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Marriage: A "Cure" Against Poverty?   versione testuale
Research confirms that the poverty rate is lower in traditional families


Marriage and poverty are interrelated. This is proven, in the face of growing inequality in the United States and in Europe, by the study realized by Melissa Schettini Kearney and Phillip B. Levine for the National Bureau of Economic Research under the title "Income Inequality and Early Non-Marital Childbearing: An Economic Exploration of the 'Culture of Despair'."
 
The most obvious example concerns the number of single-parent families. Compared to those who are married, this variable determines lower economic income, and if in 1970 the number of children living in these circumstances was moving slightly above 10%, currently it reaches 30%. The number of children born out of wedlock in the United States rose from 10% to 40% between 1970 and 2013. Among blacks, the rate is higher and exceeds 70%, while among Hispanics it is just over 50%. Among married couples the poverty rate is 3%, and among single parent families the levels reach 22%.
In 1980, four out of five children born within a marriage. Today, that rate has dropped from 80% to 60%. However, in the case of a child born within a marriage, the average rate of poverty is 6%, but 37% in single parent families. This differential of 82% reveals in short that the decline of marriage has been accompanied by an increase in poverty.
 
 
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