COMMENTARY
KEVIN HASSET
The news that the messy divorce trial of Christie Brinkley and Peter Cook ended with a settlement last week came a little too late for the two parties. The ugliness of the case was best-captured by the news alert posted by the Associated Press announcing the settlement: "Christie Brinkley settles NY divorce with husband who had teen mistress, online porn habit."
Having a publicly contested divorce clearly took its toll on the unfortunate couple, but the sad fact is that even quiet divorces can have terrible consequences both for the individuals involved and for society as a whole. Indeed, a growing body of economic literature has added up the cost of divorce and the related problem of single parenthood and found them to be astonishingly large.
The sheer enormity of these costs has policy makers scratching their heads and looking for solutions.
According to the US Department of Health and Human Services, 48% of marriages in the U.S. will end in divorce if current marriage and divorce rates continue in the future. Marriage itself is less-common as well, so the traditional nuclear family - father, mother and children - now makes up fewer than 28% of all households. There are more households, fully 32%, that are made up of single individuals or those cohabitating with non-family members.
The evidence suggests divorce has a strongly negative effect on females. Researchers at Ohio State University found that while divorce reduces a person's wealth by an average of 77%, men typically have 2.5 times the wealth of women after a divorce.
Living in a family that is not of the traditionally nuclear variety also takes a toll on children. A thought-provoking review of the literature by economists Ron Haskins, Sara McLanahan and Elisabeth Donohue highlights the costs vividly.
Most compelling is their discussion of a 2005 study by Paul Amato: "Amato reports that if the same share of children lived with their biological parents today as did in 1980, about 300,000 fewer children between the ages of 12 and 18 would repeat a grade, 485,000 fewer would be suspended from school, 250,000 fewer would need psychotherapy, 210,000 fewer would be involved in violence, and 30,000 fewer would attempt suicide every year."
Since kids who have trouble in school are more likely to have trouble thereafter, these numbers understate the true cost to society of the decline of marriage.
Is there anything Washington can do to help revive the traditional environment that serves children so well? The 1996 welfare reform set a national goal of encouraging the "formation and maintenance of two-parent families" and reducing the number of out-of-wedlock births. This translated into block grants for states, designated for "promoting healthy marriages".
President George W. Bush expanded these efforts in 2002 with the Healthy Marriage Initiative. The programme provides $100 million a year in state grants designed to "help couples, who have chosen marriage for themselves gain greater access to marriage-education services, where they can acquire the skills and knowledge necessary to form and sustain a healthy marriage".
The funding is for advertising campaigns on the value of marriage, public school educational programmes and a research initiative on marriage, among other things.
In addition, Mr Bush's 2001 tax cuts also tried to eliminate any marriage disincentives in the tax code. The law relieved married couples in lower tax brackets from the "marriage penalty" by increasing their standard deduction to twice that of singles.
These efforts, though, have hardly made a dent in the problem. Mr Haskins, Ms McLanahan and Ms Donohue write that "the evidence that pro-marriage programmes will produce benefits is thin".
So what should we do? First, both political parties have to recognise that discussion of the benefits of marriage can't dissolve into intolerance. The benefits of higher marriage rates are great. An effective programme would be a godsend for children. Crafted well, it should be uncontroversial.
Second, we need to acknowledge that our efforts to address the problem so far have been inadequate. This may be because the problem is insurmountable; it also might be because programmes in place, such as those that provide counselling, have yet to stumble upon a magic formula.
Even the best programmes will provide little help for conflicts as serious as those facing Ms Brinkley and Mr Cook, but even minor progress could benefit society.
Kevin Hassett is an adviser to Republican Senator John McCain in his bid for the 2008 presidential nomination.
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