Jim Tonkowich and Dan Anderson
April 24, 2008
How much do you think marriage dissolution in America costs taxpayers? Don’t include what it costs businesses or individuals. Just think about the public, taxpayer-supplied money spent annually as a result of divorce and out-of-wedlock childbearing.
I don’t know what you’ve guessed, but I’m nearly certain you’ve guessed too low—way too low.
According to David Blankenhorn, president of the Institute for American Values, there are three principal lines of argument for lowering the divorce rate: religious, social, and economic. As the religious and social arguments go to deeper principles, let’s examine these first before looking at the staggering economic figures.
For Christians, the religious argument focuses on the teachings of Jesus and the Apostle Paul. Both offer clear proscriptions on divorce and mandate marital fidelity between one man and one woman (Matthew 19:1-9, 1Corinthians 7:10-14). God not only hates divorce (Malachi 2:16) but has designed marriage for human joy and flourishing and for human procreation. Christian teaching throughout Church history has consistently affirmed faithful marriage and disapproved of divorce. The Church has a mandate to help people form and maintain lasting, loving marriages—and avoid divorce whenever possible.
The social argument looks at the measurable consequences of divorce much of it focusing on single parent families. In the 35 years between 1970 and 2005, the proportion of children living with both married parents dropped from 85.2 percent to 68.3 percent. That is momentous change in a relatively short period of time.
While there are single parents who are heroically raising wonderful children, there is a mountain of data indicating that children raised in single-parent households are susceptible to a host of physical and emotional risks. These include problems at school, higher rates of criminal behavior and incarceration, higher likelihood of drug and alcohol abuse, increased likelihood of early sexual behavior and teen pregnancy, and, later in life, higher rates of divorce. Because of this, it makes sense to reduce such risks by raising the marriage rate and lowering the divorce rate.
These religious and social arguments are well established and hardly news.
The third argument, economics, has been more elusive. According to Blankenhorn pro-family advocates have said for years that the financial cost of divorce must surely be high, but no one knew how high. Until now.
“The Taxpayer Costs of Divorce and Unwed Childbearing,” a study released on April 15 by the Institute for American Values, the Institute for Marriage and Public Policy, the Georgia Family Council, and Families Northwest, demonstrates the burden taxpayers bear due to the breakdown of marriage.
Divorced and single-parent households leave large numbers of women and children in poverty. Statistics show that of the households headed by a female, about sixty percent would be lifted out of poverty had the woman been married or remained married. As long as she remains unmarried she remains a financial burden to the state, dependent on various costly social welfare programs.
With the burden on the Department of Justice, Medicaid, food stamps, and housing assistance, divorce significantly increases the workload of government and the bill ultimately falls back upon the taxpayer.
The report’s principle investigator, economist Benjamin Scafidi, of Georgia College & State University, told an audience at the National Press Club that he had gone out of his way to make cautious assumptions and arrive at a “minimum estimate” of the cost to taxpayers. Even so, this “minimum estimate” is $112 billion per year in recurring costs. (I told you that you were guessing low.) $112 billion gives new meaning to the statement attributed to the late Sen. Everett Dirksen, “A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you’re talking real money.”
Speaking at the White House Compassion in Action Roundtable on April 15, Brookings Institution economist Ron Haskins noted that he could think of a number of good reasons that the estimate should be significantly higher.
To put $112 billion into perspective, Randy Hicks of the Georgia Family Association noted that in the last five years the U.S. government has spent approximately $500 billion on the Iraq War. In the same five years, we have spent at least $560 billion as a result of divorce.
This staggering number will, we hope, communicate to politicians and business leaders the need to reinforce healthy marriages in a way that religious and social arguments don’t. The good news is that even a very modest reduction in divorce and unwed childbearing will result in significant savings—more than $1.1 billion for every 1 percent reduction.
Churches and faith-based groups should lead the way in this effort. After all, we are motivated to strengthen marriage by all three arguments—religious, social, and economic—and churches by their very nature are in the marriage business. We do the weddings and so strengthening marriage and combating divorce should be an overarching ecumenical concern.
One solution that works calls for all the churches in an area to band together. Mike and Harriet McManus founded an organization called Marriage Savers as a way to encourage local clergy to institute a Community Marriage Policy. Their results are stunning.
The local clergy come to agreement on how all weddings in all churches are to be handled. This includes things like a minimum period of engagement, required counseling before and after the wedding, assigning each set of newlyweds a mentor couple, and training couples who have successfully stayed together in a rough marriage to be mentors for couples edging towards divorce. If a couple wants to get married in town, they have to comply with the policy because all the churches enforce the same rules.
According to the Marriage Savers website, the first Community Marriage Policy went into effect in Modesto, California in 1986. Since then, in Modesto:
. . . not only has the divorce rate plunged 50 percent, but the number of marriages has grown from 1,300 in 1986 to 2,500 in 2005. As thousands of marriages have been saved or created, children are faring much better. In a decade, the teen birth rate fell 30 percent, double the U.S. decline—and the school dropout rate fell 19 percent.
Tallahassee, Florida’s divorce rate dropped 23 percent. Evanston, Illinois dropped 20 percent. And Kansas City, Kansas dropped by a whopping 63 percent!
The benefits to couples, to children, and to these communities are enormous. Now we know that there’s an added benefit—the savings to taxpayers.
“The Taxpayer Costs of Divorce and Unwed Childbearing,” is not meant as an advocacy paper and as a result, it doesn’t make specific policy suggestions. It is, however, a sobering reminder that all is not well with marriage in America and it’s costing us not only social capital, but real money.
The good news is that we know how to strengthen marriage and with it families. Churches can and should lead the way. In the process we’ll save souls, society, and a lot of taxpayer dollars.
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