the (financial) cost of divorce

A few items here-- an essay entitled "The Family is a Fiscal Issue" by Jennifer Morse Roback based on a study by Ben Scafidi, The Taxpayer Costs of Divorce and Unwed Child-bearing...

(Interesting brushes with both of these people: I met Roback at a conference once (with Acton?) and she's a former George Mason prof. We tried to recruit Scafidi to IUS, but he turned us down for Georgia State.)

The chief, single-number result: family fragmentation costs U.S. taxpayers at least $112 billion every year.

Beyond that: "If, as research suggests is likely, marriage has additional benefits to children, adults, and communities, and if those benefits are in areas other than increased income levels, then the actual taxpayer costs of divorce and unwed childbearing are likely much higher.


I'll leave the details of the report to those who might be interested. Here are some excerpts from Roback's essay based on the study...

In the modern world of consumer choice divorced from any moral grounding, family policy can seem hopelessly divisive. Some argue that "alternative family forms" are simply private lifestyle choices, comparable to our choices of curtains, cuisine or music. The choice to have children inside or outside marriage is just another personal choice for each individual to make privately....

The premise of these calculations is that raising children outside of marriage increases the risk of significant harm to children, including academic, medical and psychological problems....To put it positively, marriage is a protective factor against this array of problems.

Some, though not all, of these problems are associated with poverty....So the IAV researchers calculate the taxpayer costs of divorce and unmarried childbearing by looking at the costs of anti-poverty programs....They also take account of the costs to the Criminal Justice System....

Some supporters of free markets and limited government are wary of expressing any policy preferences about the family. The idea that marriage should be the appropriate context in which to raise children seems to them an arbitrary imposition of a moral code on others. They applaud the efficiency of the free market, but they are reluctant to "privilege" marriage over other types of households as the expected context for childrearing.

Other market supporters situate the market within a wider context of human liberty and dignity. The free economy is one aspect of an overall view of society that emphasizes the priority of culture over governments. These advocates hold that it is a mistaken application of consumer and market ideas to the family to believe that family form is nothing but a personal choice. Our private decisions can have significant costs to the people around us, including taxpayers.

Ever since I wrote Love and Economics, I have been trying to convince economists, libertarians and fiscal conservatives that the family is a fiscal issue....