{"title":"Introduction to the Research Articles","authors":"","doi":"10.1002/pam.22628","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1002/pam.22628","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":48105,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Policy Analysis and Management","volume":"43 4","pages":"999-1003"},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2024-09-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142233145","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"43rd Year Data","authors":"","doi":"10.1002/pam.22632","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1002/pam.22632","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":48105,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Policy Analysis and Management","volume":"43 4","pages":"1321"},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2024-09-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142233198","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In 2012, the Obama administration issued the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program by executive order. Since then, more than 800,000 undocumented immigrants who arrived as children have benefited from renewable 2-year reprieves from deportation and work permits. In 2017, the Trump administration announced it would end DACA—an announcement immediately followed by court challenges. We examine how the temporary nature of DACA's granted benefits and the uncertainty regarding the program's fate after 2017 might have shaped DACA-eligible migrants’ decision to marry a U.S. citizen—presumably to secure permanent residence amid an increasingly unclear policy environment. Using a difference-in-differences approach that exploits the discontinuity in DACA eligibility criteria cutoffs to construct akin treatment and control groups, we show that DACA-eligible immigrants became 20% more likely than similar DACA-ineligible undocumented migrants to marry U.S. citizens after the program came under siege. The findings are illustrative of the implications of policy changes that increase the uncertainty surrounding migrants’ legal status, as in the case of intermarriage with potentially long-term consequences on migrant integration and the welfare of subsequent generations.
{"title":"Intermarriage amid immigration status uncertainty: Evidence from DACA","authors":"Catalina Amuedo-Dorantes, Chunbei Wang","doi":"10.1002/pam.22640","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1002/pam.22640","url":null,"abstract":"In 2012, the Obama administration issued the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program by executive order. Since then, more than 800,000 undocumented immigrants who arrived as children have benefited from renewable 2-year reprieves from deportation and work permits. In 2017, the Trump administration announced it would end DACA—an announcement immediately followed by court challenges. We examine how the temporary nature of DACA's granted benefits and the uncertainty regarding the program's fate after 2017 might have shaped DACA-eligible migrants’ decision to marry a U.S. citizen—presumably to secure permanent residence amid an increasingly unclear policy environment. Using a difference-in-differences approach that exploits the discontinuity in DACA eligibility criteria cutoffs to construct akin treatment and control groups, we show that DACA-eligible immigrants became 20% more likely than similar DACA-ineligible undocumented migrants to marry U.S. citizens after the program came under siege. The findings are illustrative of the implications of policy changes that increase the uncertainty surrounding migrants’ legal status, as in the case of intermarriage with potentially long-term consequences on migrant integration and the welfare of subsequent generations.","PeriodicalId":48105,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Policy Analysis and Management","volume":"25 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.8,"publicationDate":"2024-09-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142130680","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
We build a vehicle purchase and disposal model to analyze a policy that links a new electric vehicle (EV) purchase subsidy with a used gasoline vehicle scrappage requirement. We evaluate the policy based on changes in sales, scrappage, subsidy dollars spent, and emissions reductions. We find that linking a purchase subsidy with a scrappage requirement is expected to result in fewer new EV sales and carbon dioxide emissions reductions relative to a policy without linking. Our modeling reveals that these effects are due to trade-in vehicle eligibility requirements and opportunity costs lowering additional participation in the linked policy. However, the linked policy significantly increases used vehicle scrappage and is more progressive than the unlinked policy. We find that emissions reductions due to additional scrappage are sensitive to how remaining miles of scrapped vehicles are replaced.
