Tuesday, April 15, 2008

A Familiar Refrain

Okay, on my way to my 9:30, but just wanted to point some brave souls to this article: Divorce, Unwed Parenting Costing Taxpayers, which from a quick skim seems predicated on the notion that married couples/families "cost" taxpayers nothing; that "taxpayers" are all married people; and a dubious $112 billion figure that purportedly takes into account:
households headed by a single female have relatively high poverty rates, leading to higher spending on welfare, health care, criminal justice and education for those raised in the disadvantaged homes. The $112 billion estimate includes the cost of federal, state and local government programs, and lost tax revenue at all levels of government.
Quickly, does the answer to these costs have anything to do with addressing systemic reasons why ao many women and their children in this country are poor? Why there is higher spending on "criminal justice" for poor people? Etc. Etc.

Nope the answers all lie (wait for it)...

in marriage strengthening programs. Wasn't that easy?

I so hope someone critiques and deconstructs this report.

3 comments:

k8 said...

I saw an article about this earlier today. I will say that the article I saw noted that the backers of the study are associated with pro-marriage programs/groups and discussed the biases. But, then headline was the similar to the one you have. Not cool.

Rent Party said...

Great post and important. People think this stuff is "objective"...

Quiche said...

Ridiculous! Everyone knows that single people PAY MORE TAXES...and a lot of us are the working poor! Those who get none of the breaks of the "poor" and none of the tax breaks of the wealthy!!!!!!!!! So we make up the "extra" that some of those "poor" single mothers are taking from the system! ARRGGG. Double ARRRRGGG.

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