“Tying the knot sometimes means paying more in taxes,” warns the headline of an article cautioning newlyweds to be prepared for some potential surprises from the IRS when filing their taxes. But in many cases, policies that penalize marriage are more than simply an unpleasant surprise from the IRS. Marriage penalties, either in the form of increased taxes or loss of access to means-tested benefits, have harmful effects, especially on working-class families. Studies indicate that marriage penalties are associated with lower rates of marriage and higher rates of cohabitation. A 2016 report found that almost one-third of American adults knew someone who had not married for fear of losing means-tested benefits and that middle-class families with moderate education levels were the most likely to say that they knew someone who had not gotten married out of fear of losing welfare, Medicaid, or other benefits. Policies that penalize marriage are especially concerning as marriage rates have recently hit an all-time low and many couples are choosing cohabitation instead of marriage.
Currently, only half of the children in America are being raised by their married birth parents. Children are most likely to thrive when they are raised by married parents, and living with cohabitating parents does not bring the same level of stability to a child’s life. Marriage also plays an important role in upward mobility and is a key predictor of economic success. Policies that devalue marriage and family have real consequences that impact parents, children, and entire communities.
There has been a rapid and significant decline in marriage among working and middle-class families in recent decades and unfortunately, working and middle-class families are the most likely to be impacted by marriage penalties. Writing for the National Review, Brad Wilcox and Erik Randolph reported last year that marriage penalties can end up robbing working-class families of between 10 and 30 percent of their real income.
“Our safety net substantially penalizes young working-class couples who marry,” reports the Institute for Family Studies, pointing out that in Minnesota a young couple with a one-year-old child, each making $35,000 a year, would face a $15,000 marriage penalty, not counting Medicaid’s marriage penalties.
The same couple has a $9,000 marriage penalty in Georgia, and more than a $6,000 marriage penalty in Texas. In Texas, where penalties are relatively lower than the other two states, the cost of marriage still rises to about 9% of family income, excluding government provided healthcare. This is deeply concerning because most young Americans without a 4-year degree are in this income category, especially when they are first starting their careers and at the prime age of family formation,
writes Willis Krumholz. Unfortunately, efforts to reduce marriage penalties often leave out working-class families. Congress made an effort to reduce marriage penalties in 2017, but the reforms only affected Americans in the upper half of income distribution. Similarly, Minnesota minimized the marriage penalty for families in the lowest income bracket through a reform to the Minnesota Family Investment Program in 2018. This reform was also a step in the right direction, but like the Congressional reform in 2017, left out working-class families, and couples in three out of Minnesota’s four income brackets still face penalties for getting married.
Minnesota’s marriage penalties recently garnered attention thanks to a study which pointed out that ours is one of a minority of states to impose marriage penalties. While it is true that correlation does not always equal causation, comparing the results of the study to a ranking of marriage rates across the states, only one of the states that fell in the top ten imposes a marriage penalty, and the majority of marriage penalty states ranked in the lower half. Minnesota is close to the very bottom, with the 7th lowest marriage rates in the nation.
Marriage has been part of God’s design from the beginning, and it is no surprise that healthy marriages benefit parents, families, and entire communities. Families are hurt when policies directly penalize something that plays such a key role in building strong, flourishing societies. While marriage penalties are not the only factor contributing to the decline of marriage, research indicates that they do contribute to lower marriage rates. With marriage on the decline, it makes no sense to have policies that penalize people for getting married. If our policies implicitly reject the goodness of God’s design by penalizing that which he has called good, then we should not be surprised when we see an increasing number of people rejecting God’s design for the family.
