April 2, 2014
Column #1,701
New Conservative Issue: Cohabitation Reform
By Mike McManus If I were running for governor In this election year, I’d
propose Cohabitation Reform. Currently, your tax dollars are supporting couples
to live together.
Last year 8 million couples were cohabiting. Two-thirds of those who married
were living together. However, with only 2.2 million marriages in a year, that
means only 1.4 million cohabiting couples tied the knot.
What happened to the other 6.6 million cohabiting couples? Most broke up. On
average, cohabitation lasts only 15 months. While some were still living
together after a year, the grim odds are that four of five couples who cohabit
will split before a wedding.
This will come as a shock to the woman who thought that if she moved in with her
boyfriend, he would see what a wonderful wife she’d make and ask her to marry
him.
That’s one of the myths my wife and I identified in our book, Living Together:
Myths, Risks & Answers. The man knows she would marry him if asked. By
cohabiting he enjoys convenient sex, shared rent and companionship – without
commitment.
When she discovers he is not serious, she moves out. However, she’s no longer
the same hopeful, attractive young woman she was a year ago. Her searing
experience has left her less self-confident, possibly embittered or depressed.
And she may well be pregnant or have a child. Cohabiting couples are nearly as
apt to have a child as a married couple – 41% of those living together vs. 46%
of married couples. Those children are three times as likely to be expelled from
school or get pregnant as those from intact homes, five times more apt to be
poor and 12 times more likely to be incarcerated.
“Uncle Sugar” to quote Mike Huckabee, has become involved. Unwed mothers are
eligible for welfare, Medicaid, food stamps, the Earned Income Tax Credit,
housing and day care subsidies, etc.
The Heritage Foundation estimated that in 2004 those subsidies cost taxpayers
about $20,000 per unwed birth or divorce with a child. With inflation, that’s
probably $25,000 today. With 1.61 million unwed births in 2011, the cost for one
new year is a stunning $40.3 billion.
In a state like Texas, with 160,000 unwed births, taxpayers had to come up with
a huge $4 billion for one year of births. What’s more, cohabiting couples who
marry are more likely to divorce.
What can be done?
Texas will elect a new governor this year. If I were running, here’s what I
would say. “If I am elected governor, and you have an out-of-wedlock child and
are living with the father, Texas wants to encourage you to marry - the best
answer for the child and for you parents. However, today’s law would cut off
Medicaid, food stamps and benefits worth about $25,000 per year.
“Therefore, as governor I’ll propose a legal change so that if you marry, you
would lose NO benefits for two years. Then your benefits would be tapered off
over three years. Married men earn more than cohabiting men. They are more
committed to their family, and need no subsidies. Texas would rather subsidize
couples with children to marry than to subsidize cohabitation,” I’d say.
“In time, the costs to government will fall. I think we could save $1 billion to
$2 billion a year as more couples marry and fewer children are born to unwed
couples.”
Since 1990 the marriage rate in Texas has fallen by a third. Most of that
decline has hit “Middle America,” the 60% of Americans aged 25 to 60 who have a
high school diploma – but not a college degree. For them “marriage is rapidly
slipping away,” according to “The State of Our Unions – Marriage in America
2012,” of the Institute for American Values.
“As recently as the 1980s, only 13% of the children of moderately educated
mothers were born out-of-wedlock. By the late 2000s, that figure had risen to a
whopping 44 percent.”
Bradford Wilcox wrote, “Marriage among the moderately educated middle begins to
resemble the fragile state of marriage among the poor…of high school dropouts.”
By contrast, unwed births to the college-educated grew from only 2% to 6%.
The New York Times reported that more than half of all births (53%) to women
under age 30 now occur outside of marriage. Most are to cohabiting couples.
Therefore what’s needed is what I call “Cohabitation Reform.” One aspect of that
is to subsidize cohabiting couples to marry. Another is to deny benefits to
cohabiting women who give birth. She has the benefit of her partner’s income as
if she were married.
More will marry and children will have a better future.
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