/ Welfare reduces the financial need for marriage. Since the beginning of the War on Poverty, less-educated mothers have increasingly become married to the welfare state and to the U.S. taxpayer rather than to the fathers of their children.
/ As means-tested benefits expanded, welfare began to serve as a substitute for a husband in the home, and low-income marriage began to disappear. As husbands left the home, the need for more welfare to support single mothers increased. The War on Poverty created a destructive feedback loop: Welfare promoted the decline of marriage, which generated a need for more welfare.
/ A second major problem is that the means-tested welfare system actively penalizes low-income parents who do marry. All means-tested welfare programs are designed so that a family’s benefits are reduced as earnings rise. In practice, this means that, if a low-income single mother marries an employed father, her welfare benefits will generally be substantially reduced. The mother can maximize welfare by remaining unmarried and keeping the father’s income “off the books.”
For example, a single mother with two children who earns $15,000 per year would generally receive around $5,200 per year of food stamp benefits. However, if she marries a father with the same earnings level, her food stamps would be cut to zero.
/ Overall, the federal government operates over 80 means-tested welfare programs that provide cash, food, housing, medical care, and social services to poor and low-income individuals. Each program contains marriage penalties.
/ Low-income families generally receive benefits from several programs at the same time. The marriage penalties from multiple programs when added together can provide substantial financial disincentives to marriage.
/ The anti-marriage penalty is the most severe among married couples where both parents are employed.
/ It has been over 60 years since Lyndon Johnson announced the so-called war on poverty, and $22 trillion dollars later, the overall poverty levels have not budged.
/ Before liberal policies took hold in the black community, 80% of black children were raised in two parent families with a married mother and father. Now 72% of black children are born out of wedlock and 66% are raised in single parent female headed households.
/ The anti-marriage incentives built into the welfare state are indefensible. Policymakers should reduce welfare’s anti-marriage penalties.
/ Democrats have destroyed the black community through welfare.
Hot Forum Topics
