November 25, 2011
A new study shows that only 46 percent of children in the United States will reach age 17 having grown up in a home with biological parents who are married, a figure that has a significant impact on the nation's graduation, poverty and teenage birth rates, Baptist Press reports. The data shows the intact family rate is highest in the Northeast (49.6 percent) and lowest in the South (41.8 percent), highest in the state of Minnesota (57 percent) and lowest in Mississippi (34 percent), and highest among Asians (65.8 percent) and lowest among blacks (16.7 percent). The study also shows that high poverty rates, low graduation rates and high teenage pregnancy rates are closely linked to the breakup of the family. "The foundational relationship of marriage has quite an impact on the well-being of children and on the welfare of both the states and the nation," said Pat Fagan of the Family Research Council, one of the study's co-authors. "We have never faced anything like this in human history."
