Ed Vitagliano

AFA Journal news editor

August 2010 – A state senate bill passed in New York this year aims to make that state the 50th in the U.S. to legalize no-fault divorce. It is a step opposed by such strange bedfellows as the Catholic Church and the state chapter of the National Organization for Women.

Taxpayers might want to chime in, too. A study by the Institute for American Values found that the social costs of divorce hit the entire community hard – including in the pocketbook.

Of course, most people who are concerned with the devastation of divorce know the laundry list of consequences.

According to the institute: “Research suggests that the social costs are indeed extensive. When parents part, or fail to marry, their children seem to suffer from increased risks of poverty, mental illness, infant mortality, physical illness, juvenile delinquency and adult criminality, sexual abuse and other forms of family violence, economic hardship, substance abuse, and educational failure, such as increased risk of dropping out of school.”

As it turns out, there’s even more to consider when it comes to the downside of divorce. The IAV and the Institute for Marriage and Public Policy were among groups sponsoring a study titled The Taxpayer Costs of Divorce and Unwed Childbearing. It was the first-ever report to try to measure the cost to taxpayers of family fragmentation in all 50 states.

Benjamin Scafidi, an economist at Georgia College and State University, was the principal investigator for the report. He said that most of the debate over marriage and divorce policy focused on things like social stability and the effects on children and the like. There was also a serious economic side to the matter.

In the view of Scafidi, divorce is responsible for many women and the children they must raise alone ending up in poverty or near to it. The government must then bridge the economic gap through welfare and other entitlement expenditures that flow from both state and federal government agencies. But the ripples on the surface of the pond extend even further.

One document, produced by more than 100 family experts and civic leaders, noted the widespread damage done by the dissolution of marriages and the breakup of families:

“Divorce and unwed childbearing create substantial public costs, paid by taxpayers. Higher rates of crime, drug abuse, education failure, chronic illness, child abuse, domestic violence, and poverty among both adults and children bring with them higher taxpayer costs in diverse forms: more welfare expenditure; increased remedial and special education expenses; higher day-care subsidies; additional child-support collection costs; a range of increased direct court administration costs incurred in regulating post-divorce or unwed families; higher foster care and child protection services; increased Medicaid and Medicare costs; increasingly expensive and harsh crime-control measures to compensate for formerly private regulation of adolescent and young-adult behaviors; and many other similar costs.”

That’s a long list. Taxpayer Costs noted that the more marriage as an institution declines and the more families are shattered by divorce, the more the government will be expected to pick up the pieces. And that means the taxpayer – even those whose marriages and families are healthy and intact – will be picking up the tab.

It’s not chump change, either. By measuring the effects that family fragmentation has on poverty, Scafidi arrived at what he expected would be a lower-end calculation for the price tag.

“Based on the methodology, we estimate that family fragmentation costs U.S. taxpayers at least $112 billion each and every year, or more than $1 trillion each decade,” he said.

That total figure is parceled out among the three levels of government: $70.1 billion is picked up by the federal government, $33.3 billion at the state level and $8.5 billion locally.

“These costs arise from increased taxpayer expenditures for antipoverty, criminal justice, and education programs, and through lower levels of taxes paid by individuals who, as adults, earn less because of reduced opportunities as a result of having been more likely to grow up in poverty,” the report said.

Of course, the opposite is true, too. “Even programs that result in very small decreases in divorce and unwed childbearing could yield big savings for taxpayers,” the study concluded.

That’s why the efforts of groups like Marriage Savers (www.marriagesavers.org) can be so important. By providing encouragement and resources to help clergy in a community strengthen marriages, Marriage Savers has succeeded in substantially lowering divorce rates.

“So far, more than 200 cities and towns in 43 states have created Community Marriage Policies [through Marriage Savers] and divorce rates have fallen an average of 17.5%, and cohabitation by a third,” the group states on its Web site.

According to Taxpayer Costs, if community efforts aimed at reducing divorce rates could reduce family fragmentation by just 1%, U.S. taxpayers will save an estimated $1.1 billion each year.