution.  America’s dubious world reputation for having the highest world incarceration rate is our legacy – a surreal situation for which cognoscente and criminologists are mute or claim utter mystification.

The conservative policy problem began with the fact that President Reagan never envisioned the importance of practicing trickle-down social policy with the same vigor as trickle-down economic policy.   We are only now realizing that it is not possible to concurrently enjoy a robust economy, a balanced budget, and low tax rates in a reasonably civil society absent a foundation of heterosexual marriage as the social norm.

When we reverse the trend of marriage-absence through a combination of sound “Marriage Values” policy revisions and Community Marriage Policy programs, nearly every problem of concern to Tea Partiers and the majority of voters will improve to a manageable scale.  “Marriage Values” consists of eight simple and doable legislative items that will restore the institution of marriage to everyone’s mutual satisfaction.

The conservative electoral problem starts with the fact that Republicans have failed to deliver any social policy message to women since 1998.  Democrats sashayed off with the women’s vote ever since.  Given that America has survived and prospered by innovation, it should be noted that Republican campaigns everywhere still serve up the same stale canned spam that squandered the last decade’s worth of elections and bored the grassroots into torpidity.

Tea Parties will not prevail widely at the ballot box.  The principled anger of the Tea Party – also notably lacking passable visionary legislation — is as much directed at an oddly evanescent Republican party as Democrats – all distrusted by voters.  Even Tea party cheerleaders have no message personally touching average voters — who are not sure who to believe — and have largely given up on the political process for lack of sagacious leadership.

In contrast, Democrats are comparatively comfortable believing in their purchase of the votes of women, the poor, liberal churches, unions, academia, government employees, much of the middle class, and the many businesses whose profits revolve around reckless government spending.

Half-measures shuffling the consequences of marriage-absence around will not regain the women’s vote or repair our broken nation.  Only the salutary message of “Marriage Values” will win back the hearty support of the many individuals and businesses cast about in the hurricane of institutionalized marriage-absence.

The emerging Republic of the United States was founded on the bedrock of marriage before God. The caterwauling Democracy of debt it has become teeters for lack of either.  Democrats have been running on Marxism for years.  Where Marxism’s leading goal is to destroy the family unit, only the dynamic centrist message of Marriage will be instinctively understood as exigent by a majority of malcontent voters.

Credentialed leaders and candidates ready to lead America to success should contact me privately for a copy of Marriage Values policies. Those who wish to help take back America are encouraged to partner with us on Facebook.

David R. Usher is President of the Center for Marriage Policy.

You can contact and partner with him on Facebook.

© 2010, David R. Usher