The articles in this volume provide the latest information and findings on marriage. Full summaries are provided at the beginning of each article. In this section, we focus on the findings we think are most important.

Marriage as a Public Issue

Steven Nock observes that there is an emerging political, cultural, and scientific consensus that children do best in families with two loving parents. He sees the contemporary marriage debate as the nation’s recognition of the cultural nature of the problem. In this view, the debate is a crucial national conversation among Americans struggling to interpret and make sense of the role that marriage and the family play in today’s society. He also points out that although large cultural and social forces are driving the decline in marriage, most of the new U.S. programs attempting to restore or strengthen marriage focus on changing individuals, not their culture or society. He argues that the problem cannot be addressed solely at the individual level and cautions that given how little researchers and professionals know about helping couples get or stay married, expectations of policies in these areas should be modest.

Trends

Andrew Cherlin notes that sentiment in favor of marriage appears to be stronger in the United States than it is in other developed countries. The share of U.S. adults who are likely to marry is larger, but so is the share likely to divorce. U.S. children are also more likely to live in single-parent families. Given these patterns, American policymakers are unlikely to be able to raise U.S. family stability to levels typical of other developed countries. Consequently, a family policy that relies too heavily on marriage will not help the many children destined to live in single-parent and cohabiting-parent families—many of them poor—during their formative years. Cherlin argues that assistance must be directed to needy families regardless of their household structure. Policymakers must craft a careful balance of marriage-based and marriage-neutral programs to provide adequate support to American children.

Financial Consequences

Adam Thomas and Isabel Sawhill show that across all races and for a variety of income measures, children in single-parent families have less family income and are more likely to be poor than children in married-parent families. Cohabiting families are generally better off economically than single-parent families, but considerably worse off than married-parent families. The authors acknowledge that although “selection” (the fact that more-educated couples are more likely to marry than less-educated couples) may explain part of the link between family structure and family economic resources, their evidence indicates that family structure does affect family resources; single parenthood reduces children’s economic prospects and marriage improves them. Like Cherlin, they argue that policymakers may not be able to do much to reverse the trends in family structure. They also point out that marriage is not an economic cure-all for the complex problem of child poverty. Instead, Thomas and Sawhill suggest that declines in single parenthood may offer the greatest promise for improving the economic welfare of children in the United States.

Cognitive, Social, and Emotional Consequences

Paul Amato shows that children growing up with two continuously married parents are less likely than other children to experience a wide range of cognitive, emotional, and social problems, not only during childhood but also in adulthood. He attributes the advantages associated with two-parent families to a higher standard of living, more effective parenting, more cooperative co-parenting, better quality relationships between parents and children, and fewer stressful events and circumstances. Despite these advantages, Amato argues that interventions that increase the share of children who grow up with both parents would produce only modest improvements in the overall well-being of U.S. children, because children’s social or emotional problems have many causes. Nevertheless, interventions that lower only modestly the overall share of U.S. children who experience various problems could lower substantially the number of children facing these problems. Even a small decline in percentages, when multiplied by the many children in the population, is a substantial social benefit.

Gay Marriage

William Meezan and Jonathan Rauch argue that marriage confers three types of benefits on children of heterosexual parents—material benefits, stability, and social acceptance—and that these benefits would be likely to carry over to children of married same-sex parents. They also note that the empirical research carried out to date suggests that children being raised by gay parents are doing about as well as children normally do. The existing research, however, is based on rather special samples, and thus we do not know whether the children in these studies are typical of the general population of children raised by gay and lesbian couples. We also have little sense of how changing marriage laws for gay and lesbian couples might affect children in heterosexual families. The authors note that the best way to ascertain the costs and benefits of same-sex marriage on children is to compare it with the alternatives. And they suggest that such a comparison is now possible because the United States is already running a limited, localized experiment: Massachusetts is marrying same-sex couples; Vermont and Connecticut are offering civil unions; and several states are offering partner-benefit programs.

Marriage in Low-Income Communities

Kathryn Edin and Joanna Reed review recent research on social and economic barriers to marriage among the poor and discuss the efficacy of efforts by federal and state policymakers to promote marriage among poor unmarried couples. They note that disadvantaged men and women place a high value on marriage but are reluctant to make a formal commitment because they are unable to meet the high standards of relationship quality and financial stability they believe are necessary to sustain a marriage and avoid divorce. In view of these findings, Edin and Reed argue that public campaigns to convince poor Americans of the value of marriage are preaching to the choir. Because disadvantaged men and women view some degree of financial stability as a prerequisite for marriage, policymakers must address the instability and low pay of the jobs lower-income people typically hold as well as devise ways to promote homeownership and other asset development to encourage marriage. Encouraging more low-income couples to marry without giving them the tools to maintain a stable union may simply increase divorce rates.

Marriage Programs

Robin Dion examines some of the programs that have inspired the Bush administration’s marriage initiative and asks whether they are likely to be effective. She notes that they were designed for and evaluated using middle-class couples rather than the disadvantaged couples whom the Bush initiative will target. For the initiative to succeed, program curriculums will need to be responsive to and respectful of the interests and circumstances of low-income families. Although efforts to adapt these programs to disadvantaged populations are now under way, it is not yet known whether they will be successful. Dion notes that the Administration for Children and Families is planning to test several of the most important of the new marriage programs scientifically and on a large scale to learn whether they will work and whether the effects on couple relationships will translate into benefits for children.

Marriage and the Tax and Transfer Systems

Adam Carasso and Eugene Steuerle argue that marriage penalties are a result of policymakers’ efforts to achieve the goal of progressivity—giving greater tax and welfare benefits to those with lower income—while trying to keep down program costs. Under the current tax and transfer system, tax obligations rise and transfer program benefits fall, sometimes steeply, as households earn more income. As a result, many low- to moderate-income families face high effective marginal tax rates. These high rates produce large marriage penalties: additional income brought into a household by marriage causes other benefits to be reduced or lost altogether. In extreme cases, households can lose a dollar or more for every dollar earned. The authors offer several options for reducing or eliminating the marriage penalty, and recommend two in particular. The first is to set a maximum marginal tax rate for lower-income individuals, similar to the maximum rate set for highest-income individuals. The second is to provide individual wage subsidies to lower-income earners, so that such workers who marry can combine their income with that of their spouses without incurring penalties.