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Promoting Marriage Has Failed and Is Unnecessary to Cut Poverty (2015)

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Re: Promoting Marriage Has Failed and Is Unnecessary to Cut Poverty (2015)

#31

Post by rm_-rf_slash »

Shivetya wrote: post #26
rm_-rf_slash wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't have to be the entire cost of living, just the cost of housing. In Upstate NY there are farms everywhere so food is cheap. The upside to everything being gray and snowy all the time is that water is basically free. And as for other services like telcos and electricity, we pay around the same as the rest of the country. But then comes rent. It is ridiculous to think that unless you live waaaaaayyy out in th…

One major difference in the North East is that many areas have very high property taxes. It isn't uncommon to find similar property taxes to be a tenth of those values in the South.

Bingo. Absolutely. Couldn't be stated enough.

My brother goes to college in North Carolina. Demographically it is very similar: medium sized cities with rural stretched in between. Only real difference is weather and taxes. Can't do anything about the weather...

Re: Promoting Marriage Has Failed and Is Unnecessary to Cut Poverty (2015)

#32

Post by dagw »

sickbeard wrote: post #20
dagw wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You usually marry because you want to be with someone, not because it's efficient. I don't know. You decide to live with someone, share your life with them and and possibly have children with because you want to be with them. Your decision to actually marry them is, in my experience, often driven by some additional external force.

It's just more convenient to have a marriage certificate than to be common law, legally and otherwise. There are built in protections for you, your spouse and children. I'm not saying you need to do it but it one less hassle to deal with in your day to day lives.

That's my point. My wife and I might still have gotten married eventually anyway, but the external legal protections where a very strong point in the pro column.

Re: Promoting Marriage Has Failed and Is Unnecessary to Cut Poverty (2015)

#33

Post by lr4444lr »

gm-conspiracy wrote: post #7
lr4444lr wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's also a correlational issue: do people - with the maturity and fortitude to stay committed to a lifelong relationship and forestall the temporary (or even not so temporary) urge to leave someone out of boredom, irritation, and desire to reclaim independence - tend to succeed in education and the workforce by exercising those same character traits? Even the accurate recognition and prioritization of risk mitiga…

Remember the unfortunate murder of the Google exec by his escort? Anecdotal counterpoint: http://heavy.com/tech/2014/07/forrest-timothy-hayes-google-a... I apologize for referencing this, but your comment reminded me of this horrific situation.

Some people at the margins are gifted, but hopelessly self-destructive. The point I'm making is, in an age where being non-married well into adulthood and even as a parent is accepted (even incentivized!), consciously choosing to get and stay married may be a proxy for other successful characteristics, which the middle of the bell-curve could afford not to have when social pressures toward the stable marriages was stronger.

Re: Promoting Marriage Has Failed and Is Unnecessary to Cut Poverty (2015)

#34

Post by Eric_WVGG »

sickbeard wrote: post #15

I don't understand this report. You usually marry because you want to be with someone, not because it's efficient. Approaching it from a purely mathematical perspective assumes that randomly grouping people is equal to marrying someone.

He's arguing against those who have tried to make advancement of marriage part of public policy as an anti-poverty measure.

The math stuff is just to prove that, as a policy measure, it's nonsense.

Re: Promoting Marriage Has Failed and Is Unnecessary to Cut Poverty (2015)

#35

Post by danans »

ars wrote: post #21

This article basically says How to stop poverty? Give people money. Yah, that works, but it's better to stop poverty by giving people the tools/opportunity/social environment so that they won't be in poverty in the first place. That's the idea of promoting marriage, and this article justs seems completely oblivious. Giving people money to get out of poverty should be short term help, not the long term end goal.

Tools, opportunity, and a good social environment are largely a function of money, whether purchased via government programs or bought by individuals themselves with the cash given by the government (I.e basic income, EITC). Marriage alone without that money isn't going to avail those bootstrapping goods to people when they don't have them to begin with.

Re: Promoting Marriage Has Failed and Is Unnecessary to Cut Poverty (2015)

#36

Post by ars »

danans wrote: post #35
ars wrote: post #21

This article basically says How to stop poverty? Give people money. Yah, that works, but it's better to stop poverty by giving people the tools/opportunity/social environment so that they won't be in poverty in the first place. That's the idea of promoting marriage, and this article justs seems completely oblivious. Giving people money to get out of poverty should be short term help, not the long term end goal.

