Patrick Fagan is Senior Fellow and Director of the Marriage and Religion Research Institute at the Family Research Council. He writes in Public Discourse that "Family, church, and school are the three basic people-forming institutions, and it is no wonder that they produce the best results—including economic and political ones—when they cooperate.":
Even if all the market reforms of the Washington think tanks, the Wall Street Journal, and Forbes Magazine were enacted, we’d still need to kiss the Great American Economy goodbye. Below the level of economic policy lies a society that is producing fewer people capable of hard work, especially married men with children. As the retreat from marriage continues apace, there are fewer and fewer of these men, resulting in a slowly, permanently decelerating economy.
When men get married, their sense of responsibility and drive to provide gives them the incentive to work much harder. This translates into an average 27-percent increase in their productivity and income. With the retreat from marriage, instead of this “marriage premium,” we get more single men (who work the least), more cohabiting men (who work less than married men), and more divorced men (who fall between the singles and cohabiters).
All this is visible in the changing work patterns of our country, resulting in real macro-economic consequences.
4 Comments
Companies like it when employees paid by the hour, work more than a 40 hour week. It takes a salaried job to really take time away from the employee's children, when there's a commute to the job. People are living further away from their jobs, and so the transit (traffic) time to get to/from the job (sometimes up to 1.5 hours each way) has to be taken into account.
'Companies' no longer care personally for their employees. I've seen Human Resources dept. try to protect an employee, and get overruled from up the hierarchy. CEOs may want to care for their employees, but the focus on profitability in Public companies takes precedence.
And when a State (California) institution postpones for two years the earned raises for their best employees, it signals the institution is not as stable and prestigious as it once was, yet still pretends to be.
Little Man, I think I actually agree with you. Patrick Fagan's analysis completely ignores the Great Recession (or Mancession, if you will). It had a tremendous effect on family and marriage in ways that are just now being understood.
Men! Now that's a good story! A real story. A pure story.
Don't let those feminists and the LGBT get you down women - I need you! I'm little without you.
And together, we can raise a nation!
Signed,
Man.
Just saying there are many factors affecting, on average, the 'productivity' of men. Men with children usually means they 'settled down' (they are a certain type of men), and in turn means they have the help or association of a woman who identifies with the family's goals.
Just saying that companies often prefer Single men workers and women workers who don't get pregnant, who are willing to give more than a 40 hour week in a competitive frenzy. It's tough for families (by definition, with children), but the stability and consistency of a family man could win out in the end.
How Pat Fagan came up with measured productivity, would be interesting reading.