Archive for January, 2010

Exploring “marriage penalties” in health reform

Though it didn’t get much major media attention, several small and so-called conservative outlets have been complaining that the health reform bills moving (or not) through Congress are unfair to married people. AtMP tracks news about “marriage penalties” for two reasons: first, we oppose and look for ways to solve all forms of marital status discrimination, even when married people are disadvantaged; second, we’ve found that most discussions of “marriage penalties” are actually smokescreens for even bigger marriage bonuses – policies that reward people for marrying and disadvantage unmarried people.

The latest news on health reform follows the latter trend. In a nutshell: the bill creates a subsidy for people who have to buy their own insurance; in some cases that subsidy would be lower for a married couple than for two identical unmarried people because the eligibility threshold for a married couple is less than twice that for a single person.

Before getting into the details, take a moment to savor the Heritage Foundation’s position on whether this is just:

Proponents of the Senate health care bill might argue that these marriage penalties would reach their full effect only in situations where neither partner had employer-provided health insurance. It is true that married couples with employer coverage would face less bias; however, this defense of the bill remains weak because discrimination against marriage remains discrimination even if it does not fully affect all married couples. Such discrimination is unacceptable even in a single instance.

If only they had written “marital status discrimination is unacceptable even in a single instance!” But no, discrimination that puts married couples above unmarried couples, families and individuals is just fine to them.

Heritage hints at one aspect of the smokescreen effect: married people with employer-based insurance often get to put their spouse on their health plan at a much lower cost than if the spouse had to buy her/his own coverage.

Further aspects of the smokescreen are revealed in House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s Mythbuster analysis, and the Center for American Progress Action Fund’s Wonkroom analysis. Both link the subsidy calculation to the way the federal government calculates eligibility for subsidies generally: married couples are assumed to share all of their income and expenses, unmarried people are assumed not to share any at all. At AtMP, we believe this use of marital status often results in unequal treatment of people who are in equivalent situations – some married people don’t share, many unmarried people do, and few people share 100%.

In addition to this ‘equivalency’ problem, using marital status to determine subsidy eligibility can also create a justice problem. Subsidies are directed to people with low and moderate incomes. The amount of money a couple might save by sharing resources is often much less than the amount they stand to lose in subsidies if they expose their relationship by getting legally married. That’s why we hear from so many people with disabilities who can’t get married because marrying would make them ineligible for affordable health insurance. When will Heritage take up their cause?

It probably doesn’t make sense to treat all people in relationships as if they were isolated individuals. Instead, we’d like to see a new way of determining which people have combined their income and expenses to create an economic unit that should be subsidized or taxed at a different rate than an individual. We’re collecting suggestions on how to do that – please post yours as a comment!

Conversations with a chief marriage promoter

A few days ago as I was heading into the office, my Blackberry picked up an email posting to AtMP-Talk, our interactive listserve. AtMP-TALK has been hosting important, enlightening and sometimes silly conversations among over 500 members for over a decade, but it had been pretty quiet in recent months. This posting caught my eye not only because it broke the silence, but also because of the writer’s name: Chris Gersten. “Gee, that sounds familiar” I thought as I walked up the stairs and unlocked the office door, then “nah, it couldn’t be him!” When my PC warmed up, I confirmed that yes, Chris Gersten is the chairman of the Fatherhood & Marriage Leadership Insititute, and yes, he has been lurking on our listserve since mid-September (not coincidentally, around the same time I last blogged about FAMLI). I posted his brief bio to the list and wondered what would happen next.

Chris’s initial message made several general statements about the value of marriage and government-funded marriage programs, including

[M]arriage is the critical building block for every civilization since the dawn of time. It is the institution that all the social science research tells us is best for children to be raised in. It is also very difficult for people in marriages to maintain strong relationships over the years. There is nothing wrong with society and government understanding that it is in the interest of the broader society for married couples to get help.

Of course, Chris works to secure not only government understanding, but big funding for marriage programs. AtMP opposes this use of funds, and invites the public to sign our petition.

Member responses came in quickly. Almost all were thoughtful, detailed, respectful and passionate about cherishing diversity, protecting children and supporting relationships. I’m really proud that AtMP has such wise members! Here is a brief sample of what AtMP members said:

FAMILIES are the critical building block. People need to be “built” in stable families in order to become adults who function well regardless of the living situation they choose. Adults who live alone aren’t destroying society. But children can’t be single; they need families.

