COMMITTEE ON WAYS AND MEANS BILL THOMAS, California, Chairman
PHILIP M. CRANE, Illinois E. CLAY SHAW, Jr., Florida NANCY L. JOHNSON, Connecticut AMO HOUGHTON, New York WALLY HERGER, California JIM MCCRERY, Louisiana DAVE CAMP, Michigan JIM RAMSTAD, Minnesota JIM NUSSLE, Iowa SAM JOHNSON, Texas JENNIFER DUNN, Washington MAC COLLINS, Georgia ROB PORTMAN, Ohio PHIL ENGLISH, Pennsylvania WES WATKINS, Oklahoma J. D. HAYWORTH, Arizona JERRY WELLER, Illinois KENNY C. HULSHOF, Missouri SCOTT MCINNIS, Colorado RON LEWIS, Kentucky MARK FOLEY, Florida KEVIN BRADY, Texas PAUL RYAN, Wisconsin	CHARLES B. RANGEL, New York FORTNEY PETE STARK, California ROBERT T. MATSUI, California WILLIAM J. COYNE, Pennsylvania SANDER M. LEVIN, Michigan BENJAMIN L. CARDIN, Maryland JIM MCDERMOTT, Washington GERALD D. KLECZKA, Wisconsin JOHN LEWIS, Georgia RICHARD E. NEAL, Massachusetts MICHAEL R. MCNULTY, New York WILLIAM J. JEFFERSON, Louisiana JOHN S. TANNER, Tennessee XAVIER BECERRA, California KAREN L. THURMAN, Florida LLOYD DOGGETT, Texas EARL POMEROY, North Dakota
Allison Giles, Chief of Staff Janice Mays, Minority Chief Counsel  SUBCOMMITTEE ON HUMAN RESOURCES WALLY HERGER, California, Chairman
NANCY L. JOHNSON, Connecticut WES WATKINS, Oklahoma SCOTT MCINNIS, Colorado JIM MCCRERY, Louisiana DAVE CAMP, Michigan PHIL ENGLISH, Pennsylvania RON LEWIS, Kentucky	BENJAMIN L. CARDIN, Maryland FORTNEY PETE STARK, California SANDER M. LEVIN, Michigan JIM MCDERMOTT, Washington LLOYD DOGGETT, Texas
Pursuant to clause 2(e)(4) of Rule XI of the Rules of the House, public hearing records of the Committee on Ways and Means are also published in electronic form. The printed hearing record remains the official version. Because electronic submissions are used to prepare both printed and electronic versions of the hearing record, the process of converting between various electronic formats may introduce unintentional errors or omissions. Such occurrences are inherent in the current publication process and should diminish as the process is further refined.

Anderson, Hon. Mark, Representative, Arizona House of Representatives

Center for Law and Social Policy, Theodora Ooms

Edin, Kathryn, Northwestern University

Fagan, Patrick F., Heritage Foundation

Marriage Savers, Michael J. and Harriet McManus, accompanied by, Philip Cofer, Springdale, MD, and Terri Lucas, Lanham, MD

National Marriage Project, and Rutgers University, David Popenoe

National Partnership for Women & Families, Laurie Rubiner

Oklahoma Health and Human Services, and Oklahoma Department of Health, Hon. Jerry Regier

Steuerle, Eugene C., Urban Institute

Alternatives to Marriage Project, Boston, MA, statement

NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund, New York, NY, Jacqueline K. Payne, Martha Davis, Yolanda Wu, and Sherry Leiwant, statement and attachment

WELFARE AND MARRIAGE ISSUES

House of Representatives,
Committee on Ways and Means,
Subcommittee on Human Resources,
Washington, DC.

The Subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 2:00 p.m., in room B-318 Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Wally Herger (Chairman of the Subcommittee) presiding.

[The advisory announcing the hearing follows:]

Chairman HERGER. Welcome to today's hearing on welfare and marriage. It is hardly news that the institution of marriage today is under assault on several fronts. It is also not news that children often suffer when marriages break up or never form. Here is what the National Commission on Children, which included then Governor Bill Clinton, and Children's Defense Fund President Marian Wright Edelman reported back in 1991, quote, "When parents divorce or fail to marry, children are often the victims. Children who live with only one parent, usually their mothers, are six times more likely to be poor than children who live with both parents. They also suffer more emotional, behavioral, and intellectual problems. They are at greater risk of dropping out of school, alcohol and drug abuse, adolescent pregnancy and childbearing, juvenile delinquency, mental illness and suicide," end of quote.

This is not to disrespect the millions of single moms and dads working hard to raise a family alone. They are to be commended for their daily struggles, which are often heroic. But as legislators charged with overseeing government programs to help poor families with children, this Subcommittee cannot turn a blind eye to the negative effects family breakdown can have on children. So what are we to do?

For starters, we must recognize the challenges we face. At least three major social trends are at work here. First, millions of marriages are being delayed or never occur as more and more young people cohabit. Second, out-of-wedlock childbearing remains at record levels, with one in three children born outside of marriage. And, third, divorce remains at near-record levels.

Yet even within the statistics are faint glimmers of hope. In a recent survey, 82 percent of unwed mothers reported they were romantically involved with their children's father at the time of the child's birth. Almost half were living together, and the majority of these unmarried mothers and fathers believe they have a good chance of marrying the other parent. So a key question is what happens to these families that keeps them from forming permanent relationships? What can or should we do to help young couples and new parents form more permanent relationships, including, when appropriate, marriage?

In 1996, the welfare reform law attempted to answer the latter question by allowing States to use cash welfare funds to promote marriage and family formation. The logic was clear. If States discourage out of wedlock childbearing and encourage marriage, welfare dependence will shrink and children will be better off. However, only a few States have taken up this challenge. We are fortunate to have witnesses today from two States operating programs in this area, Arizona and Oklahoma. We look forward to their testimony. We also will hear from researchers and experts about other ways to promote marriage with certain cautions. Such cautions are not lost on us. We should be clear that no one is talking about forcing anyone to marry.

Americans rightly are concerned about government involvement when it comes to sensitive issues like childbearing and family formation. I am concerned about that, as well. But just as we agree on removing marriage penalties in the tax code, we should also think about removing marriage penalties in public benefit programs. With the new welfare law, we started to take steps in that direction.

Today, we will hear about what is working and consider what more can and should be done. I look forward to all the witnesses' testimonies. Without further objection, each member will have the opportunity to submit a written statement and have it included in the record at this point.

Mr. Cardin, would you like to make an opening statement?

[The opening statement of Chairman Herger follows:]

Mr. CARDIN. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman. Let me first state that I agree with the comments that you have made. I think there is general consensus that marriage can benefit children. All things being equal, children in married families face fewer hurdles than those with one parent attempting to fill two roles. Statistical comparisons between the poverty status of children in single parent homes versus those of married homes clearly highlight this divide. Of course, we must recognize that these generalizations do not apply to every circumstance, particularly when domestic violence is present, and I very much appreciate your comments of caution about the role the government should play in encouraging marriage.

However, recognizing the benefits of marriage and deciding whether government should and effectively can encourage couples to walk down the aisle are not the same thing. We need to be honest about the lack of information we have on specific programs designed to promote marriage. To avoid wasting taxpayer money on unproven programs, we may be wise to establish a demonstration project to find out what works and what does not work to encourage and sustain marriage.

The bipartisan provisions in the legislation that was authored by our colleague, Mrs. Johnson, and myself, and was passed by this Committee and the full House last year, contained some programs that would have helped in this area. I think that can be a model for our work this year. There are also some general steps that we can take to make marriage more likely to occur and more likely to last.

For example, we can eliminate disincentives to marriage, including barriers to two-parent families participating in Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF). We should start by reviewing the Federal two-parent work requirements in TANF, which may actually discourage States from serving low-income married families. Mr. Chairman, the only obstacle that could prevent us from forging a bipartisan approach to strengthening marriage would be if such an effort became a code word for cutting poverty programs or targeting single parents for punitive action. I hope this will not happen.

We should all recognize that the connection between marriage and poverty is a two-way street. Increasing marriage may help alleviate poverty, but reducing economic hardship can also promote marriage. Consider a program in Minnesota, which found that welfare recipients were more likely to get married and stay married when they were allowed to increase their income by supplementing low wages with a continued partial welfare benefit.

Listen to the testimony we will hear later today about how the lack of economic opportunity can affect decisions on marriage. In short, low-income mothers have told researchers that fathers who have little prospect of bringing home a regular paycheck are not marriage material. Just think for a moment about how the problems that poverty brings into a neighborhood, such as crime, drug addiction and hopelessness, presents additional barriers to family formation. All these issues suggest that we should do more to reduce poverty, not less, if we are truly interested in creating an environment in which parents are more likely to become and stay married.

I look forward to hearing the witnesses today and working with you, Mr. Chairman, so that we can forge a bipartisan approach to encourage marriage and remove the disincentives that are included in existing law.

[The opening statement of Mr. Cardin follows:]

Chairman HERGER. Thank you very much. I appreciate the comments of the ranking member, and I think we share some good intentions and goals here. I thank you very much, Mr. Cardin. Before we move on to our testimony this afternoon, I want to remind witnesses to limit their oral statements to five minutes. However, without objection, all of the written testimony will be made part of the permanent record. Will the witnesses for the first panel please have a seat?

I would like to recognize our colleague from Arizona, Mr. Hayworth, to introduce our first panelist, Representative Anderson, Chairman of the Human Services Committee of the Arizona House of Representatives. Mr. Hayworth?

Mr. HAYWORTH. Mr. Chairman, members of the Subcommittee, thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon. It is my honor to introduce an old friend, State Representative--from our great State of Arizona--Mark Anderson. As the chairman mentioned, Mark serves as chairman of the Human Services Committee in the Arizona State House. Under his chairmanship, Mark has been one of the key architects of Arizona's welfare reform efforts. Through his leadership, the welfare rolls in Arizona have been reduced 40 percent since 1996.

Arizona has also been successful in reducing births to unmarried and teen mothers who face a greater-than-normal risk for poverty. This is partly due to Arizona's efforts to supplement its abstinence education program by adding an abstinence-until marriage program to target teens and young adults with this important message. As a result, in September of 2000, Arizona was one of only five States to receive a $20 million bonus from the Federal Government for decreasing its out-of-wedlock birth rates.

Most recently, Representative Anderson was the sponsor of legislation creating marriage skills training courses, to be offered by community-based institutions and organizations and a media campaign to promote healthy marriage and the need for marriage preparation. I am glad Mark is here today to share with the Subcommittee the success that Arizona has had in both reducing out-of-wedlock birth rates and encouraging healthy marriages. The success of Arizona to promote marriage can be used as a model for the rest of the Nation as this Congress begins to discuss the reauthorization of Temporary Assistance to Needy Families. With that, Representative Anderson, welcome.

Chairman HERGER. Thank you, Mr. Hayworth. I would now like to recognize the gentlelady from Connecticut, Mrs. Johnson, to recognize a couple of her constituents.

Mrs. JOHNSON. Well, thank you. They are not directly my constituents, but I want to specifically welcome Mr. and Mrs. McManus to this table. I appreciate your input at this important hearing and your thoughts about how we can strengthen marriage at the same time we reduce dependence on welfare. They are not only contributing today themselves, but their son is my chief of staff on the Health Subcommittee of Ways and Means, and has dedicated many years to helping Congress find the right way to solve our problems in the health-care area. So it is a special privilege to have you here today.

Mr. MCMANUS. Thank you for your gracious comments.

Chairman HERGER. Thank you. Next I would like to recognize a member of our Committee, from Oklahoma, Mr. Watkins, to make introductions.

Mr. WATKINS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the Committee. It is my real honor and privilege to introduce a long-time friend. He is nationally recognized as a speaker on youth and family, and specifically on marriage and health and juvenile justice, and also has contributed to many books, working on many books and many periodicals on various social issues. But, also, let me say right now my friend Jerry Regier is serving as Governor Frank Keating's Cabinet Secretary for Health and Human Services, and he serves as Acting Director of the Oklahoma State Department of Health. He was appointed acting director back on June 1st of 2000, to restore integrity in the Department of Human Services and the Health department, where we had a number of problems, but as Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, he oversees 70 boards and commissions and 13 different agencies of the Department of Health and Human Services. He has also held several key appointments, one in 1992, by President Bush, 41st President Bush, of this country, as National Officer of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention in the Department of Justice in 1981, by President Reagan, who appointed him as Health and Human Services, to serve as Associate Commissioner for the Administration of Children, Youth and Families, and established in 1981 the Family Research Council.

So my friend Jerry Regier has got a long list of achievements and accomplishment and dedication to youth and also to families. I would just like to make this remark? My colleague, Mr. Cardin, mentioned about reducing poverty. I can assure you that is a situation, and having been raised in a broken home myself--we used to call it broken home--and poverty, and a mother who did everything--she said we were going to stay off welfare--I can assure you that one of the things that destroyed our family and probably motivated me to be in politics today is because I had to go back and forth to California three times with my family before I was 10 years of age to search for a job.

It destroyed our family. My father was an alcoholic and died an alcoholic, and probably because he did not have the self-esteem of being able to bring a paycheck home to his family. So that has been motivational in my life. I would just like to say you can have a broken home and the separation and all. It can either work in two ways. One, you can say I am not going to let that happen in my own family and try to do something with your life, or you can let it take you down to the bottom of the gutter, and sometimes they use that as an excuse, and poverty plays a big role in that.

So, Mr. Chairman and to the Committee, I think it is a very timely time to have this meeting.

Mr. CARDIN. Mr. Chairman, if you would just yield for one moment.

Chairman HERGER. I will yield.

Mr. CARDIN. I notice that the McManuses are accompanied by Mr. Cofer and Ms. Lucas, who happen to come from the State of Maryland. Now, they do not come from my district, but we are going through a redistricting in Maryland, so I am not sure what my district will look like. So I would like to welcome you to our Committee.

Chairman HERGER. Well, thank you, Mr. Cardin, for recognizing our other witnesses. So, with that, Mr. Anderson, we would like to hear from you for testimony, please.

Mr. ANDERSON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members. For the record, my name is Mark Anderson. I chair the Human Resources Committee in the Arizona House of Representatives. Thank you for this opportunity to speak with you today regarding welfare reform and marriage policy. I have provided packets of information which convey the essence of the research and the background on the issue. I believe the reason that I am before you today is that I was the prime sponsor of legislation which passed and became law last year, that allocated $1 million of TANF money for marriage skills courses, to be provided by community-based organizations.

The courses are neither therapy nor counseling, but are based on proven educational curricula. The legislation also provided for $75,000 for the production of a healthy marriage handbook that will be given to all Arizonans applying for marriage licenses and $75,000 for vouchers for low-income couples who want to take a marriage skills course and need financial assistance.

The legislation also established a Marriage and Communication Skills Commission that oversees the implementation of the legislation. As you are certainly aware, the wheels of government turn slowly, and the Request for Proposals (RFP) for the contract to provide the courses was not let until this year. Bids are now in, and the Marriage and Communications Skills Commission meets in two days to make its recommendations for allocating the funding.

As you begin the process of the reauthorization of the TANF block grant, I would like to strongly encourage you to urge states to develop policies and programs that strengthen marriage with the goal to lower the divorce rate.

I want to briefly mention a successful program in Arizona that I believe is a model for how marriage skills policy can be developed. In 1997, we passed our version of welfare reform in Arizona in response to the 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act. In that legislation was a provision to combine roughly $1.5 million of Title V abstinence education money with 2 million TANF dollars to create a pot of $3.5 million, which has since increased to $4 million, for an abstinence until marriage program.

The program is based on the principle that abstinence for unmarried young people is the best choice and practical skills are taught that enable someone choosing abstinence to be successful in achieving that goal. Results from that program are now coming in. Last year, Arizona was the second-best State in the nation at reducing out-of-wedlock births, as Congressman Hayworth mentioned, which enabled us to win one of the Federal $20 million bonus awards.

