The Taxpayer Costs of Divorce and Unwed Childbearing
First-Ever Estimates for the Nation and All Fifty States A Report to the Nation
Benjamin Scafidi, Principal Investigator
MOST OF THE PUBLIC DEBATE over marriage focuses on the role of marriage as a social, moral, or religious institution. But marriage is also an economic institution, a powerful creator of human and social capital. Increases in divorce and unwed childbearing have broad economic implications, including larger expenditures for the federal and state governments. This is the first-ever report that attempts to measure the taxpayer costs of family fragmentation for U.S. taxpayers in all fifty states. Among its findings: Even programs that result in very small decreases in divorce and unwed childbearing could yield big savings for taxpayers.
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