The Growing Marriage Divide

There is no more important social institution to society than marriage. It has a host of social benefits for adults and children. The breakdown of the family is directly linked to all sorts of societal problems including crime, poverty, public health, and educational challenges. This is a reality that has been well documented for decades by social science.

The decline of marriage is also a primary contributor to the growth of government. It is hard to think of a social program that has not grown dramatically because of the breakdown of the traditional family. From just 1965 to 1999 the federal government spent $7.9 trillion on poverty programs as out-of-wedlock births quadrupled.