Promoting Marriage Would Provide Economic Benefit

OneNewsNow cites a statement from Dr. Robert Rector of the Heritage Foundation that if only families were started and maintained intact, child poverty would be greatly reduced.

According to Rector, the major reason for that is that each year, about 38 percent of American children -- the equivalent of about 1.5 million children -- are born into homes without a father.

"Those children are about seven times more likely to live in poverty through their childhood, than are kids raised in a married couple's family," says Rector. "In fact, you can take data on the mother and the father, and if that mother [who] gave birth without being married was actually married to the real father of the child, in about 70 percent of the cases the child would be raised immediately out of poverty."

The researcher says the average family with poor children only works about 16 hours a week on a yearly average. According to Rector, if the number of hours worked per week were raised to 40, those children would be "immediately raised out of poverty."

Note that Rector also says poverty also results when parents aren't working full time. While there may be a few that simply cannot find full-time employment, there are many who don't want full-time work. I can think of several individuals I've encountered in the past year in my local area who don't work a 40 hour week...not because they can't get the hours, but because they are too hung over, claim they are too sick (probably from said hangover), or just flat don't want to go to work (why their employers put up with this, I don't know, but some do). Statistics on work lost due to addictions (drugs, alcohol, gambling) also bear this out.

We say we can't "legislate morality" (and I do consider a poor work ethic to be a moral issue), but we somehow believe we can successfully legislate aid packages for people who haven't earned them, legislate your money out of your pocket and into someone elses, and minimum wages for people who may or may not have earned them.

Why does our society put so much stock in solutions with little accountability that gouge the taxpayer, leaving the suffering in a perpetual state of enablement...but we refuse to adopt solutions that make value judgments, hold people responsible, and could lead people to become productive, self sufficient citizens? Why do we do that?