One is that a majority of American women under age 30 who give birth are unmarried, according to Child Trends, a Washington D.C.-based research group. Overall, a little over 40 percent of U.S. births are to unwed mothers.
The other report involves a study at Bowling Green State University that found that a third of adults ages 46 through 64 in 2010 were divorced, separated or had never been married, compared with 13 percent in 1970.
Putting morality issues aside, both of these have grim implications from an economic and social standpoint.
Like it or not, the primary social support system in this country is families. Marriage is a stabilizing influence, both economically and emotionally. In 1965, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, then an aide to President Lyndon Johnson, wrote a powerful paper on the breakdown in the African-American family structure. Today, that report seems prescient for the nation as a whole.
"The role of the family in shaping character and ability is so pervasive as to be easily overlooked," Moyniham wrote in that report. "The family is the basic social unit of American life; it is the basic socializing unit. By and large, adult conduct in society is learned as a child."
Research is clear that children born outside of marriage in the United States are much more likely to live in poverty, more likely to struggle in school, more likely to have emotional and behavior problems.
It's true that most unmarried American women who give birth are in a committed relationship at the time the baby is born. But researchers at the University of Michigan found that among unmarried parents who live together, two-thirds have split up by the time their child turns 10.
Indeed, a look at Kalamazoo County's 2010 Census data suggests that very few children live with unmarried parents — i.e., if the parents aren't married, they're not living under the same roof.
The data also shows that a third of Kalamazoo County children in single-parent households, and those families are six times more likely to live below the poverty line. In Kalamazoo County, 7 percent of married-couple families with children live in poverty, compared to 41 percent of households headed by single moms.
The latter is a horrifying statistic considering the link between poverty and academic failure. One only has to look at results on the latest Michigan Educational Assessment Program tests to see the correlation: In Kalamazoo Public Schools, the district's highest-achieving elementary schools — Winchell, Indian Prairie and King-Westwood — not-so-coincidentally have the lowest participation rates in the federal subsidized school lunch program. Meanwhile, the district's lowest-performing elementary is Lincoln, where 96 percent of students are eligible for subsided lunch.
And poor test scores may not be the worst of it. Research suggests the biggest negative effects of single parenthood involve behavior issues versus academics.
The link between marriage and financial and emotional security also is apparent for older Americans.
In a story about the Bowling Green study on unmarried 50-somethings, the New York Times noted that unmarried Baby Boomers are five times more likely to live in poverty than their married counterparts, and three times as likely to receive food stamps, public assistance or disability payments.
There is much discussion these days about the growing economic disparity in America — about the growing divide between the haves and have-nots.
The political left, as illustrated by the Occupy Wall Street movement, has focused on how economic inequality has been fueled by federal tax policies, corporate pay scales and the evaporation of high-wage, low-skill jobs. These are all valid points.
But equally valid is how changing patterns in family structure have undermined Americans' financial security. It's important to recognize the link between poverty and life decisions: Studies have shown that Americans who get an education, marry after they finish that education, wait to have children until after they marry and work full time have a very low risk of poverty.
Those points are made in a 2003 report by Isabel Sawhill for the Brookings Institute titled "The Behavioral Aspects of Poverty." The report adds this observation: "None of this means that providing lower-income families with more money is necessarily a bad thing. But we should not pretend that money alone is going to change significantly the lives of these families, beyond easing a few hardships. The challenge is to find ways of providing generous support to the poor without disregarding the unpleasant facts about their behavior."
Strengthening families and promoting the value of marriage should be not just a concern for the Rick Santorums of the world. They should also be a priority for anybody who cares about social justice and alleviating poverty. The fact that Americans have been turning against marriage is not a positive trend; we are, literally, the poorer because of it.
This opinion column was written by Julie Mack. She can be reached at 269-350-0277 or at firstname.lastname@example.org. Follow her on Twitter at twitter.com/kzjuliemack. Click here for all mlive.com posts by Julie Mack.