{"title":"Should electric vehicle purchase subsidies be linked with scrappage requirements?","authors":"Kevin Ankney, Benjamin Leard","doi":"10.1002/pam.22639","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1002/pam.22639","url":null,"abstract":"We build a vehicle purchase and disposal model to analyze a policy that links a new electric vehicle (EV) purchase subsidy with a used gasoline vehicle scrappage requirement. We evaluate the policy based on changes in sales, scrappage, subsidy dollars spent, and emissions reductions. We find that linking a purchase subsidy with a scrappage requirement is expected to result in fewer new EV sales and carbon dioxide emissions reductions relative to a policy without linking. Our modeling reveals that these effects are due to trade-in vehicle eligibility requirements and opportunity costs lowering additional participation in the linked policy. However, the linked policy significantly increases used vehicle scrappage and is more progressive than the unlinked policy. We find that emissions reductions due to additional scrappage are sensitive to how remaining miles of scrapped vehicles are replaced.","PeriodicalId":48105,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Policy Analysis and Management","volume":"48 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.8,"publicationDate":"2024-09-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142130679","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Should public policy promote marriage to improve well-being?","authors":"","doi":"10.1002/pam.22627","DOIUrl":"10.1002/pam.22627","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":48105,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Policy Analysis and Management","volume":"43 4","pages":"1283"},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2024-08-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142007462","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
<p>W. Bradford Wilcox and Alan Hawkins (hereafter, WH) introduce a marriage paradox: in the United States, the benefits to marriage are increasing and its social value remains high, but people are increasingly disinclined to get married. Why? My response is that the gains to marriage are uneven and uncertain, and for today's adults, getting and staying married is largely predicated on costly prior personal achievements that are out of reach for many. WH propose strategies to make marriage more desirable and accessible and thereby improve personal welfare and population well-being. I suggest that instead we target well-being directly. Doing so may increase marriage among those who desire it while also ensuring that achievement, fulfillment, and security are not dependent upon family structure.</p><p>WH argue that stable marriage causally improves well-being because it is an institution with legally and normatively enforceable bonds where family members share resources, time, and care efficiently and effectively. Meta-analyses and other comprehensive reviews also provide evidence that marriage improves economic security and health relative to remaining unpartnered or divorcing. But there are many caveats. The magnitude and scope of these effects diminish in study designs that rigorously account for selection mechanisms and use plausible comparison groups (McLanahan et al., <span>2013</span>; Raley & Sweeney, <span>2020</span>; Smock & Schwartz, <span>2020</span>). Studies have often reported average effects that overlook sociodemographic variation in the returns to marriage (Baker & O'Connell, <span>2022</span>; Cross et al., <span>2022</span>) and the harm that comes from remaining in a poor-quality marriage (Williams, <span>2003</span>). And WH appear to focus on families headed by couples in a shared first marriage with all children in common. Repartnered families do not gain from marriage in equal measure (Ginther & Pollak, <span>2004</span>; Raley & Sweeney, <span>2020</span>).</p><p>Another perspective generally missing from comparisons of married and non-married households is that many of the apparent benefits to marriage arise from and contribute to deeply-rooted social inequality in ways that may actually be counterproductive to marriage formation and satisfaction. For example, as WH note, married men and fathers earn more than unmarried and childless men. Yet for women, a longstanding motherhood wage penalty persists (Cukrowska-Torzewska & Matysiak, <span>2020</span>). Gendered market responses to marriage and parenthood reflect outmoded expectations about role specialization in families and distort how different-sex, dual-earner couples make decisions about parental leave, family caregiving, and housework. These constrained choice sets clash with contemporary preferences for an egalitarian distribution of household labor, leading to shared frustration and within-family inequality among married couples and diminish
{"title":"Public policy for family equality","authors":"Paula Fomby","doi":"10.1002/pam.22631","DOIUrl":"10.1002/pam.22631","url":null,"abstract":"<p>W. Bradford Wilcox and Alan Hawkins (hereafter, WH) introduce a marriage paradox: in the United States, the benefits to marriage are increasing and its social value remains high, but people are increasingly disinclined to get married. Why? My response is that the gains to marriage are uneven and uncertain, and for today's adults, getting and staying married is largely predicated on costly prior personal achievements that are out of reach for many. WH propose strategies to make marriage more desirable and accessible and thereby improve personal welfare and population well-being. I suggest that instead we target well-being directly. Doing so may increase marriage among those who desire it while also ensuring that achievement, fulfillment, and security are not dependent upon family structure.