However, when I first introduced abstinence education legislation in 1995, many legislators were very skeptical and the legislation was defeated. Yet two years later, abstinence was accepted as an idea worth trying. Now abstinence is regarded as the primary theme of the most sex education being done in Arizona. Marriage skills education will undoubtedly follow the same pattern. At first, there is a healthy skepticism among lawmakers, followed by a willingness to try it, and ultimately, based on the successful results, an acceptance of the policy.

Both abstinence until marriage and marriage skill programs are based in sound health policy. Scientific research indicates that the choice to engage in early premarital sex increases one's chances of experiencing numerous unhealthy outcomes, making abstinence a healthier lifestyle choice. However, without teaching the skills to remain abstinent, success will be extremely limited. Likewise, preparing for a healthy marriage includes communication and empathy for one's spouse. If a person can achieve and maintain a healthy marriage, studies show they reduce their risk substantially of experiencing a number of negative outcomes.

Abstinence and marriage are health and lifestyle issues similar to smoking, drug use or proper diet that schools already address. Education is a legitimate function of government, including educating citizens in ways that will promote healthy living. The goal for marriage policy should not be to eliminate divorce, as noble as that may be. Rather merely lowering the divorce rate substantially will result in significant savings in court costs, child support enforcement, domestic violence programs, foster care, and so on.

Recently, the nation of Australia conducted a study to determine the cost of divorce and discovered that the results of divorce cost $6 billion dollars a year for that nation. Australia has approximately one-fourteenth the number of people as the United States. This would equate to a cost of about $84 billion here in this country. I believe it is time to take a serious look at our priorities as we engage in a discussion of the reauthorization of the welfare block grant.

How can we prevent people from becoming dependent on the government in the first place? How can we increase the number of children growing up in homes with a loving mother and father? First, Congress must commit to the principle of healthy marriage, and secondly give people the skills to make this goal a reality. It has worked for abstinence until marriage policy in Arizona and it can work for marriage policy here, as well. I would be happy to answer any questions.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Anderson follows:]

Chairman HERGER. Thank you very much, Mr. Anderson; and now we will hear from the Secretary of the Oklahoma Department of Health and Human Services, Mr. Jerry Regier.

Mr. REGIER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate the opportunity to come and tell a little bit about what we are doing in the State of Oklahoma. Governor Frank Keating has taken leadership in setting up the marriage initiative, and I would like to share some details. In my written testimony, I talk about the role of government, and I will not spend a lot of time there, except to say the government is already involved in families. I was recently at a national conference and a local judge from Michigan put it this way. If you want strangers from the government to tell you when to see your child, how much money you should send them each month, how and when you can communicate and how to divide the assets of the marriage, then file for divorce. She went on to say, as a judge, if you want to keep the government out of your life, stay married.

I thought it was put very well, and what we are trying to do in Oklahoma is reduce divorce and thereby keep government out of people's lives, in terms of the way that they get involved during the divorce. The Governor has taken bold leadership, and I think in a State, whenever you do a public policy initiative, the first foundational steps are critical. I have outlined several of those steps that we have taken. One is that the Governor set out a measurable goal. He said he would like to reduce divorce by a one-third in the next 10 years, and so he set out the goal for everybody to begin to try to reach.

Secondly, we followed some key principles in our efforts that I think are critical to laying a foundation for really seeing something happen from a public policy standpoint. One of those is we made very sure that we had a multi-sector strategy. This cannot be a strategy where we just say to the religious community you take care of it, or that we say to any other community you take care of it, even the government.

So we took a multi-sector approach. We have seven sectors that we brought to an initial conference that the Governor had on marriage, and this was an opportunity for us to educate, to inform, as well as to get information from these folks. We invited 30 leaders from each of those seven sectors: community service providers, education, business, media, religious, government and legal.

Another principle, is that you must have leadership at the top. If you are going to take on something like this, the Governor really has to be committed to it, and our Governor is committed to it. He also committed me to provide direct leadership, as his Cabinet Secretary.

Another principle was ongoing operational management. Anytime you set a policy goal, in order to reach that goal, you must take the steps necessary to get there. We bid out the operational management and the firm of Public Strategies got that bid. They have been providing the structure for us to take the marriage initiative forward.

The final principle that we followed, is that you must commit some significant funding. Very few public policy efforts are going to be successful if there is not significant funding. In Oklahoma, we have reduced our welfare rolls by 80 percent over the last six years, and consequently, if we could call it, quote, "a surplus" that has come out of the TANF, it would be about $100 million. The Governor committed 10 percent of that, $10 million, and Department of Human Services (DHS) has set that aside for us to develop programs to support and encourage marriage.

I want to talk about the two tracks that we have taken. One track is a religious track and others will talk about that more fully, but we now have about 550 religious leaders that have committed to signing an Oklahoma marriage covenant. Basically, that says they will not marry within their religious faith or their sphere of influence without 4-6 months of premarital counseling, and that they will also work to develop mentors within their area of influence.

Secondly, what I would call the secular track. In this track we have taken three existing structures--the health department, which is psychologists involved in a guidance system in all of our counties across the State. Secondly, we have taken the social workers from DHS, which is the welfare workers. Thirdly, we have taken the extension service of the land grant college, Oklahoma State University. Each of these structures are already in place; educators in the extension system, social workers and psychologists.

We are developing a service delivery system that will deliver marriage education, skills building education, across the State through these structures. We are in the process of signing that contract. We have chosen a curriculum, which I talk about in the written testimony, called PREP, Prevention and Relationship Enhancement Program, and we have primarily chosen that curriculum because it is a very research-based, skills-building kind of curriculum. We appreciate the support that you can give to efforts like ours at the State level. Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Regier follows:]

Chairman HERGER. Thank you very much, Mr. Regier, for your testimony; and now the Co-Chairs of Marriage Savers, Mike and Harriet McManus.

Mr. MCMANUS. We are deeply honored to be here and thrilled that you are interested in marriage as it regards welfare. I never really realized until about year ago that one of the key provisions of your welfare reform law was to increase the number of two-parent families and to strengthen them, and this is exactly what we are about. I am not a researcher. I am not a therapist. I am not a pastor. I am a journalist, the kind of people you like to throw rocks at. I write a syndicated column, called "Ethics in Religion," and some years ago, in Modesto, California, the newspaper that publishes my column invited me to speak to the clergy of that area.

I had written a number of columns about what might be done to reduce the divorce rate, but I had not seen any evidence that the columns made any difference. So when I had a chance to speak to all the pastors in the community at one time, I said why don't you consider creating what might be called a "Community Marriage Policy" here, with the conscious goal of pushing down the divorce rate, doing things that we know work. For example, Catholics require six months of marriage preparation. Protestants generally do not have any time requirement in their marriage preparation process.

I said: Can you Protestants think about a four-month minimum, at least? Catholics, also, were experimenting with the use of a premarital inventory that gives the couple who is preparing for marriage an objective view of their strengths and weaknesses. It could also be used as a way to bridge to older couples who could be mentoring them and to talk through the issues that the young couples are facing as they try to build a lifelong marriage. The clergy of Modesto signed a "Community Marriage Policy" that said their goal was to radically reduce the divorce rate of those married in area churches. Well, they have done much more than that.

The divorce rate in Modesto in 15 years has come down 47.6 percent. On page three of my testimony, I also point out that the number of marriages in the community has risen, by 12 percent. At the same time, these two elements of decreasing the divorce rate and increasing the marriage rate has meant that there are many thousands more families who have solid homes and children growing up in homes that are solid. Children of divorce are twice as likely to drop out of school. They are three times as likely to have a baby out-of-wedlock. What if you had more marriages that work?

Well, you should see a drop in the school dropouts and in children having babies out-of-wedlock, and that is exactly what happened. The school dropout rate in Modesto is down 20 percent, and the birth rate of teenagers is down 30 percent. It is down nationally all over, but it is only down about 10 to 15 percent, so this is two-to-three times the rate of the United States. We have created these "Community Marriage Policies" now in 142 cities and towns across the country. These communities--we do not have data on all of them, but in 35 of them we have data, comparing the number of divorces before they began the program and signed the community marriage policy with the years afterwards, and in 32 of the 35, the divorce rates are down dramatically.

For example, in Chattanooga, they are down 19 percent in three years. That is actually moving faster than Modesto did. The core idea of what we are doing is mentor couples, and I would like my wife to tell you about that.

Mrs. MCMANUS. In every church or synagogue, there are couples with strong, vibrant marriages who could use their own marriage as a tool, as a gift, to walk alongside other couples who are contemplating marriage, other couples whose marriages are in crisis. These are mentoring couples that could be available to go the distance with couples that are needy. All that these couples need have done is to be invited, equipped, inspired to become the mentoring couple. These mentoring couples are exactly what we recruited in our own home church in Bethesda, Maryland.

We trained 53 mentor couples in a premarital program. They were available for 308 couples considering marriage. Of those 308, 250 ultimately got married, and 50 decided to walk away from their relationship; six became married and were divorced. This same concept can be used to form mentoring couples at other stages of the marital lifecycle, those couples who are in crisis and need assistance. So this is a tool where a mentor couple can really make a difference, and couples can be couples, such as my husband and myself or Terri and Philip here, whom we have mentored.

They came to us as a seriously dating couple. Ultimately, they explored their relationship, decided to get married, and they are going to be married this August. So couples who are a great reservoir, a great resource, who are sitting in the pews of our Nation's churches Sunday after Sunday can be invited to come out and bridge the generational gap, to be able to make a difference in the face of marriage in our Nation. As our mentor motto at our church in Bethesda is before you tight the knot, let us show you the ropes.

[The prepared statement of Mr. and Mrs. McManus follows:]

Mr. MCMANUS. I think you were going to allow--

Chairman HERGER. Yes, we will allow two minutes for Mr. Cofer and Ms. Lucas, please.

Mr. COFER. I want to briefly talk about the value of mentoring. Before mentoring, I started off, I did not listen. I was hardheaded. And so I believed that my relationship was a good relationship. That is when I turned to my angel, and she said, you know, we have some work to do, and I listened to her. And I saw I was very hesitant about going into the Marriage Savers program, but she implored me to, and I listened to her, and I still listen to her today. During mentoring, we learned how to communicate effectively, using "I" statements, as opposed to "you" statements. For example, "I understand you to say," or "What have I done?" We also learned how to resolve conflicts, for example, on issues such as whose church we would attend.

We also learned how to write letters to each other to communicate what was on our minds. After mentoring, we discerned that there is not a ceiling to our growth, and that we will always have room for growth, and that we will never stop growing.

Ms. LUCAS. I want to talk to you briefly about the value of taking the premarital inventory. We learned from the premarital inventory the strengths of our relationship, but most importantly, the weaknesses. We had problems with communication and problems with resolving conflict. Initially, we wanted to just take the inventory on our own, without Mike and Harriet or another mentor couple, but that would not have been beneficial to us in the long run, because it would have just given us scored, but by having the mentor couple, we were actually able to go through every single question, especially those questions where Philip and I had differences on, and talk about it deeply to kind of pinpoint potential problems in our future marriage. So that was very beneficial.

Also, through the mentoring, I learned that I was very fearful of marriage. I was afraid of losing that independence, but working with Mike and Harriet helped me to realize the importance of the unity and the oneness in the marriage, and our relationship has matured as a result.

Mr. MCMANUS. Mr. Chairman, if I could say one final thing with regard to the legislation that you are considering?

Chairman HERGER. Briefly, yes.

Mr. MCMANUS. I think it is important to note that 48 States have not spent any of their TANF money for marriage work. These States here have done it, and they are doing an admirable job. We hope to work with Oklahoma, for example, going into the counties which have the highest divorce rates and help bring down those divorce rates in that county. But since the other 48 States have not done anything, I would like to suggest that you consider the possibility of setting aside five percent of the funding of TANF surplus that might be spent by the Department of Health and Human Services on demonstration projects that could show in every State how to bring down the divorce rate.

Chairman HERGER. I thank you, and I thank each of our witnesses. Now we will turn to questioning. Mrs. Johnson, the gentlelady from Connecticut?

Mrs. JOHNSON. First of all, I would really like to thank you all for your testimony. It is so truly bizarre how we value education and then we disregard education, in terms of human development. It struck me years ago in a religious education course I took in my church, how much we knew through Piaget about the stages of child development and how they think and how they learned to think, and then we sort of throw that all aside when we get to the very difficult issues of adolescence, and of early independence, and of marriage.

At my age, I have lived through a generation of friends, and am interested to note that very few of our friends got divorced, but those who did, so many of them, as you watch, you know it was unnecessary. For us who went through women's lib as married women, I understand what happened, and it certainly affected my marriage. But I think one of the things that we fail to take into account is that we do not like ourselves all the time.

You go through periods when you are pretty discouraged about your own self. It is so easy to blame that on the other person, but why would we think we would always like our spouse over 50 years?

[Laughter.]

Mrs. JOHNSON. Just some plain ordinary common sense. It is so refreshing to remember that if we simply provide a knowledge base, we can help young people understand what is the difference between cohabiting and marriage. What is the difference to the relationship? What is the difference to the children? What is the difference to the commitment, and what is the difference when you go through hard times, because you are going to go through hard times? I do not care how perfect you are.

So it really is impressive that you have developed curriculums. I am interested in looking more closely at those curriculums. Ben and I, when we did the fatherhood bill, worked really hard at this particular issue, but frankly I was not aware that there were sort of curriculums that we could point to. But when you look at what is happening in welfare reform, the big thing that happens is that young women get to know themselves and learn about themselves and learn about their own abilities and how to communicate in the work place, but we do not teach them or we do not teach the father of their children--we do not even give them the same job support.

I mean, that was one of the things we were trying to do in our fatherhood bill. But we do not even talk to these young kids about the nature of the intimacy that created the child between them or what it takes to parent, and how can they make a rational decision? How can they determine? This is not about forcing people to marriage. This is giving people the knowledge they need to determine whether or not they can develop a relationship to the next stage.

So it really is important that the next stage of welfare reform not be quite as blind to this issue of the knowledge people need to make parenting a success, and the only stable relationship a child flourishes under are success. While I have good friends who have divorced and have done a wonderful job of creating a larger family of the two families, we all know economically it is hard and emotionally it is hard. So I really look forward to working with the chairman and the ranking member of this Committee. It is blessed to have really exceptionally good leadership on this issue, and how do we work it into the national program. But thank you for your testimony. I am sorry I did not have a question, but I just love what you said, and I just believe it from a lifetime of experience. Thank you.

Chairman HERGER. Thank you, Mrs. Johnson. Mr. Cardin?

Mr. CARDIN. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman. Let me first say that I very much appreciate the testimony of all the witnesses, and I appreciate particularly the last two witnesses being here to tell us firsthand some of the emotion that they went through in participating in the counseling. I guess our challenge is how do we take these types of programs and apply them to a social program such as TANF, which is going to be a more difficult chore? I noticed that the statistics that you gave us, the McManuses gave us, about 358 or 308, I guess it was, and 50 walked away from the marriage.

Mrs. MCMANUS. From their engagement.

Mr. CARDIN. From their engagement. Excuse me, from getting married.

Mrs. MCMANUS. From getting married.

Mr. CARDIN. And I would expect that if those 50 would have married, the divorce rate would have been higher.

Mr. MCMANUS. Of course.

Mr. CARDIN. I think that is one of our challenges. We do not want to force people into marriage only to have a bad situation, and I think it just underscores the point that we have to be very cautious as to how government encourages marriage. We should be encouraging counseling. We should be encouraging the types of programs where we can have successful marriages, but to have, particularly disincentives in the law, is one of the area I think we can agree upon to move.

Let me just ask my two State officials, the agreement we reached in 1996 was to basically give the States maximum flexibility. We made it clear that we wanted to promote marriage. It is in the TANF law. The States have the flexibility to use TANF money as they see fit. We could earmark a certain amount of money for marriage counseling or for marriage programs, but I think that violates the basic concept of our arrangement with the States. Mr. McManus raises a good point. We have used demonstration programs before to try to encourage programs, and the bill Mrs. Johnson referred to provides some new money for demonstration programs to promote marriage, and would have been available for the States on a competitive basis.

