The poverty factor we don’t talk about

Increasing the minimum wage is certainly one way to address poverty, but is it the best?

As for tackling homelessness, more affordable and social housing is one way to do it, but is there anything more effective we can do?

And what about support for struggling parents? There’s difference of opinion on whether $10-a-day daycare to help with childcare costs is the ideal use of tax dollars.

All of these programs and other types of government spending are perpetually advocated by anti-poverty groups as our best solutions to poverty. But are poverty reduction plans, reports, calls to action, and countless other means of government intervention really the best way to “lift people out of poverty,” especially considering the unquenchable need for tax dollars they require and the ambiguous results of past spending?

What if, instead, we could identify one single factor behind most of our poverty and focus on that? What if the effects were measurable and also had a huge impact on everything from education to behavioural disorders to prison rates?

And what if it didn’t cost a penny?

There is such a thing, and it’s called marriage, but out of fear of appearing old-fashioned, we’re afraid to bring it into the public sphere when issues of poverty and homelessness get addressed.

Consider the poverty rate for children in single-parent families is nearly 50 per cent, compared with just 11-per cent for kids raised by couples. How is that not an issue that needs to be addressed at its roots?

In most of these cases children are growing up without a father, making them more likely to end up in poverty and experience crime and substance abuse. They’re also far more predisposed to dropping out of school and becoming victims of sexual abuse.

Single parenthood, the decline in marriage, the increase in cohabiting, and the instability that comes from common-law relationships are interconnected. We’re experiencing it here in the Archdiocese of Vancouver where marriage, once regarded as the gold standard for relationships, has dropped about a quarter over the past decade.

A new U.S. study says the number of children being raised by both married biological parents is now 50 per cent. The report highlights the “abundant evidence” that children fare better with both biological, married parents.

The authors state American society would do well to promote marriage and its benefits, saying the success and future of children depend on it.

It may seem quaint and preachy to talk about marriage as a solution to poverty, but it's not as if all the programs and government spending advocated by anti-poverty groups have had phenomenal success. And while Jesus calls us to care for the poor, he never said it had to be done exclusively through government programs. He was also a pretty big proponent of marriage.

So in May,  in time for Mother’s Day and the National Week for Life and the Family, the Archdiocese of Vancouver is going to celebrate marriage in a very special way. A special Mass celebrated by Archbishop J. Michael Miller, CSB, will honour couples celebrating their 5th, 10th, 15th, 20th, 25th, 30th, 35th, 40th, 45th, 50th, 55th & 60th+ years of marriage.

The archdiocese will launch a webpage, which should be live next week, where couples can register their milestone anniversary online.

In his apostolic exhortation Amoris Laetitia, Pope Francis says “Marriage is the icon of God’s love for us.” That's why one of the archdiocese's Priorities and Goals is “working to strengthen marriages and families.”

In rolling out the goal we recognized “the world makes non-stop demands. Our culture works against Christian family life.” One of the ways it does that is by devaluing marriage and failing to recognize the harm that results when marriage is regarded as just another relationship.

It's high time we celebrated marriage and marriages, not just in the archdiocese but in our wider culture.