Mobility and money in US states: The marriage effect

Marriage and family structure influence the economic and social well-being of children. As Sara McLanahan and Isabel Sawhill note in the most recent issue of Princeton and Brookings’ Future of Children, “most scholars now agree that children raised by two biological parents in a stable marriage do better than children in other family forms across a wide range of outcomes.” Recent research also suggests marriage and family structure matter not just for individual children, but also for the economic and social well-being of entire communities. When it comes to economic mobility, for instance, we know from the work of Raj Chetty and Nathaniel Hendren that “[low]-income children are most likely to succeed in counties” that have “a larger share of two-parent families.”

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