So I take it that your testimony today is not to suggest that we should be earmarking Federal funds, but that States should be bolder in participating in these types of programs?

Mr. REGIER. The flexibility that we have as States is very important with this money, and much of that has been used for increasing child care, transportation, other issues related to the TANF population. The marriage money that we have set aside is really critically important to us, to be able to have the flexibility to do that, but also to have the opportunity to test things out. In other words, even in the States, we set aside $10 million. We have probably only spent less than half-a-million so far, and we are going at it methodically. We are going at it systematically.

The training program I talked about, the service delivery program, we are going to do some pilot counties, and we will do those pilot counties, and then if we roll it out to the whole State, in terms of delivering this marriage education and skills-building kinds of things throughout the State, we probably will spend maybe $1.5 million, is what we project.

Mr. CARDIN. All these efforts, as I understand it, are aimed at preserving marriage. Are there any aimed at trying to encourage marriage?

Mr. REGIER. One comment, and then I will turn it over to Mark, and that is we have in Oklahoma a program called Children First, and we have operated this program now for three years out of the State Department of Health. Public health nurses visit first-time mothers, and 75 percent of those first-time mothers are single, and we are incorporating some of this training for the public health nurses so that they can also be talking to those expectant mothers, and many times their partner is around and there, but they really have never thought through the institution of marriage. So we are doing some encouraging in that way.

Mr. ANDERSON. When we first drafted the legislation, there was money in there for a media campaign, to sort of promote marriage and to educate people as to the benefits of marriage, and I think that is very important, because I have talked with people, welfare recipients, who have told me: Why would I consider marriage? If you knew what happened to my parents, and nobody in my neighborhood is married, and I have never seen a good marriage on television; what you are talking about?

They have a complete blank look when you talk to them about the benefits of marriage. So I think that is an important component, that we do advocate as a health policy the benefits, and all the studies that have come out now, that indicate that people who are married long-term do so much better in so many categories. That has got to be part of the discussion.

Mr. CARDIN. We really do not have any good track record on these type of efforts.

Mr. ANDERSON. If you are talking about marriage skills programs--

Mr. CARDIN. No, on what impact does that type of advertising have on prospective parents marrying.

Mr. ANDERSON. I think you are right about that, because this is a new field. I think that is why States are hesitant to just jump into it, even though the language was there, the TANF legislation.

Mr. CARDIN. Nor do we have any record on whether these marriages are successful and what impact it has on the family. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Chairman HERGER. I thank you, Mr. Cardin. Now, Mr. Watkins, from Oklahoma, to inquire?

Mr. WATKINS. Mr. and Mrs. McManus, I am really impressed, and also the fact that you plan on coming to Oklahoma and work maybe with Jerry there, and in some of our counties. Jerry, I would like to say, as a member of the Committee, I would like to encourage you to look at the third district, and I will be very cooperative in trying to help make sure we get the right folks there, and we will be a part of trying to do that.

I looked real quickly, because I was very impressed with some of the things you talked about, Mark, also, with Arizona, and the things you have got going in that State, and J.D. Hayworth is a great guy and a great member of our team. But I thought you might have some more core information about how you carry out your program through the Marriage Savers group and all, but I did not see anything. I would like to hope maybe that some of that will be part--

Mr. MCMANUS. The core idea of it, as Harriet said, is to train good couples who have got good marriages to come alongside other couples and be helpful. For example, every congregation--first of all, 75 percent of people who get married, get married in a church or a synagogue. So we are talking about a huge access, and Gallup says that 40 percent of all Americans actually attend church on a given Sunday, and two-thirds are members of a church or synagogue. Those are boxcar kind of numbers, and so if you are interested in trying to do something about marriage, you need to think about how do you do this through the religious institutions.

What we have been able to do is get these agreements in which pastors are agreeing to do something that they have never done before, to take couples in good marriages and train them to come alongside of other couples. For example, every church has got couples who have been through adultery, and they survived it. They also have couples who are thinking about getting divorced because she found out he was cheating on her. If you could get Couple A to sit down with Couple B, Couple A could say: Look, we know adultery breaks trust. We have been there and done that, but we are here to tell you trust can be restored in the same marriage. We have done it. Let us talk to you about that.

And this is like Alcoholics Anonymous. It is a peer-based counseling. It is not professional counseling, but it is much more effective than professional counseling. Professional counselors only save 20 percent of marriages. We can save 80 percent.

Mr. WATKINS. That is beautiful, and I would appreciate any additional information. Mr. Cofer, is that right?

Mr. COFER. Yes.

Mr. WATKINS. I think the key is what your opening remark was, Mr. Cofer. You say you were listening to her, and that is one of the keys to make it work, is listening. God gave us two ears and only one mouth, and you are supposed to listen twice as much as you say. You are nodding, Ms. Lucas, but you cannot take words back; and I think one of the most cutting swords out there is a word, and sometime we would like to reach back and get it.

But let me say I was raised in Oklahoma, like I told you, but I have been married for 37 years and my wife and I have three children, one of them is adopted. And I have 40 acres, and I have all my grandchildren--I gave each one of them land, so their spouses and all the grandchildren are there. I built a home with three-foot doors and a 14-foot table, so I have all my children and grandchildren, everyone in that one acreage and on that area there.

People ask me how did I make it work, and I tell them one thing: I keep my mouth shut. And that is the way it works, and there is a lot to that in marriage, as well as you learn the strengths and weaknesses and you learn the negatives and the positives, and you try to work with those, and if you can do that, you can make it last. So I am impressed. This is really, to me, an inspirational type of testimony from all the panelists, and I appreciate what you have done, and I look forward to seeing you in Oklahoma. Jerry, bring them down and let's set up a meeting or two in my district.

Chairman HERGER. Thank you very much, the gentleman from Oklahoma. I also want to commend you, Mr. Cofer. You have learned before getting married what many of us took 15, 20 years to learn after we got married. So, congratulations. With that, I would yield time to the gentleman from California, Mr. Stark, for inquiry.

Mr. STARK. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am fascinated by this hearing. Mr. Anderson, in your testimony, you referred to skills to remain abstinent. Can you give me some idea what those skills would be? Sort of like hopping on one foot 15 times?

[Laughter.]

Mr. ANDERSON. That would be a start. I think in most of the courses that we offer in Arizona, we have 15 contractors doing the abstinence programs. A lot of them deal with refusal skills. Oftentimes young people find themselves in situations where it is very difficult to say no, and they regret being in that situation in the first-place. So, a lot of times, they can avoid those kind of situations. They can learn how to say no when they do not feel it is appropriate, and those kinds of things. I think that is the key, to me, besides just saying no. Just saying no does not work.

Mr. STARK. I would refer you, and, of course, Governor Thompson was not there then, to Wowatosa, Wisconsin, where I spent my adolescent years. I can probably refer you to 15 or 20 young ladies who had no trouble saying no whatsoever.

[Laughter.]

Mr. STARK. And, to my knowledge, they never took a course. You guys are wasting government money and time. Just go to the source. It sounds silly, but it gets sillier, I guess. One of the issues that they have discovered in Minnesota, and nobody has referred to this, is that perhaps providing money, helps too. The Minnesota Family Investment Program, has allowed welfare beneficiaries to keep more of their earnings and they found that it has not only led to increased employment, but to an increased marriage rate.

I have heard none of you testify to the issues that, in many cases, poverty can be a troublesome problem in a marriage. I am surprised that that did not come to the surface. We might offer an amendment to Chairman Herger's bill, for instance, to give a tax credit to somebody who would marry a welfare recipient. That could solve several problems. I am further troubled that much of this seems religious-based. Everybody talks about doing this in a church. For those of us who do not attend church, and I am not sure what you might suggest; that that is suffrage, that we go through.

But Unitarians can meet wherever they choose. They do not need a church to carry on their activities. But I have noticed, for example, and I hope that you would all agree, that we found there have been tremendously good results in many States where couples of the same sex have adopted children, to the benefit of these children. I would hope that you would all include in your counseling those people of the same sex who chose to marry. That would be part of your program; would it not?

Mr. ANDERSON. Yes. Communication skills is what we are talking about. Those can be applied in any relationship. In fact, they transcend into--

Mr. STARK. So you would not exclude same-sex couples from that?

Mr. ANDERSON. No.

Mr. STARK. That is excellent. I think you are in the right forum then. I think you suggested that the good Governor of Arizona showed exemplary leadership in this arena. Within our current House leadership, you have got the Republican Conference Chairman with children born out-of-wedlock, and the previous two Republican Speakers (one was a speaker-designee) both had extramarital affairs while they were in office. So you have got the leadership from the right group to lead you. I think this is great. So, welcome, and we will take your advice into consideration.

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

Chairman HERGER. Thank you. Mr. Camp, to inquire?

Mr. CAMP. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I want to commend all of you for being here and the work you are doing. I think it is a real positive. I guess I had a question for the McManuses, and I have the pleasure of working with your son on the Health Subcommittee, as well as some other people here. How would you target these programs, particularly to low-income families?

Mr. MCMANUS. Well, churches can be found in all economic strata; and, for example, one of our model Marriage Saver congregations is the Bread of Life Church in Kansas City, Kansas, where they have trained eight mentor couples and they have had no divorces since they trained these mentor couples. But they are also taking an aggressive stance on the issue of cohabitation.

There were seven couples in this congregation who were living together, and Pastor Leroy Sullivan preached on this, and said: You know it is not right. You ought to either get married or split. And five of the couples did marry, but there were two where the fellow refused to move out, and the woman said she wanted him to move out, but he said he did not want to move out.

So Pastor Sullivan showed up one Friday night at this couple's home, knocked on the door, and he said: Oh, Pastor, what are you doing here? He said: Well, I'm going to be here until you move out. She wants you out, and where is your remote? He sat down in the guy's chair and he said: You are going to do what? He said: I'm going to sit here until you move out. And the young man said: Well, how long are you going to be here, Pastor? He said: Well, I am here on a four-hour shift, and my elders are coming in four-hour shifts after that, and we are going to stay here until you move out. And he did.

That is taking an issue and really showing real gutsy leadership. That is the kind of thing that needs to be done.

Mr. CAMP. Is your experience ever not through a church? Are there any other agencies? I realize primarily it is through churches.

Mr. MCMANUS. Synagogues, too.

Mr. CAMP. And synagogues and religious institutions, but are you working with any nonreligious institutions?

Mr. MCMANUS. No, but I wanted to make one answer to Mr. Stark's question. The work that Oklahoma is doing is going to work through many public agencies, as well as through the churches. So when they train in this prep program, which really does teach communication and conflict-resolution skills, and training the welfare workers and the health care workers and the agricultural extension agents, they reach all of these people through public means and it is a parallel track to the religious track. So I admire what they are doing in Oklahoma.

Mr. STARK. Is that the same--

Mr. CAMP. I would be happy to yield.

Mr. STARK. If you would yield for just a second. I do encourage or think about conflict resolution for young children in school now, to stop some of the violence. Is this all combined, or is this in compartments? I mean, can you combine all this in the other training that we are trying to provide for youth in high school? For instance, conflict resolution to reduce the amount of violence, as well as perhaps helping them in interpersonal relationships?

Mr. MCMANUS. There are many programs designed for the high school student to do this, and what the high school students are surprised at is that this works with their parents, it works with their employers, as well as with their girlfriends.

Mr. CAMP. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. ANDERSON. Okay. Thank you. We still have about 10 minutes. We do have two votes coming up on the floor, but maybe we can go to one more question. Mr. Levin, would you like to inquire prior to leaving for the vote?

Mr. LEVIN. Let me just ask you about the use of State funds. Right now, for example, both Arizona and Oklahoma have considerable unspent funds of TANF. Do you really want the Federal Government to earmark how you spend these unspent funds beyond our present laws? Is that what you are coming here and asking us to do?

Mr. REGIER. I was just coming to tell you what we were doing.

[Laughter.]

Mr. REGIER. But I think the fact that the welfare law has been on the books for five years, and very few States have done anything in the area of promoting marriage or even significantly reducing out-of-wedlock births, may mean that something does need to be put in as a mandate. What we are doing, we took the leadership to do this without the mandate.

Mr. LEVIN. By the way, I think you are mixing marriage and children out-of-wedlock. I mean, there are programs relating to children out-of-wedlock. We are not talking about necessarily the same programs or the same dynamics. So you are saying the position of your State is that the government should earmark, the Federal Government, a portion of your unspent funds, and we should earmark it for what purpose?

Mr. REGIER. My point was that if the Federal Government earmarks a portion of it, it would just run parallel to what we have already earmarked as a State. So, for us, whether you earmark it or not really is immaterial.

Mr. LEVIN. Should we earmark how the money is spent for these programs?

Mr. REGIER. Excuse me?

Mr. LEVIN. Do we earmark how the money is spent?

Mr. REGIER. No. Right now, you do not.

Mr. LEVIN. No. Should we, and should we hold the States accountable for how they spend the money?

Mr. REGIER. I think the reason that I would say that perhaps something should be earmarked related to marriage is because very few States have spent any money in promoting marriage.

Mr. LEVIN. Why do you think that is?

Mr. REGIER. Well, I think it is because they do not know how to do it, which is what we are trying to explore, how one can do that.

Mr. LEVIN. So we are going to earmark money for States to do something they do not know how to do? I am serious, because the earmarking issue is a serious issue, and I think there is a need for Federal leadership. I would be inconsistent if I said we never should do that, but I do think it is a serious question. So let me shift to the State next to you. I mean, you have considerable unspent monies; right? As I look through the chart, we are talking about, in both of your cases, a substantial amount, over 10 percent of the cumulative grants are unspent funds, as of--we do not have the latest figure. It was last year.

Do you want us to earmark--I mean, to mandate?

Mr. ANDERSON. Well, Mr. Levin, I would support Congress setting aside a policy that says 10 percent or whatever the number might be of this TANF block grant should go for these kind of programs. Now, how you States decide which programs or how you achieve that, leave that up to the States. I think that is where you are going to find the 50 different laboratories of democracy. You are going to see some States succeed and others not, but then you will learn from that.

Mr. LEVIN. We have those laboratories now. They can use the monies for these programs, and there are maybe some constitutional limits, but other than that, the States can do that. And how far do we go in telling them the content of their programs?

Mr. ANDERSON. Well, Mr. Levin, I think, to me, setting the goal is a very worthwhile effort on the part of Congress. It is providing leadership to the States, and some States are ahead of others, but I think you are going to set some things in motion that are going to be able to bring forth some good policies. I think in a lot of States, this policy is controlled oftentimes by the Department of Economic Security in each State, and oftentimes they do not have the vision that I think Congress has the ability to have.

Mr. MCMANUS. It seems to me that one of the things that Mr. Anderson has said ought to be considered at the Federal level, and that is to set a goal. President Kennedy, early in his administration, set a goal of landing a man on the moon. That seemed like an impossible dream at the time that he did it, and it took 400,000 people and the substantial funding of NASA to accomplish it, but it was achieved by 1969. If this Congress and this President were to set a goal of cutting the divorce rate by one-third by the year 2010, and provided and earmarked five percent of the money for demonstration projects funded through the Federal Health and Human Service Department--

Mr. LEVIN. This is cutting the divorce rate?

Mr. MCMANUS. Yes, but what I am saying is if you set the goal and provide some money, then it seems to me you might really achieve it; and we have 300,000 congregations in this country, that if we only got one-third of them to organize 10 mentor couples apiece, we would have one million mentoring couples, and one million mentoring couples could surely save half the marriages that are ending in divorce.