What the social science research tells us is that children do best with a consistent, reliable family and adequate physical and emotional care. Married parents look good in research because the majority of consistent two-adult households are married ones. However, studies of other family types such as stable same-sex couples show that the important variable is not marriage but stability–having the same adults in the family throughout childhood. There are many advantages to having more than one
adult (particularly with more than one child) but single parents who intentionally became parents while single tend to do very well.

- ‘Becca

Several people echoed and expanded on the importance of family stability and relationship education.

I was going to ask about the nature of the help for married couples that is being funded, and why it wouldn’t be helpful for unmarried couples as well. You’ve explained that marriage education programs are really relationship education for all. Why not just call it that? Isn’t that a worthy goal?

- Kelly

Chris, if you replaced the word “marriage” with “loving, intimate, relationship” I might agree with a lot of what you say. However, marriage as a social/cultural/legal status has little to do with whether a relationship is loving or intimate! Programs should be aimed at improving love, communication, and intimacy in all relationships. Then the children would really benefit.

- Rene

Others raised questions and theories about the evolution of marriage and its connection to poverty.

Jobs for women pay less and are less likely to provide health insurance. Day care is expensive, and women’s wages simply aren’t high enough. Marriage has been a building block of civilizations because women have been relegated out of society outside the home. … We should be working to raise people up out of poverty, and marriage will *not* create that change. Improving work environments for women, creating opportunity in impoverished neighborhoods, and putting a stop to the shaming of single parents and their children will greatly help improve outcomes for children of single parents.

- Carolyn

Marriage was created as a mechanism by which to manage property. Our idea of “love marriage” is a recent invention. Marriage has historically been a partnership formed by families (most marriages were arranged in all cultures for centuries) for financial reasons.

- Jillian

Chris replied to most member responses, mentioning (but not formally citing) studies, percentages, experts and pastors, and stating “these are not just opinions. They are facts.” Our studious members were ready.

You know what, Chris? MARRIAGE CAUSES DIVORCE. There is a 100% correlation, and the causation is clear: Every divorced couple was married before divorce! Speaking more seriously … as best I can recall from my reading, child poverty and infant mortality have *decreased* significantly since 1960 (although there have been upticks recently, they’re not back up to pre-1960 levels), low birth weight is still a problem but hasn’t changed much, and child abuse is hard to measure reliably because of drastic changes in reporting standards.

- ‘Becca

How DARE you call me or my kids a national disaster.

- April

Several members referred to Dr. Bella DePaulo’s careful analysis of marriage studies, and at least one contacted her offline to ask her to weigh in, which she did:

Thanks to those of you who recommended my book and my blog. Since Chris has specifically
challenged my work (obviously, without reading it), I’ll say a bit more.

Chapter 9 of my book, SINGLED OUT, is about the children of single parents. There, I explain why Chris’s claims do not pass muster and how those studies are so widely misinterpreted. (Because Chris seems to value appeals to authority over a close reading of the original research, I’ll mention that my PhD is from Harvard, I have more than 100 academic publications to my name, and I’ve taught graduate courses in research methods for decades.) My chapter directly addresses some of the claims Chris makes, such as the one about the alleged drug abuse among the children of single parents. I explain, in detail, how particular kinds of studies are misrepresented; so if you make the same methodological mistake each time (such as confusing correlation with causality, as Rachel pointed out), it doesn’t matter if you have 50 studies or 50,000 studies – if they are flawed, they can’t be used to support your point.

I stay on top of studies that have appeared after Singled Out was published. Many of my critiques can be found in a recent collection, SINGLE WITH ATTITUDE. I’ve also posted some critiques at my Living Single blog at Psychology Today. Here are a few specifically relevant to the points about the children of single parents:
1.   Children of Single Mothers: How Do They Really Fare?
2.   It Takes a Single Person to Create a Village
3.   TIME’s Misleading Cover Story on Marriage

- Bella DePaulo

Members were uniformly unimpressed by Chris’s responses, and after about 48 hours the email storm collapsed in a heap of fatigue and curiosity, with members asking “Why is a former Bush Administration official on this listserve?” and “Are you just bored and looking for someone to harangue?”

