Children who live with their married biological parents have greater opportunities to thrive and be successful than in any other type of situation. However, many couples do not marry for fear that they will lose their government assistance.
Two experts on marriage and family believe that they have an answer to this problem. Brad Wilcox is an American Enterprise Institute visiting scholar and director of the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia. Erik Randolph is director of research at the Georgia Center for Opportunity and author of a three-part series on how to reform welfare to address welfare cliffs and marriage penalties.
The Institute for Family Studies and
the Georgia Center for Opportunity convened a focus group to gain greater
understanding about “major family issues facing working-class Americans.” One
of the participants said, “I chose not to marry. For one, I get a lot of
assistance. I have a disabled child. So being if I did marry or put any other
type of income in, I would not qualify for anything.”
In their article, Wilcox and
Randolph stated that the above comments “are indicative of one of the major
issues that emerged in our focus groups across the nation.” The wrote, “Many of
the parents gathered in those groups indicated that either they or family and
friends had steered clear of marriage for fear of losing their government
benefits, from Medicaid to childcare subsidies.” They continued with their
explanation.
They are not alone. More than 1 in 10
unmarried Americans whose income falls below the median reported they were not
married for fear of losing “access to government benefits,” according to a
recent Institute for Family Studies/Wheatley Institution survey. These marriage
penalties tend to hit hardest the working-class couples with children and household
incomes between about $28,000 and $55,000. The research indicates that the
penalties can amount to between about 10% and 30% of household income for many
families in this income bracket.
The authors believe that Republican
governors can take steps to help parents “work to eliminate or minimize the
marriage penalties that keep all too many parents from marrying. This is
important because children are much more likely to thrive – to avoid poverty,
flourish in school and steer clear of prison, for instance – when they are
raised by their own married parents.” [Emphasis added.]
Wilcox and Randolph laid much of the
blame on federal policymakers for “the way Congress set up tax and safety-net
benefits over the last six decades.” Congress fixed “many of the marriage penalties
hitting upper-income families in 2017, [but] they have left penalties hitting
lower-income families in means-tested programs like Medicaid and child care.” Only
Congress has authority and power to change “some of the marriage penalties
embedded in our social welfare programs.” However, there are some steps that
state legislatures and governors can take to help, according to the authors.
Take some funding from the Temporary
Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program, which is designed to help
lower-income families, to address this issue. After all, TANF was specifically
designed to promote marriage, reduce out-of-wedlock pregnancies and assist with
the formation and maintenance of two-parent families, goals that have all too
often been ignored by both the federal government and the states.
Because TANF is a block grant, states
control how the money is spent within the program’s broad parameters. Governors
could take advantage of this flexibility to direct its funding at the marriage penalty
problem….
One way TANF funds could be used to
promote marriage would be to provide a bonus to low-income couples with
children under 5 who wish to marry. This bonus could be pegged to remedying the
actual penalty they would incur by tying the knot….
Another way would be to let newly married
couples with children continue to receive welfare benefits even after they
marry for a full two years after they marry – so long as their total family
income is not above the state’s median family income (about $79,000 across the country)
….
Another way states could minimize marriage
penalties is by reforming their child care policies. Federal block grants
subsidize child care for low-income families. These child care programs have
some of the largest marriage penalties. States could fix this by doubling the
income threshold for child care subsidies for married families with your
children.
The important thing to remember is, “Poor
and working-class parents should not have to choose between seeking government
benefits for their children and giving their children the benefit of two
married parents." Children and families thrive when parents are married, and
thriving families strengthen communities and nations.
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