Chairman HERGER. The time has expired. I thank the gentlemen from Michigan for his inquiry. We do have three minutes left. I would just like to make the comment that when we first started five years ago on welfare reform, we did not know how to put people to work at that time. We had no idea whether welfare reform would work, and that is the purpose of this hearing, to see what is going that might work. I think when we look at the documented negative results that are overwhelming in many, many different areas of the results of children who grow up in families where they do not have two parents or the parents are not married, I certainly believe what we are working on is a very worthy goal.

Also, just another response. The purpose of this hearing is not to throw stones at anyone or any group. The purpose of this hearing is to try to determine what we can do to help children to grow up in families and in homes where they have the greatest opportunity to be successful, and also for these families to be successful. So, with that, we will recess, returning immediately after the last vote. We have two votes up. Thank you.

[Recess.]

[Questions submitted from Chairman Herger to the panel, and their responses follow:]

Arizona House of Representatives
Phoenix, Arizona 85007-2848

Dear Congressman Herger,

Thank you for inviting me to testify to your committee regarding the use of TANF funds and marriage policy. I am replying to the set of questions that you sent on May 23^rd.

The main obstacles in originally passing the marriage skills legislation had to do with myths and misconceptions that legislators had regarding the marriage issue. Several lawmakers were afraid that we were trying to mandate for welfare moms. Others were afraid that we were saying that just getting a piece of paper that says a person is married would solve all their problems. Once we were able to explain that marriage skills can be taught in a classroom environment and that there is scientific research to indicate that it can be effective at reducing divorce, then we were able to generate enough support for the legislation.

As for ongoing battles, the main battle has been with the Governor. She was never really convinced that this is a good use of TANF money. She reluctantly signed the legislation, and in the 2001 session she vetoed the ongoing funding for the program. Therefore, instead of $1 million every year, we only have the one year of funding which we will have to stretch over two years until we will have a new Governor in 2002. The actual funding will be allocated in June after the Commission has one more meeting.

The marriage skills courses will be offered to anyone who is interested in taking the courses. We assume that this will primarily be young couples contemplating marriage or recently married, or couples struggling with their relationship. The courses will be up and running by July 1^st. All couples applying for a marriage license will be given the "healthy marriage" handbook which will include contact information for the contractors providing marriage skills courses. These contractors are also charged with marketing the courses in the community through advertising in newspapers, newsletters, flyers and brochures distributed to bridal fairs, welfare offices, churches, and any other method possible to inform likely participants. The courses will run from 4 hours in length up to 16 hours and will be taught in offices, classrooms, and other public locations.

The courses are not mandatory. Participants will find out about the courses through advertising, referrals, and word-of-mouth. Anyone can enroll, but the targeted group is low-income individuals. There is $75,000 available in the form of vouchers for those couples who are under 150% of the federal poverty level and who request help to pay their share of the course’s cost.

The number of couples that we can serve depends on the average cost of the course per hour times the average number of hours per course minus the payment by the couple as their share. (The following are estimates: average cost per hour = $20. The average number of hours per course = 6. The average couple’s share of cost is 20% or around $24.) Using these estimated numbers and rounding off the $96 dollar figure to $100, we come up with 10,000 couples who can be served with the $1 million dollars.

I hope these answers are helpful. Please feel free to contact me if more information if desired. By July 1^st, we will know more as the courses will be starting out in the community. I will keep you posted as any additional information becomes available. Keep up the good work.

Sincerely,

Representative Mark Anderson
District 29 – Mesa

Oklahoma Department of Health and Human Services
Oklahoma City, Oklahoma 73117
June 5, 2001

Chairman Wally Herger
Committee on Ways and Means
Subcommittee on Human Resources
Washington, DC 20515

Dear Chairman Herger:

Thank you for the opportunity to provide additional information about Oklahoma’s diligent work to strengthen marriages and families. We are confident that the sound prevention strategy we have developed with TANF funds will result in the implementation of programs and services that will positively impact family relationships across our state.

In response to your proposed questions, I have called on our state’s Marriage Initiative management consultant, Dr. Scott Stanley and Mr. Raymond Haddock to assist in preparing a reply. All have played an integral role in the development of the Oklahoma Marriage Initiative and continue to be vital to future ideas and endeavors. Marriage Initiative team members include: Mary Myrick, APR, Project Manager; Don Hebbard, EdD, Director of Marriage Education; and Jo Anne Eason, Derinda Lowe and Kendy Cruson are individuals who have made important contributions to this work. Dr. Scott Stanley is a Senior Consultant to the Oklahoma Marriage Initiative and Co-director of the Center for Marital and Family Studies at the University of Denver. Dr. Stanley has been involved in the research, development, and refinement of the Prevention and Relationship Enhancement Program (PREP) for over 20 years. Raymond Haddock is Division Administrator for the Oklahoma State Department of Human Services, directing our state’s TANF programs. We continue to work very closely with DHS to develop programs and services for the Oklahoma Marriage Initiative.

In reference to your first question regarding expected results and results to date, I am confident of positive and substantial results. In the first couple of years of enacting the initiative, a number of specific short-term results are expected:

1) The construction of a survey instrument that can be employed at intervals to track changes in demographic trends and attitudes about marriage and family within the state of Oklahoma. This instrument will be developed through consultation of a team of marriage scholars, including a number of national and Oklahoma experts. In addition to fulfilling the intended purpose of tracking macro level changes in Oklahoma as a result of the Initiative, this instrument may become a model instrument that can be adapted and used in the efforts of other states to change the direction of various negative marriage and family trends. Oklahoma State University’s Bureau for Social Research will manage this project and further research/evaluation components.

2) The development of statewide systems in the promotion and strengthening of healthy and stable marriage and family relationships. Oklahoma seeks to be the first state in the U.S. to move from an official stance of neutrality with regard to marriage and family relationships to one of advocacy for a stronger marriage culture. While the Initiative, in all aspects, intends to project a message of acceptance toward various types of family arrangements, it will break new ground for government involvement in cultural trends that have significant impact on government expenditures and services. Specifically, government personnel in various capacities across the state will be equipped and empowered to strengthen viable marital, premarital, or co-parenting relationships (parents who may not desire or be good candidates for marriage, but who nevertheless will have to work together around the needs of their child) with goals of increased stability and quality.

3) A significant increase in the capacity of both the public and private sector to provide various services to Oklahomans—services that are targeted toward the reduction of risks and a strengthening of protective factors in marital, family, and parental relationships. As noted in the testimony provided earlier, the current trends in marriage rate declines, divorce, family fragmentation, and out-of-wedlock births become the business of the government due to a wide range of costs to society. Historically, state and federal governments have played very little role in strengthening protective marriage and family patterns, despite large social costs. In Oklahoma, we expect to demonstrate a rapid and widespread increase in the capacity of the public sector (e.g., Health Department personnel, DHS, Extension Service) and private sectors (e.g., religious organizations, non-religious social agencies) to provide relationship education services. For example, in the coming months, the pilot phase of our Training and Service Delivery System for Couples and Marriage Education will result in the training of government workers and private providers once we utilize this pilot phase to perfect the process of training and service delivery. We will see the additional training of hundreds of other supervisors and service providers as the program transitions to a statewide effort. Not only will these efforts result in increased capacity for relationship strengthening education throughout Oklahoma, such efforts will change the stance of government agencies from a "hands off" stance with regard to marriage and family relationships to one of increased understanding and advocacy for transformation of a culture of family fragmentation to one of family stability and well-being.

4) The integration of two nationally recognized services in the efforts of the Oklahoma Department of Health to strengthen viable relationships of disadvantaged, non-married mothers who are clients of the department of health. One of the most successful programs implemented by state governments around the U.S. to lower health risks as well as recidivism of out-of-wedlock births with young mothers is the Childrens’ First program. Childrens’ First is a protocol implemented by public health nurses, and it based on numerous federally funded studies demonstrating significant promise in achieving these aims. Public health nurses within the department of health have repeatedly asked for training to augment their work with these young mothers for the lowering of risks present in their relationships with boyfriends, spouses, and/or fathers of their babies. The developers of Childrens’ First (Dr. David Olds & xxxx) have been working for over a year with the developers of PREP (Drs. Stanley and Markman, et al.) to integrate adult relationship building strategies into the already highly successful protocol of Childrens’ First. This integration and implementation will be one tangible result of the initiative, with the short-term result of increased capacity of public health nurses to strengthen (where appropriate) the relationships in these "fragile families."

PREP is an evidence-based program for couples that has been evaluated in numerous long-term studies, with a variety of couples, across a number of continents (see attached executive summary on PREP). Very encouraging results have been found in tests of effects in a number of outcome studies, including ongoing research at the University of Denver, funded by the National Institute of Mental Health. The program is largely based on strategies based on findings from empirical research rather than pop psychology or speculation.

5) Continued cultural changes as state leaders in multiple sectors continue to educate the public about the real consequences of divorce, the value of strong marriages, particularly to children, and the reality that meaningful and relevant skills can be learned and used to strengthen committed relationships. The Governor, and others, have already made a significant impact through their leadership in these areas. Marriage and divorce are now regular parts of the Oklahoma conversation, with our citizens demonstrating Oklahoma determination in their desire to reverse the state’s divorce numbers.

Over 600 religious leaders, and the heads of almost every faith and denomination have signed the "Oklahoma Marriage Covenant", to slow the marriage entry period and to better utilize engagements for marriage preparation at the community level. We fully expect these "signings" to continue and the number of religious leaders making this commitment to grow. According to the Glenmary Research Center, 66.8% of Oklahomans claim affiliation with a church, and therefore this partnership with the faith community is vital. Because of leadership of pastors, rabbis, ministers and priests, we expect an increase in the number of couples obtaining premarital education services, as well as a decrease in the number of divorces.

The education sector has also begun looking at ways to include marriage and relationship education as part of its mission. We expect to see relationship courses on college campuses, and eventually in high schools. With many Oklahomans marrying at a young age, we have placed a high priority on reaching these two populations as part of our prevention strategy. We expect to, over time, delay the age of first marriages, and to better prepare young couples for marriage.

We also expect to have ever-growing involvement by our state’s media venues, as the facts about marriage and divorce are compelling. Providing good information so citizens can make better choices is a matter of both public health and welfare prevention. One of every three couples getting a divorce will result in the need for some kind of temporary assistance and that fact will keep this issue on the public agenda.

When divorce does occur, there are services that have proven to reduce the negative impacts on families, particularly mediation. Our State Courts have implemented a strong divorce mediation program which reduces both couple conflict and return court appearances.

Long-term effects might be:

1) While we cannot accurately predict the degree of success we will have in achieving the stated goals of the marriage initiative, we expect to document reductions in the number and rate of divorces, an increase in the marriage rate among people in their 20s and 30s, and a reduction in the recidivism of out-of-wedlock births by teenage girls. With regard to divorce and marriage rates, what we are essentially expecting is that trend on those indices will reflect our broad based, multi-method efforts to strengthen a marriage culture in the state of Oklahoma. Our ten-year goal is to accomplish a 1/3 reduction in the number of divorces in Oklahoma.

2) As a specific result of the implementation of prevention, premarital and early marital education services statewide, we expect to see a decline in the divorce rate of couples within the first five years of marriage. Various studies document that this is a very high risk time period for marriages, and much of our increased relationship education capacity will be directed at the needs of such young couples. In two long-term studies, adaptations of PREP have been associated with significant reductions in the likelihood of divorce and break up within the five years following training. Certainly studies vary in results, and not all couples can be expected to benefit from preventive efforts, the high likelihood of marital declines in the first five years of marriage means that young married couples are prime targets for demonstrating benefits of preventive relationship education.

3) Increased involvement of fathers of children born out-of-wedlock with those children. The Children’s First program already has a proven track record for increasing father involvement for many of these children. We expect to document an intensification of this effect through the confluence of the Childrens’ First protocol and strategies for relationship building from PREP. Those strategies will be targeted toward helping the mothers and fathers of these children handle aspects of their relationship more constructively regardless of the likelihood of marriage for those couples. However, as a result of efforts to build the relationships that are viable, we would also expect an increase in the number of these couples who eventually marry. We expect this combination of strategies from Childrens’ First and PREP to be among the most effective strategies implemented as a result of the initiative because both programs have shown significant promise in various empirical studies.

4) Decreased risk for domestic violence in the relationships of mothers in the Childrens’ First program with their boyfriends, husbands, or father of their child (sometimes this will be the same man, and sometimes the father of their child may be a different person from their boyfriend or husband.) While more research needs to be done (and is being done), there is both theoretical reason and limited data suggesting that interventions like PREP can reduce some kinds of domestic violence in some kinds of couples. As part of the efforts underway in the state of Oklahoma, pilot research is currently underway exploring the ways in which the Childrens’ First protocol and strategies from PREP may be employed by public health nurses to build more stability in the social networks of the young mothers and reduce the likelihood of domestic violence with their male partners (or fathers of their children if not now their partner).

In answering your second question regarding TANF benefits and cohabitation, Mary Stalnaker of the Department of Human Services attests that the agency currently has no data to determine any economic effect or impact on couples who were cohabiting and later chose to marry. Administrators have engaged in conversations with researchers through the University of Oklahoma regarding conducting this type of evaluation and hope to begin that process later this year. The original intent of changing this policy was to remove a marriage penalty. However, old policies were actually more friendly in the income calculations for persons who chose cohabitation than they were for persons who chose to marry.

I hope I have provided you with useful information to accompany my Congressional testimony. Please contact me again if you have further questions or request additional information. Again, thank you for this opportunity and for expressing interest in the Oklahoma Marriage Initiative.

Sincerely,

Hon. Jerry Regier
Secretary

Marriage Savers
Potomac, Maryland 20854
May 30, 2001

Rep. Wally Herger
Chairman
Ways & Means Subcommittee on Human Resources
B-317 Rayburn HOB
Washington, DC 20515        Via e-mail and U.S. Mail

Dear Chairman Herger:

Thank you again for the opportunity to testify on the reauthorization of Welfare Reform. It was a thrill to Harriet and me and to our young couple, to be able to share the experience of Marriage Savers.

You have asked two additional questions.

1. How could our approach benefit low income never-married couples or parents?

First, it should be noted that African Americans and Hispanics attend church more regularly than whites, according to George Gallup. And two-thirds of black churches are financially healthy. Why? Gallup reports a very high percent of blacks tithe, 45%. The inner city is full of churches, and average attendance is 278. However, these pastors are quite skeptical of answers from the white community for their people. So a special effort has to be made to reach minority clergy.

Nevertheless, it can be done. Writing in a recent newsletter of Marriage Savers, Pastor LeRoy Sullivan of Bread of Life Church in Kansas City, KS, told how he created a "Marriage Savers Church" that has "mandatory marriage preparation, using mentoring couples." He trained six Mentor Couples who helped 10 couples prepare for marriage. One broke an engagement, but none have divorced. He has also trained a "back-from-the-brink" couple in marriage saving. In fact, Bread of Life has had no divorces in four years.

One of those couples prepared for marriage, Herman and Djana Lloyd, say the process helped their communication: "The mentoring we have received allows us to handle arguments in a more effective manner," she says.

"When we have problems that were too hard to discuss, we've had a Mentor Couple to call upon. Marriage Savers has made us a better couple because our focus is now more on God than each other. That makes it easier not to have disagreements. When we disagree, we now handle them with love, patience, adjustment to God, prayer and a willingness to let God lead us."

Black Clergy Skepticism: One question Pastor Sullivan hears from other black pastors who he is bringing into a Community Marriage Policy®: "Is this a white man's thing?" Pastor Sullivan answers: "I explain that marriage is not a color or an ethnic `thing.' It is between a man and a woman, coming together in a covenant. The same issues are there for all — no matter what culture or ethnic background. Biblical principles know no color boundary. Marriage Savers is not a color or cultural issue. It is returning to God's plan for marriage."

This is true. However, skepticism by black clergy is natural. Extraordinary effort must be made to reach out to minority clergy associations by those organizing what we call Community Marriage Policies®, which have brought divorce rates down in dozens of communities.

