Report: Marriage is critical to reducing child poverty in Georgia

By Michelle Wirth

Atlanta, GA – A report presented during the forum held by the Georgia Family Council and conservative Washington-based think tank the Heritage Foundation says the rapid-rise of out-of-wedlock child bearing is a major cause of child poverty in Georgia.The report says in 2009, 45 percent of births in Georgia occurred outside of marriage. The report went on to say nearly 74 percent of poor families with children in the state are unmarried. Robert Rector is a senior research fellow with the Heritage Foundation. Rector claims marriage is critical weapon against child poverty.

"Married couples have substantially lower poverty rates because of the additional income the father brings into the home and because of the low educational status of the mothers who are having children without being married."

Rector says in Georgia, among women who are high school dropouts, more than two-thirds of all births occur outside of marriage. Rector claims out-of-wed lock births are not exclusive to one racial group and are most likely to occur among the less educated and young adults in their twenties.

Rector says to combat poverty, information on the benefits of marriage should be explained to at-risk youth in middle and high schools, required at federally funded birth control clinics and be a focus of public education campaigns in low-income communities. The foundation says the report was compiled with data from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the U.S. Census Bureau.

The presentation was part of a new initiative being launched by the Georgia Family Council called Breakthrough Georgia. The three to six year initiative aims to identify what's causing problems like poverty, crime and high school dropouts to occur and to find solutions.