</p><p>WH argue that stable marriage causally improves well-being because it is an institution with legally and normatively enforceable bonds where family members share resources, time, and care efficiently and effectively. Meta-analyses and other comprehensive reviews also provide evidence that marriage improves economic security and health relative to remaining unpartnered or divorcing. But there are many caveats. The magnitude and scope of these effects diminish in study designs that rigorously account for selection mechanisms and use plausible comparison groups (McLanahan et al., <span>2013</span>; Raley & Sweeney, <span>2020</span>; Smock & Schwartz, <span>2020</span>). Studies have often reported average effects that overlook sociodemographic variation in the returns to marriage (Baker & O'Connell, <span>2022</span>; Cross et al., <span>2022</span>) and the harm that comes from remaining in a poor-quality marriage (Williams, <span>2003</span>). And WH appear to focus on families headed by couples in a shared first marriage with all children in common. Repartnered families do not gain from marriage in equal measure (Ginther & Pollak, <span>2004</span>; Raley & Sweeney, <span>2020</span>).</p><p>Another perspective generally missing from comparisons of married and non-married households is that many of the apparent benefits to marriage arise from and contribute to deeply-rooted social inequality in ways that may actually be counterproductive to marriage formation and satisfaction. For example, as WH note, married men and fathers earn more than unmarried and childless men. Yet for women, a longstanding motherhood wage penalty persists (Cukrowska-Torzewska & Matysiak, <span>2020</span>). Gendered market responses to marriage and parenthood reflect outmoded expectations about role specialization in families and distort how different-sex, dual-earner couples make decisions about parental leave, family caregiving, and housework. These constrained choice sets clash with contemporary preferences for an egalitarian distribution of household labor, leading to shared frustration and within-family inequality among married couples and diminish","PeriodicalId":48105,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Policy Analysis and Management","volume":"43 4","pages":"1298-1300"},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2024-08-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/pam.22631","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142007463","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
<p>Marriage has fallen upon hard times in the United States in the last 6 decades.</p><p>Demographically, in the wake of the divorce revolution of the 1960s and 1970s, and the ongoing decline in the marriage rate, this social institution has lost significant ground as the anchor of adulthood and foundation of family life (Cherlin, <span>2009</span>; Wilcox, <span>2024</span>). Culturally, support for the values and virtues that sustain marriage have dropped in recent years, as fewer Americans report they think marriage is important for men, women, and children or embrace virtues like fidelity and monogamy that sustain strong and stable marriages (Jones, <span>2020</span>; Wilcox, <span>2024</span>).</p><p>And yet. At the same time that marriage has lost demographic and cultural ground, the empirical evidence that marriage matters for the welfare of children, men, and women continues to mount (Kearney, <span>2023</span>; McLanahan & Sawhill, <span>2015</span>; Ribar, <span>2015</span>; Wasserman, <span>2020</span>; Wilcox, <span>2024</span>). Children raised in stably married homes are markedly more likely to avoid poverty, flourish in school, and avoid incarceration (Kearney, <span>2023</span>; Ribar, <span>2015</span>; Wasserman, <span>2020</span>). Men and women who are married are markedly more financially secure, less lonely, and report greater happiness than their peers who are not married (Wilcox, <span>2024</span>). Even more surprisingly, there is growing evidence that the marriage premium in child and adult well-being is not only robust but growing for some outcomes (Iceland, <span>2021</span>; Nock, <span>2009</span>; Wilcox et al., <span>2023</span>).</p><p>What we have, then, is a “marriage paradox” where culturally and demographically the institution of marriage is garnering less support even as its objective value remains high and may even be growing. This article will detail the paradox and suggest policy remedies to it. Because “marriage represents the keystone institution” not only for many men, women, and children but also for our civilization, to paraphrase the evolutionary anthropologist Joseph Henrich (<span>2020</span>), federal, state, and local policymakers should seek ways to advance the fortunes of marriage in America. Policymakers should specifically aim for cultural measures that increase the appeal of marriage to young adults and for economic measures that make marriage and family formation more accessible to ordinary men and women.</p><p>The American heart is closing to love, marriage, and family life. Here too is a curious paradox. While marriage remains an important life aspiration for a strong majority of Americans (Willoughby & James, <span>2017</span>), dating is down (Twenge & Park, <span>2017</span>), fertility is falling (National Center for Health Statistics, <span>2024</span>), and marriage is in retreat (Wilcox, <span>2024</span>). The causes of this shift away from intimacy and family formatio