Minority clergy: a key subgroup to be organized: In our advice on how to organize a Community Marriage Policy®, we outline the need to reach out to four relatively separate clergy groups, each of which tend to operate independent of the others:

• Catholic priests
• Mainline Protestant pastors (United Methodist, Presbyterian, Episcopal)
• Evangelical Protestant pastors (Baptists, Assemblies of God, Nazarene)
• Minority clergy, black or Hispanic pastors

Black-white harmony: We have had as many as 40% of participating clergy to be minority in a city such as Columbus, GA. In fact, in that city, the black and white clergy had never cooperated on anything until they organized a Community Marriage Policy in 1997. But the two clergy groups grew to have so much respect for one another that the white clergy association dissolved and all the white pastors joined the black clergy association!

2. In my testimony, I indicated that therapists are able to save only about 20% of the troubled marriages who come to them for help, while Mentor Couples can save 80%, the mirror opposite. You asked "What accounts for the difference"?

Therapists save only 20%. Diane Sollee, a marital therapist who was Associate Director of the American Association of Marriage and Family Therapy, and now directs the Coalition for Marriage and Family Education, cites both personal experience and two studies which indicate that therapists are able to save only about a fifth of the marriages that come to them.

"The prevailing attitude of marriage therapy has been one of sophistication, to say that marriage doesn't make any difference. They are focused on increasing the happiness of the client," says Diane Sollee. "If they think the clients will be happier if they are divorced, they will help them get divorced. They take a short term view and are not looking at what it does to the long term lives of their clients. However, when a marriage breaks up, they are not just destroying a marriage. For the kids, they are destroying the family and the grandchildren." In fact, Ms. Sollee reports that a major growth area of the therapy business is "divorce adjustment therapy."

Diagnosis vs. Prescription. Another issue is that many therapists are more trained in diagnosis than in prescription. They delve into the history in great depth, which can months or years (at $100 an hour). The best therapists such as Michele Weiner-Davis, author of Divorce Busting, take the opposite approach. She says that what matters is not what happened yesterday or years ago, but what will the person do tomorrow, when a predictable problem arises? She teaches people to widen their repertoire. Instead of complaining about the other spouse, she urges clients to praise whatever good things the spouse is doing. Finally, there are relational skills which can be taught, but therapists are generally not skilled in doing so. There are courses such as PAIRS which teach these skills, and save four out of five marriages.

Selfishness vs. Selflessness: The basic reason that marriages fail is selfishness on the part of one or both partners. He drinks to excess. She is having an affair. He doesn't invest time in her as he did before the wedding and she feels neglected. One or the other becomes overly involved in work. The answer to selfishness is selflessness. A spiritual transformation is required by at least one spouse.

Peer Counseling: the AA Model: The best way to inspire such change is for couples to see how another couple who was having a similar problem — overcame the problem and now has a happy marriage. This approach is often called "peer counseling," the best known model of which is Alcoholics Anonymous. Some 1 million people attend an AA meeting every week! Why? Someone will stand up and say, "I'm Joe and I am an alcoholic, but I have not had a drink in six years. He will then tell his own 12 steps of recovery. This is not only inspirational to those addicted to alcohol, but people will donate their time to mentor the struggling individual. What is modeled is the very selflessness which the dependent person needs to break free of his/her addiction.

Mentor Couples: Similarly, peer counseling or couple mentoring is the best way to save troubled marriages. Every church has couples who have survived adultery, for example. Three pews back Couple B is moving toward divorce because she found out he has had an affair. It has never occurred to most pastors to introduce Couple A to Couple B. Couple A's story is a deep dark secret. But they would be willing to meet with Couple B, if asked. Couple A could say, "We know adultery breaks trust. We have been there, done that. But we are here to say that trust can be restored after adultery. We have done it. So can you. Let us pray about this." That is the kind of conversation that is not happening in 999 out of 1,000 churches.

Another reason why Mentor Couples are more successful than therapy is research evidence. Diane Sollee asserts, "The main body of research led by Dr. John Gottman, Dr. Bernard Guerney, Dr. Howard Markman and Dr. Scott Stanley indicates that when marriage is looked at over the long haul, the whole therapy paradigm is wrong. Marriages don't break up because one person is mentally ill or maladjusted. For the most part, therapists are trained to diagnose such illness and then come up with a treatment plan, reimbursed by insurance companies, on the theory that once a therapist straightens out or cures that person's maladjustment, the marriage will work.

"On the other hand, Mentor Couples know how to handle what marriage is. They have managed to stay married many years and have learned along the way, how to make it work, Ms. Sollee adds. Unlike therapists who will take sides with one spouse, who is paying the bill, Mentor Couples will note shortcomings on both sides, and the need for each spouse to be more considerate, more loving." (If the committee would like to contact Ms. Sollee and bring in the experts she cites to testify, call her at 202 362-3332.)

Retrouvaille (French for Rediscovery, pronounced Retro-vi) is the most successful national marriage-saving strategy in America. It has saved four out of five marriages headed for divorce in virtually every state. In fact, more than 60,000 couples have attended a two day Retrouvaille weekend retreat led by back-from-the-brink couples who donate their time. Why? Out of gratitude that Retrouvaille helped them save their marriage, they are reaching down to help others. They do not charge for giving up a weekend of time. Some will tell their story of how they overcame adultery or alcoholism or abuse. The attending couples then are asked to write to each other for 10 minutes on an issue such as "What do I have difficulty talking to you about, and how does that make me feel?" Couples then go to their motel rooms, read what each other has written and talk in private. Twenty minutes later, a knock on the door summons each couple back to the presentation room for another talk by the leaders, and the cycle repeats itself. You may want to ask the International Coordinating Team of Retrouvaille to testify in the future. I suggest you call Ted and Iris Bjorn, 205 330-8070.

Marriage Ministry is a local congregational version of Retrouvaille. Couples whose own marriages once nearly failed are trained to tell their stories to couples in crisis on a couple-to- couple basis. We at Marriage Savers have helped more than 25 churches start such a ministry, which has virtually ended divorce in these congregations. One church, First Assembly of Rockford, IL runs an item in the church bulletin: "Is your marriage in trouble? Are you tired of pretending that everything is great? Would you like to have another couple come alongside you for a season who has solved a similar problem in their marriage? If so, call Pat..." This process worked so well that the therapists started sending over their worst cases, more than 100 of them. The 14 trained Mentor Couples struggled with the enormous load, but have lost only four marriages to divorce! For more information call Larry Ballard, our Midwest Regional Director of Marriage Savers at 715 834-5914.

Community Marriage Policies

Finally, I want to reiterate that we jump-start marriage-saving reforms like those outlined above and others described in our testimony — such as Premarital Counseling and Stepfamily Support Groups — in many churches at one time in creating what we call a Community Marriage Policy® or a Community Marriage Covenant®. This weekend, for example, we will travel to Portland, Oregon where more than half of the pastors from 20+ denominations in a suburban Clackamas County, to adopt a Clackamas Community Marriage Covenant. We will remain to train more than 100 couples from 25+ churches in how to jump start these reforms in their congregations. We will do a similar training in Nashville June 15-16.

We did this in Harrisonburg, VA two years ago and the divorce rate dropped 15% in the first year! El Paso's divorce rate is down by a third in three years, and Kansas City, KS and its suburbs, by 44% in four years.

Thus, Marriage Savers is working at two levels simultaneously. We have created 145 Community Marriage Covenants to plant these reforms in scores of churches. But what matters is what happens in the individual church. At that level, what we are doing is calling out and training Mentor Couples to be able to launch proven reforms that reduce the divorce rate of an individual congregation to near zero. I have written a Manual to Create a Marriage Savers Congregation which spells out in detail how to create a "Marriage Savers Congregation" which eliminates virtually all divorces. We teach Mentor Couples and pastors how to launch a new day for marriage and an old day for divorce. It all comes down to one core idea:

In every congregation, there are couples in solid vibrant marriages who really could be of help to other couples, but have never been asked, inspired or trained to do so.

Sincerely,

Michael J. McManus,
President

Chairman HERGER. The hearing will reconvene. I thank our group of second panelists for coming up and being seated. First, I would like to introduce Mr. David Popenoe, Co-Director of National Marriage Project, and Professor of Sociology at Rutgers University; and then, Theodora Ooms, Senior Policy Analyst and Director, Resource Center on Couples and Marriage Policy, Center for Law and Social Policy; and Mr. Patrick Fagan, and thank you; a William H. G. Fitzgerald Research Fellow in Family and Cultural Issues, the Heritage Foundation; and Ms. Kathryn Edin, Associate Professor of Sociology, Northwestern University Institute of Policy and Research; and Laurie Rubiner, Vice President for Program and Public Policy, National Partnership for Women and Family; and Mr. Eugene Steuerle, Senior Fellow, the Urban Institute. Mr. Popenoe?

Mr. POPENOE. It is a pleasure to be here. I was asked to provide a brief overview of the state of marriage in America today. As the recent results of the year 2000 census confirm, marriage, as the basis of family life, continues to decline in America. Since 1970, the rate of marriage has dropped by about one-third, the out-of-wedlock birth-ratio has climbed from 11 percent to 33 percent of all births, the divorce rate has doubled and the number of people living together outside of marriage has grown by 1000 percent. With the exception of non-marital cohabitation, which increased dramatically, the marriage decline trends decelerated a little in the 1990s, but they have continued in the same direction. As of now, there is no tangible evidence of a turnaround, although a more pro-marriage attitude does seem to be gaining ground in the media, and in the culture at large, and, hopefully, in this room.

Why should this marriage decline be of national concern? Principally, because of its effects on our nation's children. The social science evidence is now overwhelming that children fare better in life if they grow up in a married, two-parent family. Children who grow up in other family forms are 2-3 times at greater risk of having serious behavioral and emotional problems when they become adolescents and adults. Many of today's youth problems can be attributed, directly or indirectly, to the decline of marriage. This includes high rates of juvenile delinquency, suicide, substance abuse, child poverty, mental illness and emotional instability. One important new study has found that the average American child in recent decades reported more anxiety than child psychiatric patients in the 1950s. Indeed, as former Senator Moynihan once observed, the United States may be the first society in history in which children are distinctly worse off than adults.

Much of the linkage between the decline of marriage and the rise of problems in childhood rests with the absent father. The evidence is now strong that fathers do matter in the lives of their children and, although there are many caring non-resident fathers, the alarmingly simple fact is that men are much less likely to stay close to their children when they are not married to their children's mother. Men tend to view marriage and child-rearing as a single package. If they are not married or are divorced, their interest in and sense of responsibility toward children greatly diminish. Many studies have found that a high percentage of all unmarried or divorced fathers lose regular contact with their children over time.

Why is marriage so important to fatherhood? Because being a father is universally problematic for men in a way it is not for women. Put simply, as marriage weakens, fathers stray. While mothers the world over bear and nurture their young with an intrinsic acknowledgment of their role, fathers are often filled with conflict and doubt. Left culturally unregulated, men's sexual behavior can be promiscuous, their paternity casual, their commitment to families weak. Marriage is society's way of engaging the basic problem of fatherhood--how to hold the father to the stronger mother-child bond. As a cultural institution, marriage stresses the long run commitment of the male, the durability of the marital relationship, and the importance of the union for children.

Our national goal should be no less than to rebuild a marriage culture, one in which as many children as possible grow up with their fathers and mothers providing care and nurture and stability. We should be every bit as much concerned with our nation's family environment as we are with our nation's economic and natural environments. Yet, if ever there was a serious domestic problem almost entirely ignored by our national elected representatives, this is it. Despite the fact, for example, that many Americans believe the current state of marriage to be one of the major problems of our time, no high-level government body in memory--until this group--has examined the issue. Indeed, in recent years the government has even cut back on the collection of marriage statistics.

Is the goal of renewing a marriage-based society impossible to achieve? It certainly will not be easy. Much of the needed change must come, of course in the cultural, moral and spiritual realms. But there are many things that can be done at the Federal level to smooth the path. Perhaps the most important is merely to recognize--as societies in the past have nearly always done as a part of public policy--that the benefits to children of having married parents are so great that the institution of marriage should be encouraged by every reasonable means possible. Fortunately, many ways exist to strengthen and stabilize marriage (which you will be hearing more about) to make marriage a more satisfying, as well as more durable, social relationship. And, of course, government should seek to do no harm in this realm. It should never institute policies, for example, that provide disincentives to marriage or that fail equally to support children not in a two-parent family.

More than 2000 years ago, the Roman Statesman Cicero noted that "marriage is the first bond of society." Surely, this observation is no less true today.

Thanks.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Popenoe follows:]

Chairman HERGER. Thank you, Mr. Popenoe; and now we will hear from Ms. Theodora Ooms, the Center for Law and Social Policy. Ms. Ooms?

Ms. OOMS. I am very glad to be here. I am a Senior Policy Analyst at the Center for Law and Social Policy and direct The Couples & Marriage Policy Resource Center, independently from my position at the center, I am also a senior consultant to the Oklahoma Marriage Initiative, and it is a very, very interesting initiative. We will learn a lot from it.

I commend you for holding this hearing on such an important, complicated and sensitive topic that matters so much to the well-being of children. My testimony focuses mainly on what States are doing to implement the three family formation goals of the 1996 Welfare Reform Act; promoting marriage, reducing out-of-wedlock pregnancy and encouraging the formation and maintenance of two-parent families.

The majority of States are making some efforts to pursue these three goals. Many of these efforts are focused on important steps such as removing policy barriers that discourage marriage. For example, 33 States have changed their policies, so that they now treat single and two-parent families equally in determining eligibility for TANF. Secondly, in order to reduce out-of-wedlock childbearing, many States are focusing on prevention of teen pregnancy. This strategy makes sense, since nearly 80 percent of teen births are non-marital and one-third of all non-marital births are to teenagers. Moreover, these figures underestimate the important role of teen pregnancy in the overall problem. 57 percent of non-marital births are either to teens or to adults who had their first birth as a teenager, about a half of non-marital births are second or later births.

As we heard in the previous panel, two States thus far, Oklahoma and Arizona, have taken steps to use TANF funds to support a number of new, innovative, educational activities designed to strengthen couples and marriage. There is no information available about the number and scope of any county-level initiatives, but, anecdotally, we have learned of a few. For example, the Greater Grand Rapids Community Marriage Policy is doing a study of TANF welfare clients and caseworkers in order to determine what kinds of help would be appropriate to offer low-income couples.

Some of the things we are doing already are related to these goals indirectly. It is also estimated that publicly funded family planning averts around 800,000 or so out-of-wedlock pregnancies a year. State programs such as child support enforcement and publicly funded family planning also contribute to achieving these family formation goals. There is evidence, for example, that States that have effective child support enforcement had lower rates of divorce, non-marital births and teen births.

Programs that reduce economic stress on couples can also promote marital stability. It was mentioned earlier that there is a great deal of interest in the findings of the Minnesota Family Independence Program, which was a welfare-to-work demonstration program implemented in 1994 to 1998. It gave increased financial support to working parents through earned-income disregards and was found to significantly increase marital stability in two-parent families, and it made it somewhat more likely that single parents got married. These findings are really important because they address the fact that the breakup of marriage not only contributes to poverty, but poverty can cause stress on marriages and make it harder for people to marry.

What does all this tell us? The field of couples and marriage policy is clearly in its infancy and there is very little known about what works. The 1996 Welfare Reform Law drew upon more than a decade of welfare-to-work demonstrations to shape and support the work-related goals. By contrast, there have been no similar demonstrations, policies or programs designed to explicitly strengthen marriage and two-parent families to guide States' efforts to implement the marriage goals. I think that this is obviously one reason, as has been said before, why States have been moving cautiously in this area. I think there are other reasons, too. It is not only the lack of knowledge.

While most Americans value marriage, many have had direct and, sometimes, very painful experiences related to the difficulty in making marriages succeed. Many view marriage and divorce as private matters. They are very unsure about whether the government should play a role and, if so, what its role should be. Also, marriage is not always a good thing. Some marriages need to be ended, and we know that some children do better when their parents divorce if the divorce is one in which the parents were in high-conflict.

