Marriage is not an anti-poverty strategy
Last month we quietly celebrated the end of federal welfare funding for marriage programs. One reason our cheer was so muted was that Congress had let the programs die with a whimper by refusing to act on the President’s budget proposal. Instead of ensuring a safety net for very-low income people for years to come, Congress gave just a few months extension to Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF – the main anti-poverty program). The extension did not cover marriage programs, nor did it cover “the Emergency Fund, which was created as a stimulus effort and helped millions of very low-income people make ends meet through the worst part of the Great Recession.” Next year we can hope for a full renewal of the safety net, plus a proper debate about whether marriage or relationship education belong in welfare funding.
At about that same anti-climactic moment, the Women of Color Policy Network published an interesting report about unmarried mothers. It has lots of good information, but strangely does not recommend policies to reduce marital status discrimination. This is especially surprising given single mothers’ low incomes, which might get a lift if we prohibited marital status discrimination in employment (yes, that’s still legal in all states except these).
Single mothers not only earn less than men, but they earn only 77 percent as much as married women with children and 87 percent as much as single women without children. In contrast, unmarried men with children earned 8 percent more than unmarried men without children.
As the report says, “lower earnings no doubt contribute to the wealth gap for single mothers, but they are just the tip of the iceberg.” Here are a few interesting excerpts about the intersection of wealth and marital status:
There is no single reason for the lack of wealth among single women mothers; the reasons are manifold and interrelated: lower wages and life-time earnings, occupational segmentation, lack of access to wealth escalators such as retirement and pension plans, and historic structural and institutional discrimination, among others. …
… Single mothers who have never been married have less wealth than women whose pathway to single motherhood was through divorce or widowhood. Divorced or widowed single mothers have a median wealth of $7,500 whereas single mothers who never married have a median wealth of zero. …
… Marriage is associated with higher wealth for two reasons: first, many women wait until they are financially stable to marry; second, marriage has wealth-building advantages such as economies of scale. Upon divorce, mothers may be able to access any wealth accumulated during marriage. Additionally, divorced single mothers are much more likely to receive child support, which gives them more disposable income to save or invest. …
Note to marriage promoters: these correlations still do NOT make marriage an ethical or effective anti-poverty strategy.
December 1st, 2010 at 2:57 pm
Hello, France has a different system so it’s difficult to make comparisons or even to comment. However, the expression ” economies of scales” rings a bell: according to French law, each pays “to his ability”: obviously a person who lives alone does not have the same “ability” as the couple, as he/she consumes about the same basic necessities: housing, gas electicity, insurance….basic equipemnts, as a couple (without children) but has a different fiscal stauts that results in approx. 20-30% lower standard of living.
France has a family favouring policy, which starts when you marry!
December 6th, 2010 at 9:30 pm
I cannot speak for all women of color, but for African American women, especially as of late the pressure and stigma of being a single mom has reached this kind of boiling point. All the statistics that say a large percentage of African American women will never marry. The sort of perverse concept that this is due to the fact that African American women are unloveable either because they are physically unattractive or are too demanding, materialistic, selfish etc . . Or that they are in one way too sexual in another not sexual enough. Then when you factor in the additional pressure the supposed dream of all African American to achieve “Black True Love” and top it off with statistics that show that many black men are currently incarcerated and will continue to be in jail for the rest of their lives, I am not surprised that they do not address anti-marriage policies. I know that many women and men for that matter face a lot of the aforementioned issues, but for a person of color (especially African American) who for many is still considered the “other” in this country, the forces weighing against marriage are many. Addressing anti marriage legislation may be asking for too much.