The best and worst states in America for married parenthood

Not all states are created equal when it comes to marriage in America.

A new report, Strong Families, Prosperous States: Do Healthy Families Affect the Wealth of States?, indicates that 15 states, largely in the North, are succeeding when it comes to married parenthood. By contrast, 15 states, largely in the South, are struggling more on the married parenthood front.

As the figure below indicates, children are much more likely to be living in a married-parent family in Northern states like Utah (#1), New Hampshire (#3), Minnesota (#4), Washington (#5), and New Jersey (#14). Farther South, however, children are less likely to be living in a home headed by a married parent. Louisiana ranks dead last, but other states in the South and Southwest—from South Carolina (#48) to New Mexico (#47) to Florida (#37)—also have low levels of married parents, as do a few Midwestern states, like Indiana (#44) and Ohio (#38).

These state differences in marriage matter not just for the individual families and children in those states, but for the more general economic health of the states themselves. Strong Families, Prosperous States, which I coauthored with economists Robert Lerman and Joseph Price, shows that states with higher levels of married parenthood enjoy higher levels of growth, economic mobility for children growing up poor, and markedly lower levels of child poverty. And because we control for a range of factors—from the educational and racial composition of a state to its tax policies and spending on education—that might otherwise confound the family-economy link at the state level, we believe that marriage trends are having an independent impact on state prosperity.

Why, exactly, does marriage matter for the health of state economies? In Strong Families, Prosperous States we hypothesize that four factors are in play:

• Marriage facilitates income pooling, economies of scale, and higher rates of saving among couples that redound to their benefit and the benefit of their state economy;

• States with more married families enjoy higher levels of male labor force participation, in part because married men work harder, smarter, and more successfully than their unmarried peers;

• States with more married families enjoy higher levels of educational performance, in part because children are more likely to excel in school when they are raised by married parents; and,

• States with more married families have lower crime rates, which is important because crime is a drag on the economy.

 

To that end, we simulated the per capita GDP, child poverty rate, and family median income for each state assuming the state enjoyed 1980 levels of married parenthood (go here). Our simulations suggest that, on average, state per capita GDP would be 4.3% higher, child poverty would be 17 % lower, and family median income would be 10% higher.

The simulations also indicate that the states that have been hardest hit by family changes in recent decades would get the biggest economic boost from having their share of families headed by married parents be raised to 1980 levels.

The tables below shows what per capita GDP, child poverty, and family median income would look like in a number of states if these states enjoyed 1980 levels of married parenthood.

The data above clearly suggest that the economic fortunes of states across the nation would be better if they enjoyed higher levels of married parenthood. In other words, Strong Families, Prosperous States suggests that the health of a state economy depends in no small part on the state of its unions.

from AEI » Latest Content http://ift.tt/1MpGRlY