Marriage as A Cure for Poverty?

Dr. Jean V. Hardisty, founding director of Political Research Associates, exposes the questionable social science justifying George W. Bush’s campaign to promote marriage as a cure for poverty. Rightist academics and think tank researchers ignore data showing that pushing low-income women and men to marry might actually diminish a low income woman’s chances of rising out of poverty, and they rely on evidence and reasoning that do not meet scholarly standards.

“Even as the government defunded welfare programs, it diverted funding to experimental programs not supported by sound social science research,” Dr. Hardisty writes.

The report is a companion to Dr. Hardisty’s earlier report Pushed to the Altar: The Right Wing Roots of Marriage Promotion. Together they provide a blueprint of the Bush legacies that an Obama Administration must dismantle so that poverty fighting tactics are no longer in thrall to right-wing ideologies suggesting that a family is not complete without a father.