Tools, opportunity, and a good social environment are largely a function of money, whether purchased via government programs or bought by individuals themselves with the cash given by the government (I.e basic income, EITC). Marriage alone without that money isn't going to avail those bootstrapping goods to people when they don't have them to begin with.

> are largely a function of money

Lots and lots of immigrants beg to differ. I will grant that you do need at least a good community, but you don't need money to get ahead.

That's why I added "social environment" - you need a community who help each other much more than you need money.

Re: Promoting Marriage Has Failed and Is Unnecessary to Cut Poverty (2015)

#37

Post by AnimalMuppet »

pjc50 wrote: post #13

The most striking line is "US married-parent child poverty is so high that it's higher than the child poverty rate in single-mother families in the low-poverty Nordics".

The most striking thing to me wasn't a line, it was a graph. It showed that single-mother child poverty rates were five times married-parent child poverty rates.

So, yeah, marriage actually does seem to help with poverty, quite dramatically so. But the article didn't talk much about that graph, because it kind of ruins their thesis.

Note well: I am not claiming that pushing people to marry will protect them (or their children) against poverty. Correlation is not causation. But there's something connecting marriage and non-poverty, no matter how much the article tries to tap-dance around it.

Re: Promoting Marriage Has Failed and Is Unnecessary to Cut Poverty (2015)

#38

Post by raisedbyninjas »

chongli wrote: post #6
lmm wrote: post #2

> Once you understand how this marriage anti-poverty story works, two things should immediately occur to you. First, it's not marriage that's cutting poverty here. It's the recombination of income. If you marry someone who does not add extra income to your family, that will do nothing to reduce your chance of poverty and, because your family is now bigger, it could even drag your family into poverty. Adding someone t…

The rise in housing prices, particularly in neighbourhoods with access to a decent public school, has totally wiped out any advantage you might have gained by pooling risks. What once was a 1-income household with a single point of failure is now a 2-income household where neither person can afford to lose their job!

So a configuration that was once RAID 1 is now RAID 0.

excluding write performance

Re: Promoting Marriage Has Failed and Is Unnecessary to Cut Poverty (2015)

#39

Post by danans »

ars wrote: post #36
danans wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tools, opportunity, and a good social environment are largely a function of money, whether purchased via government programs or bought by individuals themselves with the cash given by the government (I.e basic income, EITC). Marriage alone without that money isn't going to avail those bootstrapping goods to people when they don't have them to begin with.

> are largely a function of money Lots and lots of immigrants beg to differ. I will grant that you do need at least a good community, but you don't need money to get ahead. That's why I added "social environment" - you need a community who help each other much more than you need money.

Membership in a good community is itself a form of social capital that you can even put an monetary valuation on (compared to not having a good community). Many immigrants arrive with that form of capital intact, and admission to such communities is often gated by cultural barriers.

Further, educated immigrants, while they don't start in their adoptive country with much money, arrive with a lot of educational capital, which someone invested in before they arrived. They arrive with the "tools and opportunity" built in.

For less educated immigrants, and native-born poor, assuming a functional community exists (which is not a given for either), it's members might be able to scrape together proceeds gained by expending their physical capital in marginal labor, and share resources among themselves (housing, childcare, etc.).

But depending on their circumstances, that may not be enough to move their members out of poverty, as the surplus of their labor may not be enough to pay for, in your words, the "tools and opportunity" needed to escape poverty.

Sometimes the requirements for the community's survival can actually hinder the acquisition of tools for advancement, i.e. a 16 year old has to take a menial job to help support the extended family instead of staying in school.

Re: Promoting Marriage Has Failed and Is Unnecessary to Cut Poverty (2015)

#40

Post by infinite8s »

rm_-rf_slash wrote: post #30
morgante wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What upstate NY are you talking about? I've looked into buying a house up there and it looks incredibly cheap.

Ithaca, where income-to-housing costs rival San Francisco. Like I said, it's fine if you want to live in the boonies, but that also means you're an hour away from anything resembling civilization.

Ithaca is also a college town (Cornell) so it's not quite a fair comparison to most rural areas.
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