An obvious but difficult solution

The effort to help the disadvantaged is nearly an obsession in America. Our tax code is designed to transfer wealth from the rich to the poor. A study by the Tax Foundation estimated that the top 40% of American households pay nearly $1.75 trillion in taxes, with more than $700 billion from the richest 1% alone. The poor are the disproportionate beneficiaries. In 2016, the lowest income households “received $66 in social insurance and transfer benefits for every $1 they paid in federal taxes.” Yet, somehow, in most cases, the poor remain poor.

We spend about $1 trillion every year on education—by far the most in the world—because educational success makes financial success more likely. Indeed, over a lifetime, a person with a bachelor’s degree earns $1 million more than someone with only a high school diploma. Yet, the ability to provide universal quality education remains elusive.

Where money has been unable to solve the problem, affirmative action programs were created to assist. We told ourselves that if poverty wasn’t the problem, racism must be. But after generations of affirmative action and every other form of social engineering we could imagine, the inequities and disparities remain.

A recent study from the Hoover Institution suggests the obvious answer has always been the right answer. The key to helping kids from a disadvantaged background is not giving them more money or focusing on their race, but ensuring mom and dad are always around. According to the study,

The prevalence of two-parent families in communities predicts their average level of student achievement and social mobility rates for those from disadvantaged backgrounds—even after adjusting for income, education, ethnic composition, racial segregation, and other community factors. Children learn more if they have two parents, and they benefit as well from living in places where two-parent families are the norm.

No one who reads these findings should be surprised. The fact that it’s ideal for a child to have a mother and father in his or her life is intuitive and proven by personal experience. So why do we spend so much time talking about race, income inequality, racism, and other real but less important problems when the real solution is known? Because we don’t like the answer.

Many problems exist because we don’t like the solution, not because we don’t know the solution. We know how to lose weight, but we have record levels of obesity anyway because we struggle to say “no” to what we want. So Ozempic. In a similar way, we know what children need to thrive, but that requires mom and dad to prioritize things other than their current, personal happiness and that’s uncomfortable. Not many are willing to carry that message.

In many ways, the entire human experience is people trying to get the good gifts God has promised us through alternative means. We want wealth, but we don’t want to work. We want community and belonging, but we don’t want to serve. We want to be strong and resilient, but we always want to be comfortable. God’s design for humanity provides a path to every good thing He created us to desire, but most of the time we look for a different path because we don’t want it to cost us anything.

God wants children to flourish even more than we do, and He created marriage and the family so that would happen. But in a broken world filled with broken people, there’s a cost to that. Working the plan is hard. We know what kids really need to succeed, but it’s easier to transfer wealth through taxes or give away college admission than to tell the world they need to get married and stay married. We’ve been on the Ozempic of civilization building for a long time, but at some point, we’re going have to change our diet and get some exercise. For the children.