Study Makes Recommendations for Reviving Marriage Popularity

The traditional American family may be an endangered species. The share of adults in a marriage has dropped from 62 percent in 1950 to just 46 percent today, Barna Group study found. At the same time, the U.S. birthrate hit a record low in 2024.

“More and more individuals (are) delaying marriage if they get married at all, and even more striking, a massive decline in the number of babies being born,” Emma Waters, a policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation, told CBN News. “So typically, the replacement rate should sit around 2.1 for a country to actually be replacing itself effectively, and yet in the United States today, that number has continued to decline year after year.”

The nation needs to recommit itself to the institution of marriage, she wrote in the

The “Saving America by Saving the Family” study. “We should stop punishing married families in the United States through welfare penalties and other marriage penalties,” Waters said. “We should start supporting the American family through a host of multifaceted approaches.”

One approach the study suggests is financial, such as a $2,500 bonus for newly married couples.

“This would be called the ‘Nest Fund’ or the ‘Newlywed Early Starter Plan for American Families,'” Waters said. “The second would be taking something similar to the adoption tax credit, which is about $17,000, and transferring that to all American families who are having children.”

The report encourages a marriage bootcamp for struggling families.

“What would it look like if we actually channeled all of our federal programs toward the singular message that marriage is good and that it’s very hard and we want to provide whatever resources we can to support you?” she asked. “The long-term impact of that is that you do see couples who would under undergo this marriage boot camp having longer, healthier marriages or maybe getting married in the first place where they hadn’t before.”

Waters hopes the federal government will seriously consider these recommendations to refocus politics around saving and supporting the American family. “There is simply no greater good to invest in,” she said, “and that should be our top priority.”

–Alan Goforth