Marriage is not as effective an anti-poverty strategy as you’ve been led to believe

Despite the popular guidance, marriage can be an economic risk for single parents with unstable partners. simarik/iStock/Getty Images Plus by Eleanor Brown, Fordham University; June Carbone, University of Minnesota, and Naomi Cahn, University of Virginia Brides.com predicts that 2024 will be the “year of the proposal” as engagements tick back up after a pandemic-driven slowdown. Meanwhile, support for marriage has found new grist in recent books, including sociologist Brad Wilcox’s “Get Married: Why Americans Must Defy the Elites, Forge Strong Families and Save Civilization” and economist Melissa Kearney’s “The Two-Parent Privilege.” Kearney’s book was hailed by economist Tyler Cowen as possibly “the most important economics and policy book of this year.” This is not because it treads new ground but because, as author Kay Hymowitz writes, it breaks the supposed “taboo about an honest accounting of family decline.” These developments are good news for the marriage promotion movement, which for decades has claimed that marriage supports children’s well-being and combats poverty. The movement dates back at least to the U.S. Department of Labor’s Moynihan Report of 1965, which argued that family structure aggravated Black poverty. Forty years after the Moynihan Report, George W. Bush-era programs such as the Healthy Marriage...