Tiresome as it may be, we can expect many more conversations like this in 2010, because federal funding for marriage programs is up for renewal this year. If you agree that anti-poverty funds should be dedicated to reducing poverty, and relationship education should help everyone regardless of marital status, then please sign our petition!

Guilt by association?

What does the Alternatives to Marriage Project have to do with Prop 8? Very little! But we were mentioned during cross-examination anyway, so let’s clear up some misunderstandings and provide some context here.

One live-blogger described it like this:

Thompson begins making the case that because Cott supported an organization called Alternatives to Marriage, started by a heterosexual couple to validate cohabitation as a valid choice, that this implies she is also a proponent of poly-amorous relationships.

Cott –“I don’t support poly-amorous marriages.”

The tension is thick. Cott is clearly annoyed by Thompson who is firing off question after question with smug intent to make her look stupid.

The San Francisco Chronicle heard it a little differently:

In cross-examination, David Thompson, lawyer for the Prop. 8 campaign committee, sought to portray Cott as a biased advocate who had once endorsed a statement by a group advocating “alternatives to marriage,” which he said included multiple partners.

Cott said she had only been endorsing the right not to marry.

Thompson’s attempt to make something good sound bad revives the attacks that Professor Cott and other withstood many years ago, for signing AtMP’s 2000 Affirmation of Family Diversity. It is similar to the attacks withstood by Professor Chai Feldblum for signing the 2006 Beyond Marriage statement, before her Senate confirmation to serve on the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in late 2009.

Many AtMP members are uncomfortable with the idea of polyamory, while some see it as not only a valid but their own alternative to marriage. Similarly, many AtMP members are uncomfortable with the idea that couples are treated differently than individuals, while some would never question that.

Our official practice, like that of many of our members, is to use the term different-sex instead of heterosexual (or straight), recognizing that one can’t tell a couple’s sexuality by their sex (picture a lesbian legally married to a gay man).

Finally, AtMP does not advocate any particular lifestyle or relationship structure. We advocate fairness and equality for all, whether or not people are married or in romantic relationships.

Anyway, we’re delighted to be connected (if only very minimally very long ago) to Professor Cott and highly recommend her book Public Vows: A History of Marriage and the Nation.

India’s single women resist stigma, demand rights

A must-read article from Women’s ENews! quick highlights:

Formerly-married women in India outnumber the entire population of Canada. Ever-single women haven’t even been counted. But 58,000 women belong to single women’s organizations in 8 of India’s federated states. These organizations have lobbied for economic support, equal pay, and the right not to be burned as witches.

The article includes several organizations’ names and link – I hope our many readers in India will follow up with them!

News roundup for the new year

Several AtMP members around the county used their winter holidays to scour the news for interesting stories about marriage and its alternatives. Here are just a few of the many worth talking about:

Ann was the first to spot the efforts of different-sex unmarried couples to be included in domestic partner coverage being offered to employees of the U.S. State Department. (Yay! if you have a connection to Mr. Howard or Ms. Ros-Lehtinen, please let us know!) According to the L.A. Times,

Supporters of extending benefits to unmarried heterosexuals include such key Congress members as House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Howard L. Berman (D-Valley Village) and the committee’s top Republican, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Florida.

Thomas was the first to point out the ironies of Karl Rove’s divorce, as Rove worked to build connections between the Bush II administration and religious/political figures who favored marriage promotion.

Stephanie was the first to share the news that Virginia’s statewide Advance Health Care Directive Registry is set to go live for individuals on February 17, 2010.

Marisa pointed out CNN’s approach to covering the “people get married for health insurance” story. Hardly news, but a good summary of the issues with lots of relevant and not too obnoxious comments.

I really appreciate AtMP members sending these tips, which always go beyond what I catch via key words on Google Alerts. I also pick up interesting news from other organizations’ email lists. Just before the new year, folks at Smartmarriages shared the Onion’s trenchant predictions on cohabitation, and Women’s Enews publicized fascinating legal reforms around marriage and divorce in Uganda and Nepal.

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Archive for January, 2010

Exploring “marriage penalties” in health reform

Conversations with a chief marriage promoter

Guilt by association?

India’s single women resist stigma, demand rights

News roundup for the new year

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