Avoid poverty and overcome inequality by getting married before you have children.
“Although immigration and trade are often blamed, a more important reason for our lack of progress against poverty and our growing inequality is a dramatic change in American family life. Almost 30 percent of children now live in single-parent families, up from 12 percent in 1968. Since poverty rates in single-parent households are roughly five times as high as in two-parent households, this shift has helped keep the poverty rate up; it climbed to 13.2 percent last year. If we had the same fraction of single-parent families today as we had in 1970, the child poverty rate would probably be about 30 percent lower than it is today.”
Follow the path to upward mobility by getting married before you have children.
“Of course money is a factor in upward mobility, but it isn’t the only one; it may not even be the most important. Our research shows that if you want to avoid poverty and join the middle class in the United States, you need to complete high school (at a minimum), work full time and marry before you have children. If you do all three, your chances of being poor fall from 12 percent to 2 percent, and your chances of joining the middle class or above rise from 56 to 74 percent. (We define middle class as having an income of at least $50,000 a year for a family of three.)”
Building a nest first, then having children…building a nest first, then having children, protects children from a multitude of social pathologies.
A child’s risk of being poor, a high school drop-out, a juvenile delinquent, or knocked up as a teenager (or knocking up a teenager) decreases if the child’s father is married to his mother and living in the same home as the child. In other words, if you want to give your children the best foundation possible, being married to their father is a good start. Generally speaking.
Source: Brookings Institute
