The Best Remedy for Income Inequality: Get Married

The most significant difference between the rich and the poor in America is that the rich mostly come from intact families and the poor come from single parent families. Census Bureau data indicated that in 2012, in families headed by two married parents, just 7.5% lived in poverty. By contrast, when families are headed by a single mother the poverty level jumps to 33.9%.

Unfortunately, the number of children raised in female-headed families is growing in America. A 2012 study by the Heritage Foundation found that 28.6% of children born to a white mother were out of wedlock. For Hispanics, the figure was 52.5%, and for African-Americans 72.3%. In 1964 when the war on poverty began, almost everyone was born in a family with two married parents: only 7% were not. These figures explain why our problems with poverty are so prevalent: Children born in intact families have an easier time becoming educated, wealthy, and successful than children reared by one parent.

The Heritage Foundation has reported that among white married couples, the poverty rate in 2009 was 3.2%; for white non-married families the rate was 22%. Among black married couples, the poverty rate was only 7%, but the rate for non-married black families was 35.6%.

Redistributing money will not solve the problem of poverty in America. If it would, then we would have seen poverty disappear from our country since the war on poverty began in 1964. Welfare/redistribution policies in the United States have spent $20.7 trillion in 2011 dollars since 1964. As can be seen above, the results have been abysmal.

Politicians such as President Obama, Senator Elizabeth Warren, and New York City’s new mayor, Bill de Blasio believe that the income gap can be closed by increasing taxes on wealthy Americans and transferring the money to the poor. America already has an extremely progressive income tax situation (That means that as one’s income increases, the percentage of money going to taxes increases, too.). According to the Congressional Budget Office, the top 40% of wage earners, those who make more than $51,100/year paid 86.4% of all federal taxes in 2010. The bottom 40% of earners paid only 4.2% of taxes. Many people in the bottom 40% of earners even received money back from the government by “refunds” for money they had never paid in the first place. This happens because of the earned income tax credit and other public assistance programs.

What United States citizens need to do in order to remedy the poverty problem in our country is the stay in school and get married—after that, they should have children. Our national problem is the breakdown of the family, not money-grabbing rich people.

(This blog post was redacted from the Wall Street Journal of 1/13/14, page A15.)