The Washington Post , January 22 2004
President Bush is planning a major initiative to promote marriage, particularly among low-income couples. Reportedly, the plan would provide at least $1.5 billion for training to help couples develop the kind of interpersonal skills to sustain "healthy marriages." The initiative is a key part of his return to "compassionate conservatism." But it makes no sense.
Americans are less likely to be married now than at any time since statistics on marriage began to be tallied almost a century ago. The decline started in the 1970s. A snapshot in 1970 would have shown 68 percent of adults married, 15 percent never married, and the rest divorced, separated or widowed. By 2000 only 56 percent of adults were married and 23 percent had never been married. The same trend away from marriage is occurring all over the Western world.
There's less stigma attached to not marrying. I'm old enough to remember when an unmarried woman was called a "spinster" or an "old maid" and was presumed to be sort of odd. Nowadays it's perfectly acceptable for women -- or men -- to never marry. Some conservatives rail against the rising divorce rate and blame it on no-fault divorce laws pushed by liberals. But in fact the divorce rate is no longer rising. It rose rapidly in the 1960s and 1970s, peaked around 1980 at about 23 percent of all women who had been married and has since fallen back slightly.
Why the decline in marriage? It's not because couples are any more lacking today in interpersonal skills for healthy marriages than a generation ago. The big difference today is that a lot of men no longer represent particularly good economic deals, and women no longer have to marry to have economic security. Thirty years ago most men had stable jobs in a mass-production economy that earned them paychecks big enough to support families. And most women didn't have paid jobs, so they had to get married to have food on their tables and a roof over their heads.
Since then, stable mass-production jobs for men have dwindled, and their paychecks have shrunk. Meanwhile, women have streamed into the workforce. They're making more money than ever (but, sadly, still not as much as men doing the same job).
I'm not suggesting most unmarried women think about men and marriage in such a mercenary way. My point is only that in the new economy, such a calculation is entirely rational, and, consciously or unconsciously, a growing number of women seem to be making it.
It's not being single that causes women to be poor. It's being poor that makes it less likely they'll marry. Poor women generally don't have a bumper crop of marriage-worthy men to choose from. Most men available to them are either unemployed or employed part time, and they earn little when they do work. It's entirely rational for a poor woman to hedge her bets and tell a male companion he's welcome to stay only so long as he pulls in enough money and behaves well.
Poor unmarried women who have babies often have men living with them. In nearly half of all births out of wedlock, the biological father is living in. But the woman has no reason to marry him unless he's a good breadwinner. Studies show that mothers are far more likely to marry the fathers of their children when the father is employed.
There's no doubt that single-parent poverty is a major problem. But lack of marriage isn't the main culprit. The reason mothers are poor has to do with their lack of education and the lousy jobs they have to settle for. Jobs at the bottom of the income ladder don't pay enough to support a working woman and her children. They don't pay enough to support a working man and his family either. So even if the mother is living and sharing expenses with a working man who's also at the bottom of the income ladder, they're still likely to be poor. If she's married to him and he doesn't have a job, they're often worse off financially than if the mother is living alone.
The best way to stabilize the American family and improve the odds that children won't be impoverished is to help women -- and men -- get better-paying jobs. That means, at the least, access to good schools and job training. Yet school budgets all over America are being slashed, funds for job training have been cut and community colleges are turning away many poor students. Government programs to promote marriage are beside the point.
The writer was secretary of labor during the Clinton administration. He is now Hexter professor of social and economic policy at Brandeis University.
