The Institute for American Values (IAV) has issued a major report titled “The Taxpayer Costs of Divorce and Unwed Childbearing“, conservatively estimating the cost to taxpayers at $112 billion.
This is a very conservative estimate because it either understates or does not include federal expenditures driving decisions to not marry or to have children for profit. Programs that stimulate marriage-absence include Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF), and programs that are widely abused to abort marriage such as the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), and the Victims of Crime Act (VOCA).
The IAV understates the cost and impact of TANF, which gives states $16-billion annually in seed money to generate more child support orders under the guise of welfare. IAV values TANF at $5-billion — a significant understatement of the actual cost. Most Americans do not realize that TANF is not a tithe to help a few single mothers living in poverty. It formalizes the “man out of the house rule” and is nothing more than a loan to a woman to be collected from some guy as “child support”.
Both VAWA and VOCA contain provisions funding arbitrary and irresponsible destruction of marriage in the name of “choice” and “domestic violence”. VAWA pegs in at $1-billion. I am not sure what portion of VOCA applies.
Other costs to taxpayers are not included. A good portion of the home loan crises is strongly associated with divorce. Many loans were made to unqualified single parents. Divorcing families move into high-risk category because they have to support two households on the same income. Nobody yet knows what the home loan crisis will ultimately cost the taxpayer — but we do know it is a horrendous figure taking down banks, threatening the Federal Reserve system, and the value of the dollar on the world market.
It is estimated that three-quarters of our massive national health care insurance problem would go away if mothers simply married the fathers of their children. We do not yet know what Congress will do to pass this off on the taxpayer.
Most importantly, readers should understand the political meaning and purpose of the IAV report. Failed welfare reform policies of the 1990′s evolved in an identical arena of concern about taxpayer burdens and blaming father-absence on men created by Blankenhorn. This report is a predecessor to some even nastier legislation they have in mind.
David Blankenhorn’s primary thesis still improperly blames father-absence on men “abdicating” their roles as fathers and husbands, while claiming that “father-absence is the greatest social problem we face”. There is no study in existence supporting these notions.
The vast body of studies prove the “Blankenhorn paradox” to be absolutely wrong. Nevertheless, the Blankenhorn paradox was the basis for welfare reform policies in the 1990′s — which are failures because they propelled illegitimacy and non-marriage to new historic levels and made poverty a crime if one happens to be a poor father.
How did Blankenhorn pull this off? Liberals love collecting child support and building bigger welfare states. Conservatives were absolutely addicted to Blankenorn’s voluminous and brilliant writings on the “importance of marriage”. Conservatives subsequently bought Blankenhorn’s father-absence abdication theory without questioning the premises. Conservatives literally fell head-first into radical liberal policy in the name of “personal responsibility”.
If Blankenhorn’s thesis is wrong, then what is right?
Marriage-absence is the greatest social problem we face.
Father-absence, poverty, and illegitimacy are the results of government programs that have aggressively undermined the marriage market since 1960. When we view our national problems from the correct heirarchical perspective, the disastrous impact on women, children, men, and marriage is quite simple to discern.
The Heritage Foundation and Family Research Council are beginning to understand what went wrong, but there are still many stumbling blocks to be cleared. With time and conference calls, we will clear them and begin the second Republican revolution — this time founded on solid social policy agenda.
I recommend we welcome IAV’s report. but we should expect that IAV’s policy recommendations will be wrong every time because it consistently analyzes the wrong problem from the wrong perspective. The use of misdirected anger about father-absence as a an emotional cover to push federal policies funding more divorce and illegitimacy, at the direct expense of marriage, must never be permitted again.
