Big news on welfare-funded marriage programs: they don’t work
At last, a moment we’ve been waiting for! The release of a major evaluation of marriage programs funded by federal welfare dollars titled “Early Impacts from the Building Strong Families Project,” written by Mathematica Policy Research Inc. under a federal contract. Punch line: they don’t work.
The executive summary is very worth reading. It does not sugar-coat the dismal results, and I love the opening line: “Although most children raised by single parents fare well, …”
Our friend Shawn Fremsted at Center for Economic & Policy Research does a nice job of summarizing, concluding that the federal Healthy Marriage Initiative was a mistake that shouldn’t be repeated. Hear hear!
Rather than re-hash, I’ll add a comment on how the report’s detailed information about program operations speaks to the question of whether marriage programs should receive anti-poverty funds. I’m writing from the perspective of having spent 13 years working in low income neighborhoods around NYC, designing and running social service and housing programs for TANF* recipients and other community residents.
Mathematica reports that “Most BSF programs had little or no effect on relationships; however, there were two notable exceptions. The Oklahoma City program had a consistent pattern of positive effects, while the Baltimore program had a number of negative effects.” Oklahoma City was the only one using a relationship curriculum especially designed for low-income / low-literacy couples. Baltimore recruited couples with the lowest incomes and the lowest levels of commitment to each other or the program. Oklahoma City’s program was purpose-built; Baltimore’s was added to a pre-existing program “known for providing employment and fatherhood services to low-income men since 1999.” Although only 45% of participants in OK City graduated, that is five times higher than all the other programs.
There are many other distinctions, of course. But these few suggest that these marriage programs didn’t just fail, they failed to address the realities of people with very low incomes who could have been receiving more effective anti-poverty services if TANF funds hadn’t been diverted by marriage-happy politicians.
We eagerly await the release of more marriage program evaluations. To learn more about the upcoming evaluations, and what we hope to learn from them, turn to page 14 of Let Them Eat Wedding Rings.
Sign the petition to help us stop the federal government from throwing more good money after bad! If you are an expert on TANF and/or represent an organization that is working on TANF issues, join our professional coalition!
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*TANF = Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, the primary federal welfare program.
June 9th, 2010 at 10:20 am
While I cannot say that I am surprised by these “results,” I did have a shocking moment when I took some time to read over some of the other reports on “Building Strong Families” programs. In July of 2006 a report was published, also by Mathematica Policy, that evaluated some of the early phases of the programs funded via TANF. This was 4 years ago, mind you, but the researchers openly claimed, “Although this report is based on a very early stage of the BSF project, it represents a policy-relevant advance in our understanding of the field of healthy marriage initiatives—particularly in terms of the strategies that hold promise for supporting low-income unwed couples as they strive to achieve their aspirations for a healthy marriage.” So, what they are saying is that although the report “does not analyze impacts, nor does it replace a full-scale implementation study” (words directly from the report), it seems that they were still willing to say that this is enough on which to base policy recommendations.
In a policy climate in which every program, and every cent that funds those programs, seems to be rigorously scrutinized (less, perhaps, abstinence only sex education) I find this really suspicious.
It should come at little surprise then, that the report that actually was a program evaluation that came out this year showed, 4 years later, these programs were ineffective at best, harmful at worst.
Even if you do support government funded marriage promotion programs veiled as “anti-poverty” measures, everyone can agree that if those programs are failing the people they purport to serve, it was a waste of everyone’s time and money.
Lastly – I am so very curious about the mandate that couples who participate in the programs have a biological child together. Any insight as to how this is or is not verified. Paternity testing before marriage education classes? That would be a whole other blog post for a different day!
June 12th, 2010 at 12:07 pm
Under the law in the US, if two people are married and the other person gives birth, then their spouse is automatically the biological parent.