Tuesday, October 28, 2003
Nearly a cure-all
Social scientists never endorse any social arrangement as a cure-all. Nonetheless, when researchers from Pennsylvania State and Ohio State Universities recently addressed the question, "Is Marriage a Panacea?" they came remarkably close to answering with a simple affirmative.
Writing in the journal Social Problems, the researchers remark that in contemporary America "promoting marriage among low-income single mothers is increasingly viewed as a public policy strategy for reducing welfare dependency and encouraging economic self-sufficiency." But because "empirical evidence is limited" as to whether wedlock actually produces the desired effects, many analysts have viewed with skepticism the new policy initiatives to encourage marriage. The authors of the new study, therefore, set out to measure how much marriage actually does help the economic plight of disadvantaged women. The researchers examined social and economic data collected in 1995 from a national sample of 10,847 women aged 15 to 44. Their results provide strong indications that policymakers who are promoting wedlock are indeed serving the public good.
The report highlights a "strong and statistically significant" correlation revealing that - when compared to never-married peers - "ever-married women are substantially less likely to be poor, regardless of race, family disadvantage, nonmarital birth status, or high school dropout." The researchers calculate that "ever-married women have a poverty rate that is roughly one-third lower than the poverty rate experienced by never-married women." In other words, "marriage matters economically."
The data collected by the authors of the new study indicate that "the deleterious effect associated with a disadvantaged family background is completely offset by marrying and staying married (i.e., disadvantaged and non-disadvantaged women who marry have similarly low odds of poverty)." This means that "marriage ... offers a way out of poverty for disadvantaged women.
A copy of the full paper can be found here.
Social scientists never endorse any social arrangement as a cure-all. Nonetheless, when researchers from Pennsylvania State and Ohio State Universities recently addressed the question, "Is Marriage a Panacea?" they came remarkably close to answering with a simple affirmative.
Writing in the journal Social Problems, the researchers remark that in contemporary America "promoting marriage among low-income single mothers is increasingly viewed as a public policy strategy for reducing welfare dependency and encouraging economic self-sufficiency." But because "empirical evidence is limited" as to whether wedlock actually produces the desired effects, many analysts have viewed with skepticism the new policy initiatives to encourage marriage. The authors of the new study, therefore, set out to measure how much marriage actually does help the economic plight of disadvantaged women. The researchers examined social and economic data collected in 1995 from a national sample of 10,847 women aged 15 to 44. Their results provide strong indications that policymakers who are promoting wedlock are indeed serving the public good.
The report highlights a "strong and statistically significant" correlation revealing that - when compared to never-married peers - "ever-married women are substantially less likely to be poor, regardless of race, family disadvantage, nonmarital birth status, or high school dropout." The researchers calculate that "ever-married women have a poverty rate that is roughly one-third lower than the poverty rate experienced by never-married women." In other words, "marriage matters economically."
The data collected by the authors of the new study indicate that "the deleterious effect associated with a disadvantaged family background is completely offset by marrying and staying married (i.e., disadvantaged and non-disadvantaged women who marry have similarly low odds of poverty)." This means that "marriage ... offers a way out of poverty for disadvantaged women.
A copy of the full paper can be found here.
