Government‐Supported Healthy Marriage Initiatives Are Not Associated with Changes in Family Demographics: A Comment on Hawkins, Amato, and Kinghorn (2013)

IntheJulyissueofFamily Relations,AlanJ. Hawkins, Paul R. Amato, and Andrea Kinghorn (2013) reviewed the demographic effects of government spending on the Healthy Marriage Initiatives. These initiatives are programs designed to increase the number of children being raised in two-parent households by either promoting the value of marriage among the poor or by teaching relationship skills to couples with children (Administration for Children and Families, 2005). As Hawkins and colleagues point out, the money for these programs was carved out of Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) funding. The use of TANF funds to instill the appreciation of marriage and to teach relationship skills started in the late 1990s but was significantly increased about 8 years ago through legislation that devoted minimally $100 million a year from TANF funds to marriage initiatives (The Deficit Reduction Act of 2005, 2006). In their article, Hawkins and colleagues addressed the important question of whether these funds have met the goal of altering the demographics of families in the United States.The timing of their article could not be better. Once again, marriage is being proposed as a solution to an assortment of problems, such as income inequality and "crime among young black males" (O'Reilly, 2013a, p. C1). This has led some to call for further government interventions, including a recommendation that the federal government launch a "national campaign to discourage women from having babies out of wedlock" (O'Reilly, 2013b, p. C3; for a program encouraging marriage in another country, see Lee, 2013). Others have made similar-if not so strident-arguments for promoting and strengthening marriage, and someofthesecallsforactionhavebeenheededat the state level (e.g., Utah Marriage Commission Act, 2013). However, there is compelling evidence that low-income couples and single parents already value marriage (Edin & Kefalas, 2005; Edin & Reed, 2005; Trail & Karney, 2012), and that the challenges faced by families at or near the poverty line cannot be addressed by teaching relationship skills (Karney & Bradbury, 2005; Silva, 2013; Wilson, 2009; for an example of a nonacademic writer making this argument, see Blow, 2013). The current focus on marriage as a solution to social problems may sound familiar to those who remember the marriage debate from 10 to 15 years ago when scholars and policy makers similarly disagreed on the reasons behind the higher dissolution rates and lower marriage rates among low-income parents as well as how best to support these families (e.g., Blankenhorn, 1995; Catlett & Artis, 2004; Karney & Bradbury, 2005; Obama, 2006; Waite & Gallagher, 2000; Warren & Tyagi, 2003; Whitehead, 1997; Wilson, 2002). The difference between the prior and current focus on marriage among low-income parents is that we now have years of experience in conducting government- sponsored marriage programs (for a description of these programs, see Avishai, Heath, & Randles, 2012; Heath, 2012) and the studies describing their effectiveness. In their article, Hawkins, Amato, and Kinghorn (2013) review and add to these studies. Their analyses and the outcome studies they review lead them to conclude that there are reasons to be hopeful, noting thatalthough the findings are not as clear as we would like and more research is needed, our results, together with those of recent program evaluation studies, suggest potentially positive effects for [these programs]-effects that may become larger with the passage of time. (p. 512)My position is that this conclusion relies on selective interpretations of the data. In fact, the available data are more in line with the exact opposite conclusion. A brief review of their data and the data from three evaluation studies follows.THE DATA DESCRIBED BY HAWKINS AND COLLEAGUES (2013)Hawkins, Amato, and Kinghorn' (2013) central finding was based on a regression analysis of state-level data that used the amount of funding spent on Healthy Marriage Initiatives to predict various demographic changes since this funding started until 2010. …