Inquiring Minds: Frances Goldscheider on welfare and marriage

President Bush recently announced a welfare plan that includes $300 million for programs such as premarital counseling, designed to encourage marriage. Frances Goldscheider, professor of sociology at Brown and currently a visiting professor at the Center for Women's Studies at Stockholm University in Sweden, recently answered Kristen Cole's questions about the importance of marriage.

Why is marriage important from the perspective of a government?

Marriage promotion can be seen both as a public health and public welfare booster. Married people have much better mental and physical health than unmarried people, partly because of better monitoring, partly because of the connections between depression and poorer physical health. Many people think that this is true for men but not women, but that is a misunderstanding of the results; it's more true for men than for women, but the gender differences have been declining over time.

Of course, one could argue that it's a matter of individual choice: Adults can choose to be unmarried, like choosing to smoke. However, results are even stronger if anything for children, who don't choose. Having married parents leads to a 10- 20-percent increase in the proportion finishing high school, attending college, and being employed in young adulthood. There is a similar decline in the likelihood of being a teen parent, and - Calvin's [Goldscheider] and my small contribution - about a 20 percent increase in the likelihood of leaving home for some relatively stable or positive reason (college, job, marriage) relative to more problematic arrangements (military, cohabitation/unmarried parenthood, or "just because.")

If you want to know more regarding adults, there's a good review in the Waite and Gallagher book "The Case for Marriage." Regarding kids, a better place might be a recent issue of the journal, Context. The February issue has an article by Sara McLanahan on the consequences for kids, and comments by me and others.

How is marriage already encouraged in this country?

It's mildly encouraged socially - was stronger in the past - and wealthier people get substantial benefits via the tax, inheritance and Social Security systems.

But these benefits decrease with income, and when you get down to about twice the poverty level, things go the other way. Poor families on Medicaid are the greatest scandal. Even a relatively slight increase in income, which normally accompanies marriage, causes couples to lose their insurance, and the husband and wife are unlikely to have jobs that provide health insurance. Public housing is also strongly means tested, with the result that couples often lose rent dollars, dollar for dollar or worse, by an increase in family income. There has been some effort to address this issue, but it costs money.

What the "new" (1996, about to be re-authorized) welfare system is mostly doing is throwing poor families either onto their own resources or onto the family safety net (marriage, parents, whatever) as welfare is cut off. Most couples got jobs, though there's strong evidence that their kids, especially their adolescent kids, got much less supervision, and are appearing to be doing worse, but that was in that economy. In the current economy, even with this quite weak recovery, it is likely to be a very different story. And one of the things we do know is that lousy/unstable jobs destabilize marriages powerfully.

When did premarital counseling come into vogue? Is the conventional wisdom that it works?

This is a tough one, and I know less about it. The programs are so variable in length, content and teeth. There is some evidence that some couples in some programs who have little in common are slowed down long enough to deter them. I've heard anecdotal information that continued support is helpful, as the first few years are not only the most stressful, but are when the negative patterns that lead to anger and eventual separation are shaped.