Family – the best “Stimulus Package” for America

In these uncertain economic times, we want to keep our jobs. But it also appears that the best “stimulus package” we can get would be to either get married or stay married for the benefit of the whole family.

Research has long shown that the family – an intact mother and father for the children – isn’t just an old notion. It is a predictor of greater wealth, better health, less crime and higher educational attainment for the children.
In the state of Indiana, and across the country, we’ve gone to great lengths to restructure our property tax systems. But if we want to take an honest look at factors that affect our economy, including government spending, we must get past being “judgmental” about families and look honestly at this significant drain on both our fiscal resources and on the family as a creator of human and social capital.

As we plan for the future, new data is showing us that the family and the economy are intricately intertwined. Where do the issues of family and the economy meet, and how do we start to talk about them? In the “family and children’s committee” or in the “tax and fiscal committee”? What impact do they have on our workforce, our tax base, our spending on services?

A first-of-it’s-kind report now shows the financial cost of family breakdown (or families not forming at all, in the case of unwed childbearing) and it points to $839 million per year in Indian alone. The researchers admit that they took a narrow, conservative estimate in their first foray into such economic impact analysis (it didn’t include Medicaid, or the cost of alcohol and drug abuse, for example). If this number is, indeed, the tip of the iceberg in Indiana, then let’s look more closely at this issue to see just how deeply it hits our economy.

Click on the study to learn more about the issue and see all fifty state estimates.

Indiana Family Institute will start this dialogue in the state of Indiana. Watch this space for more information in the future.