So, while many agree that promoting healthy marriages is an appropriate policy goal, I think we have to act cautiously in order to bring the public along in this debate and allay these concerns. For example we know that in individual circumstances marriage may not be feasible or desirable for a particular couple. Thus, we should hold onto a secondary goal to support responsible, cooperative parenting on the part of both parents.

Finally, we need to know more. While there is a good deal of academic research on these subjects, for the most part it has not been translated into policy and many gaps remain. We need more policy-relevant research and we need much better marriage and divorce statistics. We also need States and communities to conduct thoughtful demonstration programs and initiatives that are carefully evaluated. This public discussion and debate about the importance of marriage has only just begun. It is going to be critical for informing the public and building public support for strategies to strengthen marriage and families.

Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Ms. Ooms follows:]

Chairman HERGER. Thank you very much, Ms. Ooms. Now, Mr. Pat Fagan, the Heritage Foundation?

Mr. FAGAN. Thank you Chairman Herger, and Mr. Cardin. It is an honor to be here today. I want to start off with the last time that the issue of marriage was addressed: in the TANF legislation. I think you will remember that one of the reasons why things have progressed so slowly at the State level, was that there was a serious debate in Congress on the effects of out-of-wedlock births in children, and I think most people would agree that Congress was not sure exactly what it should do with that. Congress knew it was a serious problem. Congress knew it was a serious issue, but a delicate issue, and were unsure how to how move forward? My read is that Congress ducked the difficult decision, punted to the States and said, "You guys do something about it."

So, Congress having punted to the States and there is not much response, because it is not very clear to the States exactly what Congress was requesting them to do. So, next time around, if Congress wants to get more action at the State level it should be a lot clearer on what it would like to see the States do. Congress should define it more clearly the goals.

Also, in the TANF legislation, Congress removed a massive amount of discretion on the part of the States in Congress' mandates on welfare-to-work. Clear guidelines definitely worked tremendously in the return-to-work dimension of TANF.

As a result of their absence of clear guidelines the total monies that will have been spent by all of the States from TANF monies on anything to do with restoring marriage will amount to one-thousandth of one percent of TANF monies: Rather low. This is the result of the ambiguity and the lack of clarity on what Congress would like to see the States accomplish.

On the issue of freedom: I do not know anybody working in this area who does not want all efforts in this area to proceed with a maximum of freedom. Therefore, I would put freedom right up front in the name of whatever amendment you propose and call it the Marriage Choice and Education Amendment. Choice and Freedom should be right in there, because I know of no one who is interested in any form of coercion.

There was a parallel drawn to the space initiative of the John F. Kennedy days. In 2001, we are confronted with a much greater crisis in our society: Today, only 40 out of every 100 children who are born will reach age 18 with their biological mother and father married in a family. Out of all children conceived, it is much less: 27 out of every 100 conceived. Today, America is a dangerous place for a child to be raised, because of what the breakdown in marriage is doing, whether it is intended or not, every single breakdown is a serious rejection of the child by one of the parents, and caused by the rejection of each other.

All this rejection is putting in place an expanding negative feedback loop in which boys are falling further and further behind, and who, especially, among the poor, are becoming less and less employable, because they do not have a father around. They do not have an effective male model around. One of the key things in life that the young male has got to learn is to go out and work, take responsibility, to prepare himself to be the provider for his wife and for his children. Because of the breakdown in marriage we have here a negative loop where young girls growing up poor have less and less young boys around who are growing up to be capable of being husbands.

There is a huge need to proceed aggressively in this for another reason: To the extent that marriage breaks down, the need for the Federal and State safety net expands in every single domestic policy department. Therefore, I suggest that in every social policy agency--Health and Human Services Department (HHS), Education, Department of Justice, Interior and Housing and Urban Development Department--there be a very small office of marriage initiatives--just a couple of people who will do the work of tracking what is happening out across the nation, using some of whatever monies you are going to provide the States and track this money and advise the States in how it might be best spent, pointing out what is working, disseminating the research, ensuring accountability. If these Offices of Marriage Initiatives, one set up at the Federal level, it will be very easy for Congress to monitor, through oversight what is actually happening at the State level and to make sure it is done with freedom and responsibility, extending the capacities of the States and of the Federal Government to move to increase marriage in a way that protects the freedom of all yet benefits the children with the marriage of their parents.

Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Fagan follows:]

Chairman HERGER. Thank you, Mr. Fagan. And now we will turn to Ms. Kathryn Edin, Northwestern University. Ms. Edin?

Ms. EDIN. I am an urban ethnographer. I go out and talk to people. Between 1989 and the present, my colleagues and I have conducted lengthy, multiple ethnographic interviews with well over 300 low-income, single mothers, most of whom are either TANF recipients, welfare recipients or have some welfare history. Overall, the majority that we spoke to did aspire to marriage, but many felt that marriage offered more risks than rewards. Our interviews revealed four reasons single mothers may be hesitant to marry.

First, affordability--for the mothers we spoke to, economic stability was a necessary, but not sufficient condition for marriage. This does not mean, however, that the mothers we interviewed do not often deeply care about the men in their lives. One woman said, "There was a struggle going on inside of me. I mean, he lost his job at the auto body shop and then he couldn't find another one. I was trying to live on my welfare check and it just wasn't enough. Finally, I couldn't do it anymore, because it was too much pressure on me, even though he is the love of my life. I told him he had to leave even though I knew it wasn't really his fault that he wasn't working. But, I had nothing in the house to feed the kids, no money to pay the bills, nothing. I could not take it, so I made him leave.

Second, respectability--many Americans believe the marriage norm no longer operates within poor communities. They think that poor people think too little of marriage. Our conversations with low-income, single mothers revealed the opposite. They avoid marriage, in part, because they think too much of it. In these communities marriage has a kind of sacred significance and is a powerful marker of respectability. However, it only confers respectability if accompanied by financial stability and some measure of upward mobility. One woman says, "I want to get married. I have always wanted to get married and have a family. My baby's father, he's doing pretty good economically, but I'm not going to get married until we save up enough money to buy an acre of land and finance a trailer. Then we will marry."

Others often talked about the sacred nature of marriage and felt that entering into a union that would almost certainly collapse under economic strain would be quote, "a sacrilege." This reflects the strong belief of many that marriage should be quote, "forever."

Third, trust--the substantial minority of our respondents say they have given up on marriage. This is more because of their low view of the men they know, than because they reject institution of marriage itself. Women tend to believe men are untrustworthy in several respects. For example, they fear that the men will not or even cannot be sexually faithful. When women says, "Maybe I will find a good person to get married to, someone to be a stepfather to my son. They are not all bad. There are three things in my life; my school, my work and my son, not men. At first they love you, and then they think you're beautiful, and then they leave for another woman. My father is like that. He has kids by several different women. I hate him for it. I say I hate you, why do you do that? Why?"

Another fear is that men will be irresponsible with the money. One woman told me, "I gave my children's father the money to go buy some Pampers. He went down some street with his cousin and they were down partying and drinking, and he spent my son's Pampers money on partying." Additionally, mothers sometimes do not trust men with their children. We heard stories about men who leave their children home alone, drink heavily or smoke crack in front of the kids, neglect to feed or otherwise care for them, or even physically or sexually abuse them. One women summed it up as follows, "Men can say, 'Well, honey, I'm going out for the night.' And then they disappear for two months, whereas the mother has a deeper commitment, conscience or compassion. If women acted like men, our kid would be in the park, left. We would say somebody else is going to take care of it. Everybody would be orphaned.

Finally, fourth, the stalled sexual revolution at home--having a child often times reveals competencies mothers did not know they possessed, yet they are hard pressed to get the men in their lives to respect these competencies. They think men try to take power away from women and try to be in control of all the decisions, and since they do not trust men, this lack of control is very frightening. Most mothers want a partnership of equals. They believe the best way to achieve this is to make sure they are contributing financially to the household economy and will have something to fall back on if the relationship goes bad. As one women told us, "I want to have a nice job so I know if he walked out, I have something to fall back on. The mortgage and everything else is going to be in my name. That is how I want it to be. I do want to get married, but I'm going to get myself stabilized and get everything together with me and my daughter before I take that route."

I take three lessons from this data. Number one, it is true that most low-income women do aspire to marriage. Two, but it is on their terms. They want some level of social mobility and economic stability. They will marry provided the husband doesn't fool around with other women, mismanage the money, neglect of abuse their children or beat them. Domestic violence was quite common with the women we interviewed. They also do not want to make all the decisions and they want him to respect their competencies. Unless low-skilled men's economic situations improve and they begin to change their behaviors toward women, it is quite likely that large numbers of low-income women will continue to resist marriage.

[The prepared statement of Ms. Edin follows:]

Chairman HERGER. Thank you, Ms. Edin, for your testimony; and now Ms. Laurie Rubiner, of the National Partnership for Women and Families. Ms. Rubiner?

Ms. RUBINER. Thank you very much. Good afternoon, Chairman Herger and Congressman Cardin and other distinguished members of the Subcommittee. I am pleased to present to have the opportunity to present testimony this afternoon on marriage and welfare reform. If we are truly committed to helping people out of poverty, then our public policy should be directed at providing real supports to those who are actually living in poverty. Such assistance should be provided not based upon family formation, but rather upon the needs of the family and the adult's willingness to follow the rules we have established for receiving aid.

The mission of welfare reform should be to reduce poverty and help people achieve economic independence, not to engage in social engineering or discrimination against families that do not meet a particular ideal about family composition, nor should welfare reform legislation be used as a vehicle to punish families who fail to conform to our individual views of what a family should or should not be. We should learn from our past welfare policy that attempts to influence family formation can backfire. It is essential that welfare policies are developed with a primary focus on providing assistance and supports to all eligible families in need and not just a favored few.

Some have suggested that married couples should be given preferential treatment in the distribution of scarce welfare benefits, under the theory that this will encourage people to get married. Such a policy would be misguided. First, there is no conclusive evidence that links increased welfare benefits to increased marriage rates. Second, to give preference to families solely because they are comprised of a married couple with children discriminates against those who are not married, but are working hard and playing by the rules.

Consider the example of Elizabeth Jones in Katharine Boo's recent article in The New Yorker magazine. Ms. Jones followed the rules of the 1996 welfare reform law. She left welfare and got not one, but two jobs to care for her three children. She sleeps four hours a night. Even with a day job as a D.C. police officer and a night job in private security, she still cannot afford child care. So her school-age children are left to care for each other after school in a dangerous D.C. neighborhood. While Ms. Jones may be in the success column of those welfare recipients who have moved into financial independence, it is hard to understand how anyone, after reading her story, could not agree that scarce welfare resources should be used to help her get the kind of support that we know would help, such as quality affordable child care, health insurance and transportation.

If marriage were only about economics, then policies that provide financial incentives for people to get married would be appropriate, but a successful marriage is a much more complicated equation, and a marriage license is not a winning lottery ticket. Rather than simply promoting marriage as a quick-fix economic solution, we ought to be focused on helping individuals make responsible decisions about their relationships and their lives. In addition, studies have found that significant percentages of welfare clients are victims of domestic violence and may turn to TANF to help escape an abusive environment.

It is wrong to promote policies that make women choose between supporting their children or returning to their abusers. Rather than focusing merely on getting individuals married, regardless of whether there is a solid foundation, our focus ought to be on what it takes to make those marriages work. It should come as no surprise that low-income women want the same kinds of marriages that we want for ourselves and our children, and that they prefer to remain single rather than enter into an unstable, unsuitable or abusive marriage.

There are millions of hard-working, single-parent families without adequate resources. The number of single parent families is growing at a faster rate than married couple families, confirming that the concept of what constitutes a family is changing. We ought to do whatever we can to strengthen family bonds, including where grandparents and other relatives are struggling to keep families together. Our efforts should be informed about what we have learned about policies that work and policies that do not work.

We already know from our previous efforts at welfare policy that we have to exercise care in constructing policies that may impact family composition. To the extent that the old Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) law may have resulted in a disincentive to marry, we ought not repeat those same mistakes. I am not here to condemn marriage. It is precisely out of respect for what the institution of marriage should be that I reject the outdated notion that a woman's only route out of poverty is a walk down the aisle. I urge you not to allow a discussion about marriage to divert attention from the task at hand, adopting concrete, comprehensive policies to provide all families in poverty with the support they need to make a permanent transition from welfare to economic security.

Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Ms. Rubiner follows:]

Chairman HERGER. Thank you, Ms. Rubiner. Now we will hear from Mr. Gene Steuerle of the Urban Institute. Mr. Steuerle?

Mr. STEUERLE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Mr. Cardin. As the last of six speakers on the topic of marriage at the end of a long day, I am reminded of Henry VIII's admonition to his own six wives, that they were not to overstay their welcome. What I would like to talk to you about today is the way that Federal policy creates marriage penalties, and I would like to emphasize that TANF is only the tip of the iceberg. Marriage penalties are created by food stamps, by Medicaid, by housing subsidies, by supplemental security income, by the earned income credit, by the individual income tax, and--even for some widows, widowers and divorced persons--by the way Social Security and military and Foreign Service retirement systems work. And these are only some of the culprits.

Marriage penalties, however, are not inevitable. Most public expenditures are made through programs that do not create marriage penalties. Marriage penalties essentially arise in those programs that phase out benefits as income increases, and then attempt to impose that additional tax, that implicit tax, on a household when a spouse with earnings marries into it. Two rationales are used to justify marriage penalties. Some believe that we should grant fewer benefits or impose higher taxes on a married couple than on two single individuals with the same combined income as the couple.

The argument is that there are economies of scale in the marriage and therefore the household with people living together are better off because of those shared facilities and goods. It is not that there are no economies of scale. Indeed, there are; however, they apply to almost all sharing arrangements: dormitories, retirement homes, cohabitation and so on. If you think about it, it is only the marital vows of allegiance that is the type of arrangement on which we impose those taxes.

In those communities where marriage is no longer the norm, and, as the recent census shows, those communities are growing, this natural social incentive to achieve economies of scale in living does not disappear, but is merely converted into forms that avoid the marriage contract. For example, adult males in marriage-discouraged communities still live with someone, they still achieve economies of scale, only now they are more likely than before to stay with their mothers, with relatives, with friends, or in serial relationships, rather than with a spouse or their own children.

The transfer and tax systems say, in particular that, if they are fathers, they can support their children better by remaining unmarried. Marriage penalties are also a classic example of the type of liberal conservative compromise that has dominated social policy for several decades. Liberals wanting social programs to be as progressive as possible want to concentrate benefits on the lowest-income people. Conservatives wanting to limit budget cost also want to limit the benefits. Both motives, progressivity and budget containment, are honorable motives. The net result, however, of this compromise has been that we have achieved substantial marriage penalties on significant portions of the population.

Because each new expenditure and tax program tends to have its own unique, built-in phase out, households in America literately face dozens of income tax systems. Every one of these programs--TANF, food stamps, Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC)--has a little mini income tax in it that is imposed as that program phases out. To see how these tax rates affect marriage, take an example of a single head of household who has moved out of TANF and has a job making a little over $10,000 a year. If this benefit recipient now marries a single person earning, say, about $8 an hour (a logical partner), their combined income would fall by about 22 percent, or over $7,000. The reason? They would lose earned-income credits; they would lose food stamps; they would lose Medicaid.

In my view, taxing a large share of marital commitments makes little sense in any society, especially one seeking to foster community spirit among its members. After all, the primary feature of a community is to share, and the most basic form of sharing is between two people or within a family. Independently, from whether marriage penalties significantly affect behavior, I believe they have a corrosive effect on society, and especially on low-income communities most affected by marriage penalties.

In summary form, there are four steps that I believe would solve this marriage penalty problem. First, we must reduce the combined marginal tax rate, implicit and explicit, that applies to low and moderate income individuals, so that they do not rise much about the rate that now apply to middle and upper income families. In other words, we have to keep the tax rate down around 30 or 40 percent, and not at the rate of 70 percent or more that it often achieves.

