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It appears that marriage and money are inextricably bound. After all, Melissa Kearney is an economist. And of course the success of children is related to the w
by lapcat 3y ago
It appears that marriage and money are inextricably bound. After all, Melissa Kearney is an economist. And of course the success of children is related to the wealth and education of their parents. The article mentions money many times:
> Kearney notes that families headed by a single mother are five times more likely to live in poverty than families headed by a married couple.
> Most single mothers start from behind; they're less likely to have a college education or a high income. Single motherhood is a lot less prevalent in higher-educated women.
> Data also shows that many single mothers don't have help from any other adult, like a grandparent or other family member. That means it's mom who both supports the family financially and serves as the primary caregiver.
> many women don't marry the father of their child not because they reject the concept of marriage, but because they do not see him as a reliable source of economic security or stability.
This doesn't look like a "moral" problem (family values, yadda yadda). It looks more like a monetary problem.
- jkhdigital 3y agoAs with nearly all of social science, we can’t really run the controlled experiments necessary to determine if this is a causal relationship. Just because it looks like a “monetary problem” does not mean that throwing money at it will fix anything.
- lapcat 3y ago> Just because it looks like a “monetary problem” does not mean that throwing money at it will fix anything. There's a grain of truth and a grain of falsity to this statement. It's true that indiscriminately "throwing" money doesn't necessarily fix monetary problems. On the other hand, it seems unlikely that the problem can be solved without addressing the economic conditions that seem to have created it. Certainly, lecturing people about "family values", which has been happening for many decades, hasn't fixed anything.
- bsder 3y agoAs people have pointed out, contrasting widowers is a good control group.
- bsder 3y ago> This doesn't look like a "moral" problem (family values, yadda yadda). It looks more like a monetary problem. Lower socioeconomic classes have less resource. Less resource means children do worse. Calling Captain Obvious. Presumably, if a father was pulling his economic weight, the mother would marry him. The issue is that a male in a lower socioeconomic class is likely not pulling his own weight due to a lack of jobs. So, if you want more marriage, improve the job prospects for the lower socioeocnomic classes that make up big chunks of the population.