How the Quality of Marriages Affects a Country’s Economy
Religion & Liberty Online

How the Quality of Marriages Affects a Country’s Economy

The quality of children and our future society, depends directly on the quality of the marriage of their parents, says Pat Fagan of the Family Research Council speaking at the recent World Congress of Families:

Fagan notes that society is made up of five facets: the family, church, school, the marketplace and government. The first three mentioned are the places that “grow the people” so to speak, and are closely interrelated. The last two areas of society are those into which people are set loose, once they’ve grown up: but the role that they play in these spheres of economy and government really depends on what happened in their experience of family, church and school.

The statistics which Fagan shares are both interesting and revealing. When men marry, their productivity increases by over 20%, and the highest rates of productivity in society come from men who are married with three kids. Married people also make up the demographic that shows the lowest level of unemployment. And while sadly only 45% of children in America reach the age of 17 with their parents’ marriage still intact, those who do achieve better education results.

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Joe Carter

Joe Carter is a Senior Editor at the Acton Institute. Joe also serves as an editor at the The Gospel Coalition, a communications specialist for the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, and as an adjunct professor of journalism at Patrick Henry College. He is the editor of the NIV Lifehacks Bible and co-author of How to Argue like Jesus: Learning Persuasion from History's Greatest Communicator (Crossway).