Marriage may not be silver bullet for poverty, study says

If you have had much contact with poor people, you already know this.

When I did substitute teaching in poor high schools and middle schools, I tried to get my students to take education seriously. The boys didn't think they needed to study because they were sure they would be able to get rich in music or sports.
The girls thought they didn't need to study because they would get married and be supported by their husbands. Of course, who would be available for them to marry? Those boys who didn't think they needed an education.
In one class, I asked if they knew any women who had been able to do this. There was a pause, then one girl said "My grandmother."

http://www.nbcnews.com/business/marriage-may-not-be-silver-bullet-poverty-study-says-2D11863554

Allison Linn CNBC
Jan. 7, 2014

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“We are continuing to spend money on … these healthy marriage initiatives and I think the evidence is now clear that these are not effective policies,” said Kristi Williams, an associate professor of sociology at The Ohio State University. “So, it’s time to start thinking about spending that money in a way that’s more likely to help single mothers and their children.”

A new briefing paper, written by Williams and released Monday by the Council on Contemporary Families, argues that even when single mothers do later marry, those marriages are not necessarily beneficial to the women and their children.

Williams points to a study finding that more than half of single moms who married were divorced by the time they reached ages 35 to 44. In many cases, she notes, women who marry and later divorce are worse off financially.

Children also don’t always benefit, she said. Her research found that the children of single mothers who later married did not often have extra physical or psychological advantages once they were adolescents.

Williams said she did see advantages for children whose biological parents later got and stayed married, but she notes that’s uncommon. A long-running project called the Fragile Families study found that only 16 percent of the low-income unwed mothers they studied were married to their child’s biological father five years after the child’s birth.

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The government has long funded initiatives to encourage healthy marriages and responsible fatherhood, stemming from the welfare reform efforts that began in 1996.

Williams argues that policymakers might get more bang for their buck if they used that money for other efforts to improve the financial futures of young, low-income women. Those include programs to help reduce unintended pregnancies and ones that subsidized child care for children three years old and younger, she said.

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Williams and others say their research has found that low-income women, like most Americans, do want to get and stay married. But, Williams said, they hesitate because they are realistic about how challenging it will be to have a successful marriage amid severe economic strain.

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