{"title":"The Marriage Paradox: Understanding and remedying the paradoxical place of marriage in America","authors":"W. Bradford Wilcox, Alan J. Hawkins","doi":"10.1002/pam.22637","DOIUrl":"10.1002/pam.22637","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Marriage has fallen upon hard times in the United States in the last 6 decades.</p><p>Demographically, in the wake of the divorce revolution of the 1960s and 1970s, and the ongoing decline in the marriage rate, this social institution has lost significant ground as the anchor of adulthood and foundation of family life (Cherlin, <span>2009</span>; Wilcox, <span>2024</span>). Culturally, support for the values and virtues that sustain marriage have dropped in recent years, as fewer Americans report they think marriage is important for men, women, and children or embrace virtues like fidelity and monogamy that sustain strong and stable marriages (Jones, <span>2020</span>; Wilcox, <span>2024</span>).</p><p>And yet. At the same time that marriage has lost demographic and cultural ground, the empirical evidence that marriage matters for the welfare of children, men, and women continues to mount (Kearney, <span>2023</span>; McLanahan & Sawhill, <span>2015</span>; Ribar, <span>2015</span>; Wasserman, <span>2020</span>; Wilcox, <span>2024</span>). Children raised in stably married homes are markedly more likely to avoid poverty, flourish in school, and avoid incarceration (Kearney, <span>2023</span>; Ribar, <span>2015</span>; Wasserman, <span>2020</span>). Men and women who are married are markedly more financially secure, less lonely, and report greater happiness than their peers who are not married (Wilcox, <span>2024</span>). Even more surprisingly, there is growing evidence that the marriage premium in child and adult well-being is not only robust but growing for some outcomes (Iceland, <span>2021</span>; Nock, <span>2009</span>; Wilcox et al., <span>2023</span>).</p><p>What we have, then, is a “marriage paradox” where culturally and demographically the institution of marriage is garnering less support even as its objective value remains high and may even be growing. This article will detail the paradox and suggest policy remedies to it. Because “marriage represents the keystone institution” not only for many men, women, and children but also for our civilization, to paraphrase the evolutionary anthropologist Joseph Henrich (<span>2020</span>), federal, state, and local policymakers should seek ways to advance the fortunes of marriage in America. Policymakers should specifically aim for cultural measures that increase the appeal of marriage to young adults and for economic measures that make marriage and family formation more accessible to ordinary men and women.</p><p>The American heart is closing to love, marriage, and family life. Here too is a curious paradox. While marriage remains an important life aspiration for a strong majority of Americans (Willoughby & James, <span>2017</span>), dating is down (Twenge & Park, <span>2017</span>), fertility is falling (National Center for Health Statistics, <span>2024</span>), and marriage is in retreat (Wilcox, <span>2024</span>). The causes of this shift away from intimacy and family formatio","PeriodicalId":48105,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Policy Analysis and Management","volume":"43 4","pages":"1290-1297"},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2024-08-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/pam.22637","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142002645","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
A central aspect of poverty measurement is identifying the people and places experiencing financial hardships. This paper explores this relationship using the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's Financial Well-Being Scale, which reflects individuals’ self-assessments of financial challenges. Using this measure, for every 1 percentage point increase in a state's official poverty rate for working-age adults, there is a 0.59 percentage point increase in the share with low financial well-being. In contrast, the supplemental poverty rate is negatively correlated with the financial hardship using the CFPB measure. This reflects the supplemental poverty measure's geographic adjustment shifting poverty towards areas with lower rates of financial hardship.
{"title":"Evaluating the effects of geographic adjustments on poverty measures using self-reported financial well-being","authors":"Jeff Larrimore","doi":"10.1002/pam.22633","DOIUrl":"10.1002/pam.22633","url":null,"abstract":"<p>A central aspect of poverty measurement is identifying the people and places experiencing financial hardships. This paper explores this relationship using the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's Financial Well-Being Scale, which reflects individuals’ self-assessments of financial challenges. Using this measure, for every 1 percentage point increase in a state's official poverty rate for working-age adults, there is a 0.59 percentage point increase in the share with low financial well-being. In contrast, the supplemental poverty rate is negatively correlated with the financial hardship using the CFPB measure. This reflects the supplemental poverty measure's geographic adjustment shifting poverty towards areas with lower rates of financial hardship.</p>","PeriodicalId":48105,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Policy Analysis and Management","volume":"44 1","pages":"295-303"},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2024-08-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142002651","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
