Marriage as a Matter of Social Justice
Isabel Sawhill at the Brookings Institution and Adam Thomas of Georgetown University have found that much of the growth in child poverty from the late 1960s to the 1990s can be attributed to the growth in single parenthood, and that “child poverty rates would drop substantially” if more low-income parents were married. My research with the Urban Institute’s Robert Lerman suggests that about one-third of the growth in family-income inequality can be linked to declines in marriage since the 1970s. Economic stagnation among ordinary American families would also be lower were it not for the retreat from marriage: We estimate that the “growth in median income of families with children would be 44 percent higher if the United States enjoyed 1980 levels of married parenthood today.”
.. At least in the United States, Francis is indeed right to argue that the “evidence is mounting” that the retreat from marriage is “associated with increased poverty and a host of other social ills.”
.. The figure above shows that Catholics without a college degree are about one-fourth less likely to regularly attend Mass, compared to Catholics with a college degree.