Marriage: the most direct way to reduce child poverty

The latest Voices for Children “Kids Count” report came out recently with New Mexico ranked 49th. While much of the debate has centered around New Mexico’s dismal rankings and assigning blame for it, liberals have centered their “solutions” on a new pre-k program. Rio Grande Foundation has, of course, proposed a variety of free market solutions to alleviating poverty in New Mexico. The fact is that neither method will have an immediate impact in the same way that the best private-sector anti-poverty program would have. That “program” is called marriage and as the chart below illustrates, it is highly effective.

Creating policies to save marriage is admittedly a challenge and I admit that RGF is not expert on the matter, but given this data, it has to at least be mentioned (and the left certainly won’t do that). Perhaps government can at least stop creating welfare programs that dis-incentivize marriage?