How America’s Welfare System Can Stop Separating Kids From Their Fathers
The decline of marriage and corresponding increase of fatherless children in America over the last 60 years exists almost entirely among the poor and working class. The consequences are devastating, especially for children, yet the government continues to disincentivize marriage in its welfare programs without recognizing the pitfalls.
Fatherless children are more likely to experience poverty as adults compared with children from intact married homes, even when accounting for original differences in child poverty. Preeminent social mobility researcher Raj Chetty factored in the quality of schools, race, and ethnicity, and found that the number of married fathers in a neighborhood is a primary predictor of upward economic mobility later in life for the children in that area.
One explanation for this is that dads help their children develop valuable life skills. Nobel Prize-winning economist James...
