The Root of Wealth Inequality: Race or Family Upbringing?

According to a recent Pew report, the racial/ ethnic wealth divide has widened since the Great Recession. Commentators have already begun to speculate plausible rationales for this gap: inability for minorities to replenish savings, differences in financial assets, or disparate accumulations of wealth. But each of these explanations evades the two root issues at hand: family structure and frequency of religious worship.

Family structure. The intact, married family consistently produces the best economic benefits and averts financial woes. Pew’s report measured race/ ethnicity without controlling for family structure. Because the rate of family intactness is higher among whites (54 percent) than blacks (17 percent) and Hispanics (41 percent), “whites” as a racial class seemed best off.

However, as Chart 1 shows, family structure cannot be ignored. Marriage is associated with lower rates of poverty, independent of race. So, for example, the poverty rate for single white mothers is three times higher than the poverty rate for married black families. Further investigation will likely show that the true wealth divide following the Great Recession is between intact and non-intact families, especially single mothers on welfare. As Sheldon Danziger concluded back in 1986, families on welfare are stuck in a perpetual cycle of poverty because their income is disconnected from the market-based economy. Even if the economy improves, the welfare recipient’s income remains stagnant.

The importance of family structure in an improving economy is conveyed in the Iowa Youth and Families Project, widely regarded as having the richest archive of life record data on rural families and children in the United States. Over a series of decades, researchers collected data on two-parent families during and after the Iowa Farm Crisis—the worst decline in America since the 1930s. They found that the children from two-parent families from Iowa farms, despite faring worse than any other group, improved the most due to their strong family relations, productive roles, ties to grandparents, ties to their community, and resourcefulness. Recovery from the Great Recession is linked to similar familial and community factors.

Frequency of religious worship. The intact married family may fare well following economic recessions, but the intact married family that worships frequently will fare best during and after these times of difficulty. Couples whose marriages lasted 30 years or more reported that their faith helped them to deal with hard times, and was a source of moral guidance in making decisions and dealing with conflict. Adolescents whose mothers attend religious services at least weekly display better health, greater problem-solving skills, and higher overall satisfaction with their lives, regardless of race, gender, income, or family structure. An increase in religious practice is associated with greater hope and a greater sense of purpose in life, and religious affiliation and regular church attendance are among the most common reasons people give to explain their own happiness.

Beyond personal hope and well-being, religiosity confers many benefits on society as a whole. Religious attendance is associated with direct decreases in both minor and major forms of crime and deviance, to an extent unrivalled by government welfare programs. Religious individuals are 40 percent more likely than their secular counterparts to give money to charities. Compared to their secular counterparts, religious individuals are more than twice as likely to volunteer. Recovering from a depleted economy requires communal support; this support is most readily available in communities with high levels of religious participation … something that is free to anyone who wants it.

Pew’s study of wealth inequality is certainly thought-provoking; however, it is futile to discover such gaps in society if we fail to cure their causes. Reviving all of society following the Great Recession mandates an immediate attention to restoring the intact married family that worships frequently.   

Abandoning Monogamy, the Certain Road to Inequality

The natural order of sexual relationships is ingrained in the very creation of the world: “The Lord God said, ‘It is not good for the man to be alone.  I will make a helper suitable for him’…For this cause a man shall leave his father and his mother and shall cleave to his wife; and they shall become one flesh” (Genesis 2: 18 & 24).” 

From the moment of creation, man and woman shared an inimitable complementarity—man was created for woman, woman was created for man. Sexual monogamy was the pre-ordained moral standard. However, man and woman transgressed this norm and initiated a culture of polyamory (having more than one romantic relationship simultaneously). In his presentation at the International Interreligious Colloquium of the Complementarity of Man and Woman hosted by Pope Francis, Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks explained how this deviation gave rise to societies clad in inequality. “Polygamy,” he said, “is the ultimate expression of inequality because it means that many males will never have the opportunity to have a wife and child.” In a polygamous society wealthier and more prominent men will accrue the majority of eligible women, thereby denying those of lower status to the fundamental right to an intact family. Because marriage is scientifically linked to better educational, economic, behavioral, and health outcomes, sexual mores that allow the rich to marry at the expense of the poor will exacerbate social inequalities.

