End the Welfare Marriage Penalty

by Sam Brownback and David Blankenhorn: Lawmakers have done little to address marriage penalties facing the poor. What if the federal government forced couples to pay 20 percent of their annual income just to get or stay married? And suppose a couple could avoid this tax if they either got a divorce or never got married in the first place? Does it sound like good public policy to force a couple earning, say, $60,000 a year to pay $12,000 just for being married?

That's more or less what we demand of millions of low-income Americans who receive government welfare benefits. For most couples on welfare, getting married is among the more expensive decisions they will face as newlyweds, because saying "I do" will reduce the benefits they receive, on average, by 10 percent to 20 percent of their total income.

We shudder to think what would happen to marriage in America if all of us, and not just the poor, faced such a pernicious incentive system. Knowledge of the marriage penalty in poor neighborhoods is typically spread by word of mouth. This informal learning might actually increase the anti-marriage impact of the penalty, by convincing nearly all poor couples that they will lose income if they marry, even though some (due to the complexity of the regulations) would not.

In recent years, Congress has made substantial progress in reducing the marriage penalties paid by middle- and upper-income couples because of the tax system. But lawmakers have done little to address marriage penalties facing the poor through the benefit system. Why should we care about this issue? For starters, consider the children . . . [Read More] Sam Brownback is a U.S. senator (R) from Kansas. David Blankenhorn is president of the Institute for American Values in New York.

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