<p>There is no longer any question that men, women, children, and even communities are better off, on average, when marriage grounds and guides the context of family life (Kearney, <span>2023</span>; Wilcox, <span>2024</span>). In communities and households where marriage is the norm, for instance, the American Dream is stronger (Chetty et al. <span>2014</span>; Wilcox, <span>2024</span>), rates of child poverty are lower and college graduation higher (Kearney, <span>2023</span>; Wilcox et al., <span>2015</span>), and adult deaths of despair and financial distress are markedly less common (Rothwell, <span>2024</span>; Wilcox, <span>2024</span>). Given this, how can one argue against public policies designed to strengthen the institution of marriage?</p><p>We are not persuaded by Professor Fomby's points. We explain why below.</p><p>There is no doubt, given the ways in which marriage is now more common among, for instance, more affluent and religious Americans (Wilcox, <span>2024</span>) that some of the evident benefits of marriage for children and adults actually flow from the “multiple forms of capital that [married] families accumulate and effectively deploy” in their lives, as Fomby contends.</p><p>But the effects of what Harvard anthropologist Joseph Henrich (<span>2020</span>) called our “primeval institution” are not likely to be entirely about selection. The values, norms, and customs of marriage—which have guided family relationships in civilizations across the globe—lend meaning, direction, and stability to individual and family lives. They also allow for unparalleled financial collaboration and security. All of which appear to have a protective impact on the well-being of children and adults that is causal (Wilcox, <span>2024</span>).</p><p>The most sophisticated social scientific evidence regarding marriage is consistent with the conclusion that marriage's effects are not just about selection but also about protection. One study of Minnesota identical male twins found, for instance, that married twins earn about 26% more than their identical twins who are not married (Bouchard et al., <span>1990</span>). Another twin study by psychologist Brian D'Onofrio and colleagues (<span>2005</span>) found results “consistent with a causal connection between marital instability and psychopathology in young-adult offspring” of mothers who were twins but discordant on divorce (p. 570). Studies like these strongly suggest that pre-existing biological or social factors do not entirely account for the effects of marriage on children and adults. As with other core institutions—like colleges and universities—the values, norms, and customs deployed by the institution of marriage appear to influence men, women, children, and the communities in which they live—generally for the good.</p><p>In the last 50 years, a large marriage divide has emerged in America such that lower-income and Black Americans are markedly less likely to get and stay married. Fomby a
{"title":"Bridge the marriage divide, don't accept it","authors":"W. Bradford Wilcox, Alan J. Hawkins","doi":"10.1002/pam.22638","DOIUrl":"10.1002/pam.22638","url":null,"abstract":"<p>There is no longer any question that men, women, children, and even communities are better off, on average, when marriage grounds and guides the context of family life (Kearney, <span>2023</span>; Wilcox, <span>2024</span>). In communities and households where marriage is the norm, for instance, the American Dream is stronger (Chetty et al. <span>2014</span>; Wilcox, <span>2024</span>), rates of child poverty are lower and college graduation higher (Kearney, <span>2023</span>; Wilcox et al., <span>2015</span>), and adult deaths of despair and financial distress are markedly less common (Rothwell, <span>2024</span>; Wilcox, <span>2024</span>). Given this, how can one argue against public policies designed to strengthen the institution of marriage?</p><p>We are not persuaded by Professor Fomby's points. We explain why below.</p><p>There is no doubt, given the ways in which marriage is now more common among, for instance, more affluent and religious Americans (Wilcox, <span>2024</span>) that some of the evident benefits of marriage for children and adults actually flow from the “multiple forms of capital that [married] families accumulate and effectively deploy” in their lives, as Fomby contends.</p><p>But the effects of what Harvard anthropologist Joseph Henrich (<span>2020</span>) called our “primeval institution” are not likely to be entirely about selection. The values, norms, and customs of marriage—which have guided family relationships in civilizations across the globe—lend meaning, direction, and stability to individual and family lives. They also allow for unparalleled financial collaboration and security. All of which appear to have a protective impact on the well-being of children and adults that is causal (Wilcox, <span>2024</span>).</p><p>The most sophisticated social scientific evidence regarding marriage is consistent with the conclusion that marriage's effects are not just about selection but also about protection. One study of Minnesota identical male twins found, for instance, that married twins earn about 26% more than their identical twins who are not married (Bouchard et al., <span>1990</span>). Another twin study by psychologist Brian D'Onofrio and colleagues (<span>2005</span>) found results “consistent with a causal connection between marital instability and psychopathology in young-adult offspring” of mothers who were twins but discordant on divorce (p. 570). Studies like these strongly suggest that pre-existing biological or social factors do not entirely account for the effects of marriage on children and adults. As with other core institutions—like colleges and universities—the values, norms, and customs deployed by the institution of marriage appear to influence men, women, children, and the communities in which they live—generally for the good.</p><p>In the last 50 years, a large marriage divide has emerged in America such that lower-income and Black Americans are markedly less likely to get and stay married. Fomby a","PeriodicalId":48105,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Policy Analysis and Management","volume":"43 4","pages":"1301-1304"},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2024-08-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/pam.22638","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142002716","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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