Second, we have to avoid adding phase out after phase out after phase out to every benefit and tax programs. If you remember nothing else from my testimony, I hope you remember that every time a phase out is added to a government program, it creates a marriage penalty. Third, we need to move towards individually-based, as well as family-based wage subsidies for low-income workers. And, finally, at least for the low and middle-income ranges, apply income splitting rules, which Congress is attempting to do in its 2001 tax legislation.

Finally, regardless of whether you accept these recommendations, I do hope you will consider attempting to coordinate administrative structures and to share data in all government programs so we can learn just better what is happening to America's families.

Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Steuerle follows:]

Chairman HERGER. Thank you very much, Mr. Steuerle. I thank each of our panelists, and now we will turn to some questions.

Mr. Popenoe, we hear a lot about the negative effects of family breakdown on children. Could you tell us more about the positive effects of marriage on adults, and especially women, some of which you note on page four of your testimony?

Mr. POPENOE. Which I did not get to, and there is a lot of new information about how marriage provides health benefits, wealth benefits, longevity, happiness, low levels of depression. These are determined by comparing married people with single people, and by comparing married people with cohabiting couples. In such comparisons, the married couples tend to come out way ahead. There have been a many attempts to try to determine that this is not just a selection affect: in other words, that is due only to the fact that the happier, healthier and wealthier people go into marriage. The general belief now among scholars is that it is not primarily the selection affect. There is a real marriage effect, and the reason for it seems to be that two people who pledge a long-term commitment to each other can plan their life together, can achieve economies of scale, can monitor each other's behavior, can be lifelong, intimate sexual companions, and all those things bring enormous benefits to the married couple.

Chairman HERGER. Thank you Mr. Popenoe.

Mr. Steuerle, you were mentioning in your testimony, and you referred to it on page three, that if a single head of household earning $10,700 per year married someone making $8 dollars per hour, their combined income could fall by over $7,500 due to the marriage alone. Is there data on whether low-income workers actually make these sorts of calculations prior to marrying or choosing not to marry?

Mr. STEUERLE. Mr. Chairman, I should be honest. The research is very mixed on the question of whether you can slightly change incentives in these programs and thereby affect the marriage rate. Certainly trying to remove marriage penalties in government programs, for instance, is not going to remove the sexual revolution. However, I should also indicate that we have no good evidence on what the social effect in a community is. We do know that people learn from each other. There is a similar debate, for instance, about whether a lot of the penalties for working longer lead people to retire. But there is some evidence that if you retire and I live next to you in New York, and you have better incentives than I do, I still might retire and move to Florida because you moved. And the same thing appears to take place in a lot of these low-income communities--in particular that people learn by watching each other.

But as an analyst and a researcher, I must be honest. The research is very mixed. I am not going to exaggerate that we know how to slightly change incentives and thereby foster marriage. I will start, however, that in all these programs the government does say to low-income people that marriage is a mistake that is very costly. That message is there, whether it affects their marriage rates or not.

Chairman HERGER. Thank you, Mr. Steuerle. Ms. Edin, would you like to comment on this, on our culture and low-income--

Ms. EDIN. Sure. I think the kind of research you really need to get at these questions is the kind of research that ethnographers and qualitative researchers do, who actually go out and spend time in low-income communities. I would say that in terms of some of the penalties, for example, in the earned-income tax credit, the credit still has not quite been around long enough for people to begin noticing these things. I suspect they will, because it is very interest, in another line of research on welfare reform, how they are noticing the effect of the increased income disregard, which in many States has moved from 33 percent, and this is really--our evidence suggests that this might be having at least a modest incentive effect on mothers' sense of working being worthwhile.

So I would suspect that because the penalty for marriage is so huge in the earned-income tax credit, in particular, that people will begin learning from each other and picking up on it, and it is a matter of time.

Chairman HERGER. Thank you very much, Ms. Edin. Mr. Cardin, to inquire?

Mr. CARDIN. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I want to thank each of the panelists. This panel has brought us back to the realities of the problem that we have with people, in promoting marriage and dealing with children born out of wedlock. It has convinced me that the goals that we have in TANF are the correct goals in this regard, but we need to expand that to deal with the economic problems of poverty, which is clearly stopping us from making the type of progress that we want. I think, Ms. Edin, your observations from the people that you interview bring us back to reality; that a mother is not interested in marrying if that mother believes it is not going to be in the best interest of her family, and taking on the financial responsibility of a husband is not always in the best interest of the family.

It also brings us back to the bill that we worked on last year, Mr. Chairman, the fatherhood initiative, where we were trying to connect fathers to family by helping fathers become more responsible by having the skills necessary to earn a livelihood, and we think that program made sense in the goals of welfare. So it really, I think, reinforces some of our points from our work last year. Also, there are currently disincentives in the welfare law that--Ms. Ooms, you mentioned the fact that 33 States, I think, have moved to remove the distinction between a two-parent family and a one-parent family in eligibility. That means there are 17 States that have not, so we still have disincentives in our law that really need to be examined as to whether they are counterproductive to the goals we are trying to establish here.

Also, the post-employment services, which are very difficult for States to participate in because the clock is still tolling. If they provide supplemental assistance or if they try to deal with some of the skills training that is necessary, it can affect a State's willingness to move in this direction. So I think you have to look at it in total, and we have not done that. I do not agree with the point, I think that you make, Mr. Fagan, about such a small percentage of the resources going to these goals. I think you have to take a look at it in more general way, and I am not sure we have the numbers. We need better statistics. I agree with you there. We need much better information in order to make these judgments, but I was just impressed by, at least--and if you want to add more to this, Ms. Ooms or Ms. Edin, I would appreciate it--the fact that if you deal with the economics, you can deal with trying to get the family more connected.

If there are rewards in it, there is a better chance of having the father connected to the family, at least that is how I interpret it from some of the work that you were doing.

Ms. EDIN. I can respond to that a little bit. I think what the interviews with these mothers have shown, and we are doing corollary interviews with fathers in three cities, by the way, is that there are really two things going on. One is economic and the other thing is sort of behavioral, and in some ways the two are tied together, because we know, for example, that although domestic violence occurs across the income distribution, it is more concentrated among the poor, among low-income men.

Other problems are similarly true. The sex gap, the gap in sexual expectations between men and women, is wider at the bottom than it is in the middle, and so it is kind of hard to sort that out. But I think we would be mistaken to think it is all economics. I think economics plays a big role, but there are cultural issues, as well, in the way men have been socialized to treat women, and the way men are not socialized to be very good dads or very connected to their kids.

But I will tell you that based on, now, six years of interviewing low-income, non-custodial fathers, that there is a great deal of willingness or maybe even wishful thinking, on the part of fathers, willingness to want to be more involved in family life.

Mr. CARDIN. Again, that is why this  Committee and the House last year passed the fatherhood initiative. Unfortunately, it did not pass the Senate. But the fatherhood initiative was recognition that we had to put more attention on the non-custodial parent for the reasons you just said, gain some experience, figure out how to deal with the problem, and hopefully that will develop some guidelines for States to be more aggressive in this area.

Ms. Ooms, did you want to add something?

Ms. OOMS. I just wanted to add, I think we have to do several things at once. This is a complicated issue, especially for low-income couples. However, the TANF goals that address the two-parent families and out-of-wedlock childbearing relate to the general population. I think it is a question of economics. I think it is a question of culture. I think it is a question of the relationship skills that were talked about in the first panel. I think you would agree, Kathy, that in low-income families, you could give the guy a job and they could live together, but they could still have a hard time if somebody did not help them learn to get along better together. I think they need some of these kinds of soft-skills services, as many other people do, too.

So, I think we have to have multiple strategies and not rely on just one or the other. I think we also need to think what are the best times at which we can give this kind of help. This new study that some of you know about, the Fragile Families and Child Well-being study, which is showing that the time of birth is the time when many of these unmarried couples are really very romantically attached, 50 percent are living together and say they want to marry. This offers a window of opportunity when we should be offering both the economic help and the training in relationship skills and other supports to couples. I think that this is one of the most exciting pieces of research that is really helping guide policy in the future.

Ms. EDIN. 30 seconds?

Mr. CARDIN. Sure.

Ms. EDIN. I would say, in all of these interviews, the most palpable reality is the incredibly high level of mistrust between men and women in these communities.

Chairman HERGER. Thank you very much. It would appear that we are in need of more research as we listen to both of our panels; and Ms. Ooms, just your comment, if you could, about research in this area, and especially federally-funded research. Is the government paying appropriate attention to issues of family structure and their impact, especially on children? What more do you feel should be done? What are some of the possible benefits if we had better research in this area?

Ms. OOMS. I think there are a couple of things we should do. I think firstly our basic vital national statistics on marriage and divorce, collected by the Center for Disease Control from state governments, have to be rebuilt. We must invest in getting those statistics in the same shape as we have our birth and death statistics, because otherwise we cannot keep track of trends in marriage and divorce in the States and communities. So that is one area that we really need to pay some attention, and it has been terribly, badly neglected.

What we do know about these issues has been learned from a lot of federally-funded research, but I would say that the whole issue of "couple unions," as researchers call it, has had very low priority in the Federal research agenda. I think the kind of thing that would be helpful, because there are so many issues that we still do not understand and we need to know about--is the kind of initiative we had on the fatherhood front about three or four years ago. All the Federal statistical agencies got together and said how can we learn more about fathers and fatherhood, and they began to plan to add fathers to certain surveys and to do certain kinds of piggybacking on each others studies to learn more.

I think if there is The Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics, which made this effort in the fatherhood area, should be asked by the Congress to make the same kind of effort in the couples and marriage area. Then we might be able to learn a lot more from data that is already out there, and also from new data they decide needs to be collected. So I think we have a big job to do.

Mr. STEUERLE. Mr. Chairman, could I also add one very quick comment there?

Chairman HERGER. Yes.

Mr. STEUERLE. One way, to really leverage up what you want to do in the way of research is to combine administrative data sets and the survey data sets. There is not a lot of money required: in some sense, the people have already paid for those surveys, already paid to file those administrative records. In a lot of States and at the national level, those sets are not combined. There are a lot of reasons why they are not combined. It is not just resources. Issues of confidentiality are also involved. But a lot of the data, I think, are there to improve our understanding greatly. It may only be a minor element in the type of legislation you deal with, but I believe it could be very important.

Chairman HERGER. Thank you very much. Again, I want to thank each of you for your outstanding testimony, both this panel and our first panel. Once again, I trust the witnesses would respond to additional questions on these issues. It has been a very informative hearing. I appreciate the work that each of you have done and the time that you have given us today, and with that, this Committee stands adjourned.

[Whereupon, at 4:25 p.m., the hearing was adjourned.]
[Questions submitted from Chairman Herger to the panel, and their responses follow:]

National Marriage Project
Piscataway, New Jersey 08901
June 5, 2001

Hon. Wally Herger
Chairman, Subcommittee on Human Resources
Committee on Ways and Means
House of Representatives
Congress of the United States

Dear Chairman Herger,

It is a pleasure and a privilege to be able to provide further information to you and your distinguished committee. I will answer the questions in the order they were asked.

Question 1. As the hearing reflected, the Subcommittee is interested in overall trends in marriage and family formation, with a special focus on the impact of these trends on lower-income families, including those on or at risk of going on welfare. Thus, in addition to the general data included in your testimony about overall marriage, divorce, cohabitation, and out-of-wedlock birth data and trends, please provide us with similar marriage, divorce, cohabitation and out-of-wedlock birth information, to the degree available, for low-income families, including families on or at risk of going on welfare.

1. The National Marriage Project does not keep marriage data broken down by income or by those at risk of going on welfare. These data can be secured from the U.S. Census Bureau and from such private sources as the Urban Institute or the Heritage Foundation. As you well know, however, the marriage situation in the low-income community is far worse than it is for the nation as a whole. Indeed, in some urban areas marriage has all but disappeared as the basis of family life.

Question 2. Is there anything we can do about reversing the trends in family formation? What social, cultural or legal factors reinforced marriage in prior generations and what specifically changed? Were there legislative policies that had an effect on undermining marriage?

2. The decline of marriage and the family in the United States over the past four decades is largely attributed to changes in three areas: the economy, government policies, and the culture. In the economy, the rise in women’s employment opportunities and earning ability has reduced the benefits associated with sharing income and household costs with a man and also made divorce and the single life more attractive. In other words, women’s new economic independence enhances both their unwillingness to marry and their willingness to divorce. At the same time, as men’s wages and job opportunities have declined relative to women’s, the eligibility of men as potential marriage partners has dropped. Women are less likely to want to marry lower-earning men, and lower-earning men are less likely to want to marry because they feel unable to support a family. Studies have indicated that these economic changes have made a measurable but rather modest contribution to family change in America.

The impact of government has focused largely on two areas. At the national level are the perverse incentives in tax policies and welfare programs, incentives that reward people for being unmarried rather than married. For the society as a whole these public policies have probably been relatively unimportant. But for the very poor, and those on welfare, their impact has been much greater. At the state level, the most widely analyzed policy has been the shift to "no-fault" divorce, beginning in the late 1960s. Scholars differ about the effect this may have had on increasing the divorce rate. Some have found little or no effect, while others have determined that the divorce increase may have been as high as 20%. The increase, however, was for only the first few years following the legal change, after which the effect diminished.

By far the most important cause of family decline has been changes in the culture, that is, the values and beliefs that give coherence and meaning to life. During the past forty years we have seen changes in the fundamental ideals and role expectations that have defined the family for the past several centuries. "Self-fulfillment" has risen as a dominant life goal, displacing such values as self-sacrifice, commitment to others, and institutional obligation. The traditional moral legitimacy and authority of almost all social institutions, including marriage, has eroded. Although individuals still favor marriage as an intimate partnership, they have become more hesitant to commit themselves to institutionalized marriage roles and societies have weakened their sanctions of such roles. This broad cultural shift is the end result of the long-term growth of individualism in modern societies, accentuated by the relative affluence of our era.

Question 3. How can government help Arebuild a marriage culture@, as you put it? Is it enough to remove marriage penalties in the tax code and certain marriage disincentives in benefit programs? What else is needed, including from non-government sources, such as churches, civic leaders, the media and so on?

3. Obviously, public policies are not particularly well suited to changing matters of the heart. Without significant cultural change—for example, the dampening of the sexual revolution, moral responsibility on the part of the organized entertainment industry, and a renewed cultural focus on children—the task of restoring a marriage culture will be difficult to achieve. Nevertheless, there is a significant role at the margins for government to play. Lying behind all government family policies should be three simple propositions: (1) children are our future; (2), the family is the most important institution for child wellbeing; (3) marriage is the best arrangement for family life. Generally speaking, the goal of government should be to increase the proportion of children who are living with and cared for by their two natural, married parents and to decrease the proportion of children who are not.

What follows are some key pro-marriage and pro-family policies that the national government could institute. I shall emphasize in this discussion initiatives that apply to all economic segments of the population. You have many other witnesses, more knowledgeable about such matters than I, who deal specifically with policies for welfare and other very low-income populations. And I shall take for granted, and not discuss, policies already under consideration by the Congress that help to remove marriage penalties from the tax code and marriage disincentives from benefit programs.

a. Develop and widely promulgate an annual measurement of our nation’s marital and family health, much like the government today provides annual measurements of our nation’s economic health. The importance of marriage and the family must be publicized more widely; this would be an effective way to start. In addition to divorce and out-of-wedlock birth rates, the measurement should include indicators such as the percent of children living apart from their two married parents and the percent of children living apart from their biological fathers.

b. Develop, test, and disseminate widely on an informational basis, premarital and marital education programs. Many educational programs now exist that are designed to strengthen existing and future marriages. Good marriages are a national resource, and we should be encouraging them. This effort might be thought of as akin to the federal government’s cooperative extension programs in agriculture, which have been instrumental in promoting scientific agriculture and have led to the world’s most productive agricultural economy.

c. Provide educational credits or vouchers to parents who leave the paid labor force for extended periods of time to care for their young children. Parents who raise their own children perform an important social service, but in doing so may harm their long-run career prospects (not to mention their loss of current income). In return for this sacrifice, society could compensate their further education so that they can more effectively reenter the labor force or become established in their careers. Sometimes referred to as a "parental bill of rights" because it is designed along the lines of the G. I. Bill for World War II veterans, these credits or vouchers could be provided for high school, vocational, college, graduate or post-graduate education.

d. For married couples with dependent children, increase their personal tax exemption for each year, after five years, that they remain married. Not only should marriage be unpenalized by the tax system, it should be favored with a tax reward. This marriage bonus would not have to be great; it could be mostly symbolic. It could also be capped after a certain time. But it would be a stunning affirmation that long-lasting marriages are in the national interest.

