The Wealth of Nations Depends on the Health of Families by Patrick Fagan
Family, church, and school are the three basic people-forming institutions, and it is no wonder that they produce the best results—including economic and political ones—when they cooperate.Posted by Jill Fallon at February 19, 2013 10:03 AM | Permalink
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When men get married, their sense of responsibility and drive to provide gives them the incentive to work much harder. This translates into an average 27-percent increase in their productivity and income. With the retreat from marriage, instead of this “marriage premium,” we get more single men (who work the least), more cohabiting men (who work less than married men), and more divorced men (who fall between the singles and cohabiters).
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Adding all this together, the conclusion (visible in the federal data) is that married families with children are the main source of the higher income, education, and productivity that grows the economy and its capital.
Interestingly, and today controversially, chastity—sexual abstinence until marriage and lifelong monogamy thereafter—significantly strengthens marriages and therefore the economy. Research on the pathways to divorce shows this.
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Thus the core strategy for forming great workers for the economy is growing intact married families who are united in worship through their community of belief and send their children to schools that inculcate those values and beliefs. Not only does that produce the greatest average human capital for the marketplace; it also produces the best citizens for the polis and the common good.
And from this strong family, other benefits abound: marriage, education, health, income, savings, longevity, and a society shielded from the many costs and sufferings of crime, addictions, sexual perversions, bad health, poverty, and abuse. While strong families will not fully obliterate all societal weakness, they massively reduce them.