No, Traditional Marriage Won’t End Poverty
Jeb Bush and Paul Ryan think marriage is the best way to fight poverty. Too bad the facts don’t back them up.
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At a fundraiser with Wall Street donors hosted by the Manhattan Institute on Monday, Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R) and Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) told the crowd that marriage is the best cure for poverty.
“A loving family taking care of their children in a traditional marriage will create the chance to break out of poverty far better, far better than any of the government programs that we can create,” Bush told the crowd.
Ryan agreed, saying, “The best way to turn from a vicious cycle of despair and learned hopelessness to a virtuous cycle of hope and flourishing is by embracing the attributes of friendship, accountability and love” and adding, “That’s how you fight poverty.”
Ryan recently released an audit of anti-poverty programs, went on a listening tour to areas with high levels of poverty, and held hearings on poverty (although wouldn’t let any poor people testify) ahead of releasing a report on anti-poverty programs later this year. Ryan and Bush aren’t the only conservatives to point to marriage as the cure for poverty; Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) called it “the greatest tool” to lift people out of poverty and a panel of conservatives at the Heritage Foundation marriage is the best way to lift women up in the economy.
But pushing poor people toward marriage won’t go very far toward poverty reduction. More than two-thirds of single mothers who marry end up divorced by the time they’re ages 35 to 44. That will actually leave them worse off financially than if they had stayed single. The marriages that do make it tend to be unstable and low quality.
And the government’s attempts at promoting marriage have shown pitiful results compared to the huge sums of money it spent. It spent $800 million on the Health Marriage Initiative but the national marriage rate continued to decline and the divorce rate remained unchanged, while state-level spending from the program didn’t have any significant association with marriage rates in those states. It spent $11,000 per couple in the Building Strong Families program but had no effect on whether couples got married or even stayed together, while those who enrolled were less likely to stick it out and the fathers were less likely to be involved with their children. And it spent $9,100 per couple in the Supporting Healthy Marriage program but it didn’t lead to more couples staying together or getting married and it had little impact on children’s well-being.
Meanwhile, despite Bush’s claim that marriage is more effective than policy at alleviating poverty, that also is not the case. While a disproportionate number of single mothers and their children live in poverty in the United States as compared to some other developed countries, that’s mostly due to differences in policy. Matt Bruenig at Demos found that family composition can’t account for the country’s high child poverty rates, but that our tax system and social safety net can. Without those public programs, the American poverty rate for children who live with single mothers looks similar to Finland, Norway, and Sweden; it’s after those are all taken into account that the difference emerges.
And policy choices leave America’s single mothers the worst off among 18 developed countries. They have to deal with the least generous income support system, the lack of paid family leave, a long wait for early childhood education to start, high rates of lacking insurance, and a low rate of child support receipt.
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Texas Legislature Starts Talking ‘Frackquakes’ While Oklahomans Get Quake Insurance
On Monday, lawmakers in Texas, for the first time, formally addressed the recent rash of earthquakes that rocked northern Texas this winter.
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CREDIT: SHUTTERSTOCK
On Monday, lawmakers in Texas, for the first time, formally addressed the recent rash of earthquakes that rocked northern Texas this winter. At the first hearing of the newly created Seismic Activity Subcommittee in the Texas House, lawmakers heard testimony from local leaders, scientists and the Texas Railroad Commission, about the effects of the recent surge in seismic activity and its possible links to the state’s booming oil and gas industry.
“Our school district now conducts earthquake drills,” Azle Mayor Alan Brundrette said at the hearing — something schools in the area have never before had to worry about. Residents have also been complaining about cracking foundations and breaking water pipes.
According to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), since November 1, 2013, at least 27 earthquakes with magnitudes between 2.1 and 3.7 have struck near the border of Parker and Tarrant counties in and around the towns of Azle and Reno in northern Texas. The affected area sits atop the Barnett Shale, one of the nation’s most productive natural gas fields.
For decades, there have been concerns that fracking operations could trigger tremors. While fracking itself has only been definitively linked to quakes in a handful of cases, including most recently, in Ohio, it is the injection of fracking wastewater deep into the earth that is believed to trigger most fracking-related tremors. The fluid increases underground pressure and acts as a lubricant on faults. Texas is home to nearly 3,600 active disposal wells.
Arkansas has already imposed a moratorium on new injection wells in areas that have recently experienced unusual seismicity, as has Ohio. But Monday’s testimony from the Texas Railroad Commission, which oversees oil and gas operations in the state, suggests that the Lone Star State is in no hurry to act.
“A knee-jerk reaction could have a negative impact on our economy because of the large role the oil and gas industry plays here,” Milton Rister, executive director of the Texas Railroad Commission said during the hearing. “I think the three commissioners are aware we need to make some adjustment … but don’t want to do something we all end up regretting a year from now.”
“The industry’s right to profit does not surpass our right as citizens to the quality of life we’ve come to know,” said Lynda Stokes, mayor of Reno at the hearing.
Part of the problem in linking any particular quake with wastewater injection is the lack of information scientists have about injection well activity. Researchers at Southern Methodist University, who in December added 12 seismometers to the Reno-Azle area to get more accurate readings, say they can’t create a full picture of what is going on underground without knowing the volumes and pressures of wastewater injections at each well. That data is not publicly available as it is considered proprietary.
“We have a state agency that has the authority to regulate those operators, yet we can’t get everyone together to share the information we need to address the problem,” said Brundrett, mayor of Azle. “It’s time to step up and confirm – once and for all – whether disposal wells are causing these quakes and why.”
In April, Ohio moved to take tough new action to manage the threat posed by increased seismicity, by releasing strict new guidelines for monitoring seismic activity in the state. The rules require companies to install seismic monitors before beginning to drill within three miles of a known fault or in an area that has experienced seismic activity greater than 2.0 magnitude. If seismic monitors detect a quake of 1.0 or more, regulators will suspend fracking and investigate whether drilling is connected to the quake
The recent wave of tremors is not the first time that the usual quiet ground in Texas has shifted suddenly. In 2008 and 2009, the Dallas-Fort Worth area was shaken by three series of earthquakes, with magnitudes as high as 3.3. Researchers at Southern Methodist University and the University of Texas at Austin concluded that local fracking wastewater wells were the plausible cause for the quakes. Prior to 2008, the Dallas-Fort Worth area had just one recorded earthquake greater than 2.0 — there have since been 70.
While many small earthquakes may be more of a nuisance than a danger, they can also be a warning of much more serious earth-shaking to come. The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) recently issued an earthquake warning for another heavily fracked state, Oklahoma, where the rate of earthquakes has increased by about 50 percent since last October. The sharp uptick in small quakes increased the likelihood of larger, more dangerous earthquakes — 5.0 and greater — in the future, the scientists warned.
An informal survey conducted by the Oklahoma Insurance Commission found that 12 to 18 percent of residents now have earthquake insurance, up from just 2 to 4 percent in 2011.
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But more importantly these glaciers act “as a linchpin on the rest of the [West Antarctic] ice sheet, which contains enough ice to cause” a total of 12 to 15 feet of global sea level rise, as the University of Washington 
