By: Brian D. Tesch Advertising Manager
Lately, income inequality has become a very hot topic. With all the coverage from the presidential campaign, it seems like everyone has an opinion on it. What’s not being discussed, and what is perhaps even more troubling, are the correlations between income inequality and the American family.
The Pew Research Center has placed some rather surprising numbers on the status of American families. Divorce rates by the number of marriages have doubled over the past 50 years. Household sizes have dropped by 25 percent, and the number of births to unmarried women has risen a whopping seven-fold.
Children that grow up in a household where one parent is absent for a period of time, whether divorced or single by birth, are at a great disadvantage to other children when it comes to social mobility. They are actually half as likely to move up, compared to kids raised in a household with two parents. Social mobility is the leading factor to income inequality, and it鈥檚 important we understand why this is.
It is actually quite simple; two parents are better than one. Double the experiences, double the knowledge, double the capital, and double the support. For economists like Professor Zenon Zygmont, they prefer to call it “double the human capital.” Zygmont explained that human capital is the most important element to any economy and also to any individual.
“Look at countries like Japan, and Germany between 1940’s and 1960’s.” Said Zygmont. “After the war, most of their physical capital was completely destroyed. But in 20 years they were able to completely rebuild their countries.”
While physical capital seems more tangible and more important to us, the importance of human capital must be emphasized. For the most part, a majority of an individual’s human capital is developed before they turn 18.
Primarily, parents play the biggest role in the development of human capital. In single-parent households, there is less human capital available to children. Maybe that’s why children living in a single-parent household in the United States are twice as likely to drop out of high-school, twice as likely to have a child before the age of twenty, and one in a half times as likely to be “idle” (being out of school and out for work).
“But that’s not the full story,” said Professor Mike Mcglade. 55 percent of births in Sweden are actually from unmarried women.
“Despite this, social mobility remains high, and child poverty rates are next to nonexistent,” said McGlade. It’s no mystery why; it’s all about public policy.
McGlade pointed out that Swedish parents are entitled to up to 480 days of paid maternity leave; while maternity leave in the United States is non-existent.
Maternity leave, and other policies that support single parents, allows single mothers to spend the time with their child. It helps them compensate the lack of human capital a single parent can offer. It is why children that grow up in single-parent households in Sweden are at less of a disadvantage, in terms of lifetime social mobility, as children in the United States who grow up in single-parent households.
Contact the author at btesch14@wou.edu
