December 13, 2005

Dear [Senator],

The Alternatives to Marriage Project opposes the inclusion of funding for marriage promotion programs in pending legislation to reauthorize Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF). President Bush is proposing to divert $1 billion over the next five years away from proven anti-poverty measures in order to spend our money on social engineering efforts such as pre-marital counseling and public education campaigns on the importance of marriage. This is bad public policy for four reasons:

• First, marriage does not necessarily lead to escaping poverty. While some studies correlate marriage with lower poverty rates, no causation is understood. Realistically, it is much more likely that having a well-paid job increases one's chances of getting married than that marrying increases one's chances of getting a well-paid job.
• Second, there is no proven link between marrying and raising healthy children. While children do benefit from having multiple attentive, communicative adults in their lives, there is little reliable evidence that marriage creates this tableau more effectively than other family forms. Statistically speaking, if every poor child in America were living with both biological parents, two-thirds of them would still be living below the poverty line.
• Third, marriage promotion programs have never been rigorously analyzed; most were designed for white, middle class, committed couples and there is no evidence that they can be made relevant and effective for disadvantaged populations struggling to overcome poverty and related hardships.
• Fourth, most Americans oppose government's involvement in personal decisions regarding marriage and oppose the use of scarce public dollars to promote it.

Good public policy should help all families succeed, instead of trying to turn back the clock on social progress. Marriage ought to be a genuine choice, not one that stems from economic necessity or government coercion. Marriage is only one of many successful family forms.

Today 94 million American adults are unmarried, including 11 million who live with unmarried partners. Furthermore, 43% of different-sex unmarried partner households include children (compared to 46% of married couples); put another way, 28% of children in the U.S. live in unmarried families. Three-quarters of Americans today believe that a family is a group of people who love and care for each other, not just those who are bound by blood and marriage.

TANF reauthorization, currently the subject of House / Senate reconciliation, not only promotes marriage as an anti-poverty measure at the expense of proven interventions, it imposes unnecessary obstacles in the paths of low-income people, both married and unmarried. It mandates that parents spend additional hours working while simultaneously limiting their access to resources such as subsidized child care. It fails to remedy a variety of legislative and regulatory pitfalls that make it harder for low-income married couples to succeed. It withholds funds from programs that would improve the employment, educational, and health outcomes for low-income families and children. While the Senate's version of the legislation makes marriage promotion programs voluntary and suggests that they include advice by experts on preventing domestic violence, such acknowledgement of reality does not justify taking a billion dollars away from jobs, child care, education, housing and health care.

The Alternatives to Marriage Project strongly opposes the use of federal anti-poverty dollars to promote or encourage marriage, and it is clear that most Americans agree with us. Polls demonstrate that most Americans are against government's involvement in personal decisions regarding marriage and oppose the use of scarce public dollars to promote it among the poor. According to the PEW Forum on Religion & Public Life opinion poll, nearly eight in ten Americans (79%) want the government to stay out of this private decision. Even among those with a high level of religious commitment, two-thirds (66%) do not wish to see the government involved in marriage promotion. Real anti-poverty measures must to do more than demonize and penalize single-parent families.

We urge Congress to zero-out funding for marriage promotion and restore $1 billion over five years to those elements of TANF that help America's families—of all shapes and sizes—to live without poverty.

Sincerely,

Lisa-Nicolle Grist
Executive Director