Broken marriages draining tax coffers

SALT LAKE CITY — Utah taxpayers spend about $276 million on the effects of divorce and out-of-wedlock childbirth. But while there are effective tools to strengthen marriage and families, those who statistically need help most are the least likely to seek it out, experts say.

"Those who are younger, less educated and less religious feel that such education is not important. But they are more apt to divorce, as well," said Melanie Reese, coordinator for the Utah Healthy Marriage Initiative (www.strongermarriage.org), which is housed in the Utah Department of Workforce Services.

The cost of divorce and out-of-wedlock births to taxpayers nationally exceeds $112 billion a year, including the cost of federal, state and local government programs and forgone tax revenues, according to "The Taxpayer Costs of Divorce and Unwed Childbearing: First-ever Estimates for the Nation and All 50 States," a report by a coalition of organizations that includes the Institute for American Values, the Institute for Marriage and Public Policy, the Georgia Family Council and Families Northwest.

The group said children are particularly impacted by marriage failure, with "potential risks" that include poverty, mental illness, physical illness, infant mortality, lower educational attainment, juvenile delinquency, behavior problems, criminal activity as adults and early unwed parenthood. Reese notes that research shows children who live with both biological parents do better socially than peers in other family structures.

"The idea that family fragmentation contributes to child poverty has been studied extensively and is widely accepted," the coalition said, noting that marriage "can help to reduce poverty" because there are two potential wage earners in a home, economies of scale and "possibly also because of changes in habits, values and mores that occur" when people marry.

The report says while most of the debate over marriage focuses on it as a social, moral or religious institution, marriage is "also an economic institution, a powerful creator of human and social capital. Increases in divorce and unwed childbearing have broad economic implications...."