Question 4. ACohabit@ doesn=t carry with it the stigma of terms our parents used for this concept. I can only imagine what today=s term for Ashotgun wedding@ would be, if that concept even has meaning any more. Does our language indicate society=s unwillingness to be more forceful in promoting marriage above other Alifestyles@?

4. Our language reflects the way culture has changed in the family realm. Some of the linguistic changes, such as "nonmarital cohabitation," stem from the sometimes-misguided attempt of the social sciences to develop "value-neutral" categories. Other changes, such as the "right to choice," come from advocacy groups. There is not much that can be done to shape the language once something becomes established. In my own work, I mostly have to follow the linguistic guidelines in current use within the social sciences. Where appropriate, however, I still tend to use such descriptive and meaningful terms as "broken" instead of "alternative" family, or family "decline" instead of family "change."

Question 5. In the May 22, 2001 Washington Post, E.J. Dionne claims that the statistics revealing a decline in married two-parent families are misleading and exaggerated. He says Athe headlines are wrong. The two-parent family is still the norm in America.@ What is your reaction?

5. E. J. Dionne was largely right in his assessment of the media’s handling of the new Census Bureau numbers. The Census Bureau made some initial gaffs in their press release of the data and these were then compounded by many journalists. The biggest problem was the use by the media of the Census category "household" to mean "family." The media stressed that less than 25% of all households now contain married couples with children, but that is a little misleading. What one really wants to know is how many families (or family households) with children are headed by a married couple. And the answer to that is not 25% but 72%!

At the same time, Dionne’s article itself was misleading: The "fading family" is no myth, as he suggested. In 1960 the percentage of families with children headed by married couples was 93%, in 1990 it was 76%, today it is just 72%. Thus the downward trend has been steep and continuing. Although the divorce rate has declined a bit in recent decades, the percentage of all births that are out-of-wedlock has remained virtually the same in recent years at about one third (it even went up slightly last year). The most important problem today is probably the rapid increase in cohabiting couples with children. As of this writing, the Census Bureau has not given us the data on cohabiting couples with children, but from other surveys we know that it has grown enormously since 1990. As I mentioned in my testimony before the committee, there is no tangible evidence yet that the fading family trend has turned around, although it slowed a little in the 1990s.

I hope this further clarification of my hearing testimony is helpful, and I would of course be happy to answer any additional questions you or the other members of the committee might have.

Very truly yours,

David Popenoe
Professor of Sociology,
Co-Director, National Marriage Project
Rutgers University

Center for Law and Social Policy
Washington, DC 20036
June 6, 2001

Chairman Wally Herger
Subcommittee on Human Resources
Committee on Ways and Means
Washington, DC 20515

Dear Chairman Herger,

I received your letter of May 23 asking me to respond to follow up questions to my testimony provided at the hearing on marriage and welfare issues. I will first respond to your two specific questions and then make a general comment.

Your two questions were: How many States are using TANF funds to operate fatherhood programs? Do States consider these programs to be pro-marriage programs? These apparently simple questions are in fact quite difficult to answer. There have been few systematic attempts to date to find out what is going on in the states on this issue, and these inquiries that have taken place have confronted two major difficulties.

First, there is the problem of defining what is meant by the very broad term "fatherhood programs." For example fatherhood programs can refer to media efforts to promote responsible, involved fatherhood for all fathers (unmarried, married, separated and divorced); to activities designed to encourage young men not to become fathers before they are ready to be responsible, and to community-based programs designed to provide specific services to non-custodial fathers, fathers in "fragile" families etc.

A second problem is that the broad range of programs and strategies being used by states to promote responsible fatherhood are scattered among different agencies and offices. Typically there is no central office or person who keeps track of what is going on and what funds are being spent on this issue.

I will summarize below the information that is currently available from three different sources, the National Center on Children in Poverty, the Welfare Information Network and the National Conference on State Legislatures.

1. The National Center for Children in Poverty (NCCP) published a report in 1999 titled Map and Track, State Initiatives to Encourage Responsible Fatherhood by Jane Knitzer and Stanley Bernard. This report was based on two surveys sent to all state governments, DC, Puerto Rico and the territories. The survey asked states to report on what policies and practices states were using that relate to responsible fatherhood. The survey asked about activities classified in five different categories:

• Promoting public awareness about responsible fatherhood;
• Preventing unwanted or too-early fatherhood;
• Enhancing fathers as economic providers;
• Enhancing fathers as nurturers; and
• Promoting leadership capacity.

The report found that all of the 43 of the states that responded reported at least one activity to encourage responsible fatherhood, and 80% of the states reported that they had initiatives in four out of the five categories.

In the NCCP survey states were also asked to report separately on whether they were using Welfare to Work to fund any of these programs, or TANF funds to provide services to noncustodial fathers of children receiving TANF funds. 17 of the 43 states that responded reported that they "used federal funds from the welfare law to fund access and visitation projects." Of the twenty-nine states reporting job-related activities for low income or unemployed fathers, thirteen said that their program is primarily for fathers of children receiving TANF and planned to use Welfare to Work monies for these programs. (Stanley Bernard told me that the information states provided on these funding questions was not very complete or clear.)

The findings of the NCCP report suggest that in general fatherhood initiatives were not designed to promote marriage, however it notes that many of the programs were beginning to become more sensitive to gender issues. A few were beginning to focus on domestic violence issues and teaching the fathers to respect the mothers of their children, and not abusing them physically, mentally or verbally. And those programs that primarily served non custodial/non resident fathers recognize that the mother was typically the "gatekeeper of access to children and for a variety of reasons may often make it difficult for them to be with their fathers." (p.53.). Consequently a few of these programs provided mediation services, and increasingly programs were developing efforts to teach cooperative parenting between the mothers and fathers (sometimes referred to as "team" parenting).

2. The Welfare Information Network, in collaboration with ACF, NGA, NCSL and APHSA maintains two data bases of state and local policies, programs and initiatives: the State Plan Database (see www.welfareinfo.org/SPD) and the State and Local Initiative Database (SLID) (for information contact April Kaplan at WIN). The State Plan Database reports services states provide for noncustodial parents using TANF funding. These services were classified into six categories:

• employment/job search
• parenting skills training
• visitation/shared custody
• arrearage reduction
• peer counseling programs

As of November 2000, of the 41 states who provided data, 28 states reported that they provided services in at least one of these categories. The most popular statewide program was the Employment/Job Search category (15 states).

I think it would be safe to say that these programs are not generally regarded as pro-marriage efforts. Services to non-custodial parents generally have three purposes: (i) to increase the earnings capacity of non-custodial fathers so they can be more reliable payors of child support; (ii) to provide parenting skills training and peer support so that fathers can have better relationships with their children; and (iii) to facilitate visitation in high conflict families. While these programs are not designed to promote marriageability, they could however have that affect, and anecdotal evidence suggests that in some individual circumstances this has been the case.

3. The National Conference of State Legislatures has established an Advisory Committee on Responsible Fatherhood. Members of this committee and NCSL staff conducted an informal review of state and local activities through interviews, site visits and committee meetings. In 2000, NCSL published a report Connecting Low-Income Fathers and Families: A Guide to Practical Policies written by Dana Reichert. One section of this Guide highlights the availability of TANF funds to support fatherhood activities and reports on several states that are using TANF funds for this purpose. These states include California, Florida, Missouri, Arizona, North Carolina, Ohio and Iowa. In addition the NCSL report notes that Welfare –to-Work funds are being used in a number of states to fund services to noncustodial parents who meet certain eligibility criteria.

Finally, from the NCSL report and from conversations I have had over the past couple of years with program providers it appears that a few fatherhood programs are trying out approaches to helping young men who are not yet fathers, and those who are already fathers learn more about marriage and the benefits of marriage, and what skills and attitudes are needed to have successful relationships and long lasting marriages.

Comment. I conclude with a few personal observations about your question as to whether fatherhood programs have the effect of encouraging low-income fathers to marry. My short answer is that in some cases they may, but not necessarily to the mother of their children.

When fatherhood programs help non-custodial fathers, or fathers in "fragile" families get jobs, become more responsible providers, and overcome other personal barriers (such as substance abuse, or tendencies to be violent) their relationships with their children’s mother may improve. In some circumstances this may lead the parents to marry (and hopefully have a good lasting marriage).

However we need to be realistic about the chances that this will happen. The experience of the Faire Shares Demonstration Projects and other programs suggests that by the time many of these fathers have been referred to or are enrolled in a fatherhood program their relationships with their child(ren)’s mother, even when it was originally reasonably good, has deteriorated considerably. In these situations it is clearly very difficult to reestablish the trust, goodwill and motivation necessary to move them towards marriage. Thus however successful the father’s "rehabilitation" may be, the chances of the father marrying his children’s mother may be slight. In addition each parent has often moved on to form new partnerships. In these cases the best that can be hoped for is that the parents will actively cooperate around the rearing of the child(ren) they have in common, which is a very important and positive goal.

In conclusion, I think it’s fair to say that fatherhood programs certainly have the potential to be "pro-marriage" through activities that help to make them more "marriageable". However few of the programs at this point have an explicit emphasis on promoting marriage in their curriculum since marriage to their children’s mother is not viewed as a realistic or desired option for most of their participants. However participating in a fatherhood program may make the father a more attractive marriage partner to, and strengthen the relationship with, their current partner. Thus while these fathers may not marry their children’s mother, they may marry their current (or a future) partner.

On a more optimistic note, the Fragile Families study suggests that if fatherhood programs were to explicitly target young unmarried couples around the time of birth they might be more successful in stabilizing the couple’s relationships, this could lead the number the young parents to marry in some cases.

Carefully designed and evaluated programs are very much needed to learn more about what kinds of additional information, services and supports they should provide these young parents that might encourage and support marriage. In my judgment it would be important to include services designed specifically for the young mothers as well as for the fathers and services that focus on the couple’s relationship. As Kathy Edin’s research suggests many of these mothers have had poor experiences with their own fathers and with men throughout their lives. As a result they have a great deal of mistrust of men in general, and may have never known a couple who had a successful marriage.

One last point, some fatherhood programs are now seeking advice and help from experts in domestic violence. I believe any fatherhood program that wants to develop a more explicit emphasis on marriage, should be encouraged to seek advice, consultation (and perhaps even collaborate with) practitioners and educators who are expert in helping build relationships skills and strengthening marriage.

I hope my responses have been helpful. I welcome any additional questions you may have.

Yours sincerely,

Theodora Ooms
Senior Policy Analyst

National Partnership for Women and Families
Washington, DC 20009
June 5, 2001

Honorable Wally Herger
Chairman, Subcommittee on Human Resources
Committee on Ways and Means
B-317 Rayburn House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515

Dear Congressman Herger:

Thank you for your follow-up questions to the National Partnership’s testimony at your recent hearing on marriage and welfare issues. We appreciated the invitation to testify at the hearing and welcome the opportunity to offer our perspective on important welfare policy questions. In your letter dated May 23, 2001, you posed three follow-up questions. Those questions are listed below and our response follows each question.

1. In your testimony, you recommend that welfare policies should be "neutral on the subject of family formation." Haven’t government programs discouraged marriage in a variety of ways (taxes, "man in the house" rules, etc.)? Haven’t these factors contributed to rising out-of-wedlock births and declines in marriage which contributes to negative effects on child well-being? In short, is current policy "neutral" or do we need to do a better job promoting marriage just to reach neutrality?

The National Partnership believes that welfare policies should be neutral on the subject of family formation. Forcing families in need to compose themselves in a specific family structure as a condition of receiving welfare assistance would ultimately have the effect of denying vital benefits to families at their most vulnerable. As we stated in our testimony, to the extent that past policies have influenced the composition of families receiving welfare assistance, we ought not to repeat those same mistakes. Instead, we should concentrate on developing policies that enable families to become more economically secure, whatever their structure. We ought not to have disincentives to marriage, but we ought not to coerce individuals into getting married either.

In terms of broader concerns about the rise in out-of-wedlock births and declines in marriage over the past few years, we believe that there are a variety of factors that have contributed to these changes – including a complex array of societal and economic shifts -- that go well beyond the different welfare policies that have been in place.

The National Partnership believes that the one point that should be uncontroversial and enjoy widespread agreement is that the fundamental purpose of a temporary assistance for needy families program is to help families in need become economically independent and ultimately escape poverty. The decline in the poverty rate over the last few years has been an encouraging development that can be traced to a variety of factors, including a strong economy and important policy changes such as increased availability of the Earned Income Tax Credit. At the same time, however, research indicates that many families in the lowest economic brackets are worse off today than they were five years ago. As we noted in our testimony, recent data, for example, reveals that between 1995 and 1999 the inflation-adjusted disposable income of female-headed families with the lowest incomes actually declined by 4 percent. And, analysis of Census data indicates that while the number of children in poverty has decreased, many children who remain poor have grown poorer. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities reports that in 1998 and 1999 the average poor child fell further behind the poverty line than in any year since 1979. Thus, while there has been progress in poverty reduction, there is still a great deal of work to do.

The National Partnership supports policies that promote strong, healthy families, regardless of their structure. To that end, we support efforts in the context of TANF to provide supports to low income married-couple families and eliminate policies that make it difficult for these families to stay together. We also support programs that help individuals make responsible choices about their personal relationships and their decisions to form families. Rather than promoting marriage as a "quick-fix" economic solution, we believe that helping individuals make sound, reasonable decisions about their lives will make marriages and families stronger, healthier, and more stable. Thus, any "marriage promotion" policies must be considered with the utmost care. Using marriage as an imperfect band-aid to cure the complex problem of poverty ultimately may do more harm than good. Most importantly, we also believe that TANF funds must be used to provide support to all families in need and not just those families that conform to a preferred family structure. Poor families headed by single parents or other relatives also need assistance to ensure that they have the best chance to leave poverty and find economic security.

As we stated in our testimony, very few would disagree that having two parents in the home working together to provide a healthy and nurturing environment can be an ideal setting for children. But the reality is that many children do not live in that type of environment. Thus, we believe that it is essential to focus on providing a full range of supports – such as quality healthcare, education, and childcare – to improve the well-being of low-income children regardless of family composition. Making these types of supports available to all families in need will maximize the chances of children growing up in a healthy, positive family environment.

Further, focusing on ways to promote strong, healthy families – rather than simply promoting marriage as a panacea – is particularly crucial because many low-income women have turned to welfare as their only source of support when trying to escape domestic violence or other abusive situations. These clients often need access to counseling and other forms of assistance, such as training opportunities, to get back on their feet and support themselves and their families. Coercing clients to get married without regard to whether there is a positive foundation for marriage will do little to promote healthy and stable marriages, healthy and stable families, or child well-being. We believe that research studies support the view that children are better off in non-abusive or non-disruptive family settings that can offer a nurturing, supportive environment.

Again, thank you for the opportunity to offer these comments. We look forward to working with you in the near future.

Sincerely,

Laurie Rubiner
Vice President for Program and Public Policy

[Submissions for the record follow:]

Alternatives to Marriage Project, Boston, MA, statement

NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund, New York, NY, Jacqueline K. Payne, Martha Davis, Yolanda Wu, and Sherry Leiwant, statement and attachment