Median Income of Families with Children by Family Structure Family income directly correlates with the number of American children who live in or below the level of poverty. The mass of children who witnessed their parents' divorce grows by 1 million each year. The financial toll of divorce is significant. Two-parent households have an average income of 43,600 verses 25,300. In addition to the limits imposed by the diminishment of financial resources, divorce increases delinquency and crime rates, the incidence of child abuse, the abuse of controlled substances, decreases in academic achievement and less frequent participation in civic and religious organizations.
Divorce can devastate children.
First, there seems to be a significant relationship between divorce and criminal behavior of children. Robert Sampson has found that divorce rate predicted the level of robbery in any given area. He draws from this data the conclusion that the supervision found within intact families by way of formal and informal social controls is able to mitigate the level of criminal activity of young people. Moreover, in a recent study done by the Wisconsin Department of Health and Human Services and the U.S. Census Bureau found that children of divorced parents are 12 times more likely to engage in activities which result in incarceration than their intact counterparts. The same phenomenon can also be understood by plotting the behavior of children who do not live with their biological father.