One thing to do is to stop penalizing family structure through taxes and transfers.
> The U.S. tax code, for example, contains a marriage penalty for high-earner, two-income couples. And the earned income tax credit penalizes lower-wage married couples. Moreover, welfare rules have frequently made it harder for married households than for single-parent households to get benefits. Although few couples sit down and calculate the possible economic effects of getting married, there is a sense, especially within low-income communities, that getting married means you lose “stuff.” Couples may not be able to calculate exactly how much “stuff” they stand to lose, but they know marriage, at least financially, is a bad deal.
> And they are right. According to calculations by Eugene Steuerle of the Urban Institute, a single mother working full-time at a minimum-wage job who marries a man working full-time at $8 an hour stands to lose $8,060 in cash and noncash welfare benefits. Under such circumstances, the wonder is not that few low-income couples marry, but that any do.
Yes and no. The tax code doesn't punish marriage per se. It punishes financially successful and ambitious couples (and for that matter, financially successful and ambitious individuals). The traditional breadwinner-homemaker relationship is subsidized in all but name by the current tax code.
> The U.S. tax code, for example, contains a marriage penalty for high-earner, two-income couples. And the earned income tax credit penalizes lower-wage married couples. Moreover, welfare rules have frequently made it harder for married households than for single-parent households to get benefits. Although few couples sit down and calculate the possible economic effects of getting married, there is a sense, especially within low-income communities, that getting married means you lose “stuff.” Couples may not be able to calculate exactly how much “stuff” they stand to lose, but they know marriage, at least financially, is a bad deal.
> And they are right. According to calculations by Eugene Steuerle of the Urban Institute, a single mother working full-time at a minimum-wage job who marries a man working full-time at $8 an hour stands to lose $8,060 in cash and noncash welfare benefits. Under such circumstances, the wonder is not that few low-income couples marry, but that any do.
https://www.brookings.edu/articles/wedding-bell-blues-marria...