photo credit: jorgemejia
It is strange that when you talk with a young, recently married couple that one economic reason for finally tying the knot is that it costs less for two people to share a home, furniture, etc. than it does for two separate people. So, why is it you never hear people talking about getting a divorce discuss how much more expensive it is going to be to bust up their home?
Well, it turns out that the damage done to the economy extends far beyond simple living arrangements. A recent study by Henry Potrykus, Patrick Fagan, Robert Schwarzwalder titled “Our Fiscal Crisis: We Cannont Tax, Spend, and Borrow Enough to Substitute for Marriage” (from the Marriage and Religion Research Institute) explores the economic costs of the breakdown of the family:
Three facts shape our on-going fiscal crisis: Government revenues come from the taxation of our economy. Our economic growth is and will continue to be a fraction of that of the pre-1960′s era because of the breakdown in marriage. All the while, more citizens are pushed into dependency on this government, again because of marriage breakdown.
This slowdown in economic growth coupled with the increased numbers of dependent citizens makes closing the deficit impossible for President Obama or anyone else who uses the present welfare state as the economic model to be sustained. It cannot be.
This reality arises from two facts: 1) We have proportionately fewer children 2) Up to 20 percent of these children are unequipped to compete in the modern economy because of a lack of essential skills formed within the intact married family . . .
Because larger families are a greater contribution to the economy than smaller families, U.S. family planning policies have undermined the U.S. economy. The sensible economic policy is to grow intact, stable married families instead of favoring sexual unions that are not child-centered.
- A sane government would work to reverse all laws, policies and programs that undermine fertile marriage such as no fault-divorce, abortion, education formation of high-school students in extra-marital sexual intercourse, and family planning services that have resulted in a massive increase in single-parent families, and the loss of well over 50 million workers.
- Tax policies should support rather than penalize marriage and family formation.
The long-range solution to our economic difficulties is to grow intact married families rather than growing government. [emphasis added]
