The Impoverishing Effect of Cohabitation<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />
 
J. Michael Sharman
 
A couple hundred years ago, Benjamin Franklin advised his countrymen, "Early to bed and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise."[1]
Nowadays, we seem to need a bit more instruction. 
The text for health and prosperity being taught now by both liberals and conservatives is that if you want to stay out of poverty, then don't have kids before you are married, don't get married before you are 20 years old, and don't break up with your marriage partner.[2]
Back when, this didn't need to be explained.  In 1950, when my parents were building their family, only 4 percent of children were born to unmarried women.[3]
But in 2004, which is the most recent year for which these figures are available, 34.6% of all births in the <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />US were to unmarried women.[4] Let that soak in: One in three newborns in the US is born without married parents.
Let's state the numbers a few different ways to try and get a full understanding of the economic impact to a child in an unmarried family.
 Into every life a little rain must fall, but bad economic weather hits unmarried families a whole lot harder than it does married families. Ninety-two percent of married families with children are NOT poor, while 51.6% of nevermarried households are poor. Children born to parents who do not marry spend more than half of their lives (56.7%) in poverty, but children in married families live outside of poverty for 93.7% of their lives.
 Unmarried women plus children equals poverty. Look at this: A child raised by a never-married mother is 900% more likely to live in poverty than a child raised by two parents in an intact marriage.[5]
Single parenthood is a problem for all races, but let's get real, if we as a society really cared about racial equality we would strongly promote marriage. Black children are much more likely to live in poverty because their parents are much less likely to marry.
Black kids are half as likely as white kids to be living in a two-parent household. Black kids are eight times more likely than white kids to live with an unwed mother. The most common living arrangement for black preschoolers is to live with a never-married mother.[6]
One author went so far as to say: "The birthrates of black married women have fallen so sharply that absent out-of-wedlock childbearing, the African American population would not only fail to reproduce itself, but would rapidly die off."[7]
The marriage of an unmarried parent helps in all single-parent situations, but it helps black kids lots more than it does white kids. The family income of white children rises by 45 percent when their single parent marries, but the family income of black children soars by 81 percent with marriage.[8]
Divorce hurts everyone, but it hurts a black child harder and longer than it does a white child. A study found that in the first two years following a divorce, family income falls by 53 percent among black children but white children's family income only falls about 30 percent.
In fact, three or more years after the divorce, black families' income have only recouped 11% of their income loss while the white families' income rebounded 30%.[9]
It is a true irony that a black child was more likely to grow up living with both parents during the days of slavery than he is today.[10] As recently as 1940, the black illegitimacy rate was just 19 percent[11], but births today to unmarried black women equal 68.2% of all births to black women.[12]
Joy Jones got the front page of The Washington Post Outlook section when she used a provocative quote from one of her six grade students for the title of her op-ed piece: "'Marriage Is for White People.'" A black educator and writer, Ms. Jones said, "I grew up in the time when two-parent families were still the norm, in both black and white America. … Today it would appear that many – particularly in the black community – have dispensed with marriage altogether."[13]
And that is so completely self-defeating. In a study comparing the attitudes of married African Americans to their unmarried peers, those who are married report they are wealthier, happier, choose healthier behaviors, and their children are better off.[14]
So what makes a family healthy and wealthy? Wise parents who have given their children a wedding anniversity to celebrate.

[1] Poor Richard's Almanack (1735) http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Benjamin_Franklin

[2] Clegg, Roger "1,293,567 Casualties: A social trend claims young victims", attributing that concept to former Clinton advisor William Galston
http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/comment050100b.html

[3] Cherlin, Andrew J. "Should the Government Promote Marriage" Contexts magazine, Vol 2, No 4 (fall 2003)
http://www.contextsmagazine.org/content_sample_v2-4.php

[4] National Vital Statistics Reports, Vol. 54, No. 2, Table 19, September 8, 2005

[5] Bailey, Blake "How Not to Be Poor" BRIEF ANALYSIS, national center for Policy Analysis
No. 428 (January 15, 2003)

[6] The Abolition of Marriage, by Maggie Gallagher p. 117, citing Andrew J. Cherlin, Marriage, Divorce, Remarriage, rev. and enl. ed., (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1992), 98-99.

[7] The Abolition of Marriage, by Maggie Gallagher p. 120, citing Reynolds Forley, "After the Starting Line: Blacks and Women in an Uphill Pace," Demography 25, no. 4 (November 1988): 487, Figure 6.

[8] February 2005 issue of Demography, following a nationally representative, longitudinal survey of Americans conducted by the University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research. http://www.divorcereform.org/black.html

[9] February 2005 issue of Demography, following a nationally representative, longitudinal survey of Americans conducted by the University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research. http://www.divorcereform.org/black.html

[10] Andrew J. Cherlin, Marriage, Divorce, Remarriage, rev. and enl. ed., (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1992), 110 . See also Herbert G. Gutman, The Black Family in Slavery and Freedom, 1750-1925 (New York: Pantheon, 1976).

[11] Clegg, Roger "1,293,567 Casualties: A social trend claims young victims" http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/comment050100b.html

[12] National Vital Statistics Reports, Vol. 54, No. 2, Table 19, September 8, 2005

[13] Jones, Joy, "'Marriage Is for White People'", The Washington Post, Outlook, B1, March 26, 2006.

[14] "The Consequences of Marriage for African Americans: A Comprehensive Literature Review"by: Lorraine Blackmun, et al Press Release: October 24, 2005
http://www.divorcereform.org/black.html