States With More Marriages Are Wealthier

AEI reports:

While the retreat from marriage has been a nationwide trend for some time, this study is the first to examine the impact of family structure on the economic performance of individual states.

In their new report, American Enterprise Institute scholar and sociologist W. Bradford Wilcox, along with economists Joseph Price and Robert I. Lerman, find that US states with higher levels of marriage are more economically prosperous than other states. Among the key points of the report:

Higher levels of marriage, and especially higher levels of married-parent families, are strongly associated with more economic growth, more economic mobility, less child poverty, and higher median family income at the state level. When we compare states in the top quintile of married-parent families with those in the bottom quintile, we find a $1,451 higher per capita GDP in the top quintile, 10.5 percent greater upward income mobility for children from lower-income families, a 13.2 percent decline in the child poverty rate, and a $3,654 higher median family income. These estimates are based on models that control for a range of factors, including educational and racial composition of a state, tax policies, education spending, and the unchanging characteristics of states.

In a state, the share of parents who are married is one of the top predictors of the economic outcomes studied in this report. In fact, this “family” factor is generally a stronger predictor of economic mobility, child poverty, and median family income in US states than educational, racial, and age compositions.

The state-level link between marriage and economic growth is stronger for younger adults (ages 25–35) than for older adults (36–59). This suggests that marriage plays a particularly important role in fostering a positive labor-market orientation among young men (i.e., young married men work more than young unmarried men).

We need to strengthen families by minimizing government.