Families are a foundational unit of society, shaping economic circumstances, character and the way one experiences the world. Decades of social science research have shown that children who grow up in two-parent homes tend to complete more years of education, earn higher incomes in the workforce and have a greater likelihood of getting married themselves, thereby continuing the cycle.
The percentage of American children raised in two-parent homes, however, is strikingly low. Nearly 30 percent of American children now live outside a married-parent home, with 20 percent living with only their mother. Research has shown that this gap in family structures contributes to class gaps in childhood resources, experiences and outcomes, which simultaneously reflect and exacerbate inequality.
In partnership with the University of Notre Dame’s Poverty Initiative, the College of Arts & Letters has launched an interdisciplinary research endeavor aimed at addressing these issues by building and disseminating evidence that will inform policy to strengthen families, support parents and improve child well-being.
Led by Melissa Kearney, the Gilbert F. Schaefer Professor in the Department of Economics, the Strengthening Families Research Initiative has developed an ambitious research agenda that will foster policy-relevant work by scholars in economics, psychology, anthropology and other disciplines.
“I am honored to join colleagues across the Notre Dame community in launching an initiative that takes up the need to strengthen families as a research and policy priority,” said Kearney, who joined the Notre Dame faculty this fall after 19 years at the University of Maryland. “Through rigorous scholarship and active engagement, this effort will deepen our understanding of the challenges facing families in America and identify solutions that promote healthy family formation and stability. This is a timely and important endeavor — and Notre Dame is exactly the right place for it.”
Kearney, who also directs the Aspen Economic Strategy Group, is the author of “The Two-Parent Privilege: How Americans Stopped Getting Married and Started Falling Behind.” She is a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research and a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. Her work has been published frequently in leading academic journals, and she has contributed pieces to The New York Times, The Atlantic and Time.
The Strengthening Families Research Initiative has identified three key social challenges affecting family well-being: the number of U.S. children living with married parents has declined in the past 40 years; family structures differ significantly by education, race and ethnicity; and children who grow up outside two-parent homes are at an elevated risk of poverty and other measures of economic and social disadvantage.
To address these challenges, Kearney and other scholars will examine fundamental questions that align with the University’s Catholic mission-driven commitment to fighting poverty, including:
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What are effective ways to improve the economic position of non-college-educated men, and to what extent do such efforts promote stable families and better outcomes for men, women and children?
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How should government tax codes and transfer programs be reformed to promote, rather than discourage, the formation of stable marriages and families?
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What is the causal link between the legal and institutional frameworks around marriage and divorce and the decline in marriage and married-parent homes? How do these legal and institutional frameworks affect child and parent well-being?
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What types of programs and interventions advance healthy relationship formation and effective co-parenting? How successful are such programs at improving children’s and parents’ outcomes?
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How can systems that interact with vulnerable families be reformed and leveraged to better serve and strengthen families?
“The challenges facing families are immense. Understanding what works to strengthen families is crucial in the fight against poverty,” said Jim Sullivan, professor of economics, director of the Notre Dame Poverty Initiative, and co-founder and director of the Wilson Sheehan Lab for Economic Opportunities. “The Poverty Initiative is proud to support the efforts of the Strengthening Families Research Initiative in their examination of what policies and programs best support family stability and social mobility.”
A focus on building strong families as part of an anti-poverty research and policy agenda is more complex than a focus on education, labor market, health care or housing interventions, Kearney said. Families are deeply personal affairs, and relationships are complicated, but they do affect economic realities, children’s life trajectories and societal outcomes.
Kearney believes that researchers, community leaders and policymakers must collaborate to address barriers many face in creating strong and supportive family environments for themselves and their children. With support from across the University, she believes Notre Dame can be the place where those connections are made.
“The Strengthening Families Research Initiative embodies what makes Notre Dame distinctive: a deep commitment to rigorous research, to the fight against poverty and to Catholic social teaching,” said Kenneth Scheve, the I.A. O’Shaughnessy Dean of the College of Arts & Letters. “We are thrilled that a scholar and leader as exceptional as Melissa has chosen Notre Dame as the place to do this work, and I look forward to supporting her and her team as they use the best social science evidence to understand what truly helps families thrive in the real world.”
Contact: Tracy DeStazio, associate director of media relations, 574-631-9958 or tdestazi@nd.edu