Some have argued that the Hebrew Bible/ Old Testament implicitly supports polygamous relationships by praising men like Abraham and Jacob who had multiple wives. However, Rabbi Sacks pointed out that overt tensions between Sarah and Hager or Leah and Rachel instead teach the destructiveness of polygamy rather than condone it. This is further proven by the Tenth Commandment: “You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife [singular]” (Exodus 20:17). Notably, polygamy is never once explicitly approved of in the Hebrew Bible/ Old Testament. In the New Testament, Jesus reiterates God’s moral mandate: “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh? So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together let not man separate” (Matthew 19: 4-6).

Today, serial polyamory is on the rise, and many sexual partners have jettisoned the idea of marriage altogether. As Rabbi Sacks predicted, this has yielded great social inequalities. In 2012, the poorly and moderately educated were 35 percent less likely to be married than the college educated. In 2011, roughly three fourths of federal and state welfare assistance went to single parent families, most of which were led by women who gave birth out of wedlock. Neighborhoods with more single parents, an indicator of sexual non-monogamy, tend to have higher crime rates and more problematic behavior among children.

Sexual monogamy also provides a number of benefits in addition to the social ills it prevents. “[The family] is where we first take the risk of giving and receiving love,” said Rabbi Sacks. Beauty and life do not exist in any one entity in itself, but rather in the unity. By uniting man and woman into a lifelong marriage, the pre-ordained institution for the sexual act, the two complementary halves unite into one and better reflect the complete nature of God the Father.

Non-monogamous relationships vitiate God’s perfect order with structural injustices—they victimize innocent members within the family and impose disorder on society. If left as is, families not built on monogamy will accelerate America’s road to serfdom.

Remember to Thank God for your Family

At the first Thanksgiving, the Pilgrims and Native Americans came together to thank God for the abundant blessings bestowed upon them, especially for their families. Unfortunately today, though family still remains, God is being pushed out some by Black Friday sales and other materialistic frenzies. But as the bedrock of society that best cultivates future generations, the intact married family that worships God weekly cannot be forgotten—it was and is one of the most important things we all have to be grateful for. 

Although most Thanksgiving festivities are winding to a close, the intact married family produces a number of benefits for individuals and society, and should be celebrated everyday of the year. MARRI has consolidated 20 social science reasons to give thanks to God for your married family:

1. Men raised in married families have more open, affectionate, and cooperative relationships with the women to whom they are attracted than do those from divorced families.  
2. Families with either biological or adoptive parents present have the highest quality of parent-child relationships.
3. Married men and women report having more enjoyable sexual intercourse more often.
4. Those from married families are less likely to see religion decline in importance in their lives, less likely to begin attending church less frequently and less likely to disassociate themselves from their religious affiliation.
5. Children of married parents are more engaged in school than children from all other family structures.
6. Children in intact married families have the highest combined English and math grade point averages (GPAs.)
7. Adolescents from intact married families are less frequently suspended, expelled, or delinquent, and less frequently experience school problems than children from other family structures.
8. Men’s productivity increases by 26 percent as a result of marrying.
9. Intact married families have the largest annual income of all family structures with children under 18.
10. Married couples are less likely to receive welfare.
11. Married men are less likely to commit crimes.
12. Marriage is associated with lower rates of domestic violence and abuse, compared to cohabitation.
13. Married women are healthier than never-married, divorced, and separated women.
14. Married men and women are more likely to have health insurance.
15. Married men and women have higher survival rates after being diagnosed with cancer, regardless of the stage of the cancer’s progression.
16. Married people have lower mortality rates, including lower risk of death from accidents, disease, and self-inflicted injuries and suicide.
17. Married people are least likely to have mental disorders.
18. A larger fraction of those raised in an intact family consider themselves “very happy” than those raised in non-intact families.
19. Married parents spend more on education and less on alcohol and tobacco as compared to cohabiting parents.
20. Married mothers enjoy greater psychological well-being and greater love and intimacy than cohabiting or single mothers.