Every 45 seconds in the United States, a family is torn apart by divorce. Divorce costs U.S. taxpayers $112 billion each year. Studies of divorce rates found in the African American community shows that in the first two years following divorce, family income falls by 53 percent. Recent studies by family scholars’ estimate that marriage typically brings a host of important benefits to African American men, women, and children. On average, African Americans that are married are wealthier, happier and choose healthier behaviors than their unmarried peers.
Today the number of children born into a black marriage averages less than 0.9 children per marriage. The birthrates of black married women have fallen so sharply that absent out-of-wedlock child bearing, the African American population would not only fail to reproduce itself, but would die off. The following statistics further illustrate the need to focus on marriage in the African American Community:
- Today only one-third of black children have two parents in the home
- In the 1940’s only 18 percent of African American marriages ended in divorce. During the late sixties and early seventies, 60 percent had already divorced.
- Recent study for the journal “Criminology” has revealed that neighborhoods with larger portions of adults who are less invested in marriage and residential stability are more likely to see higher rates of assault by African-American males.
- Children of divorce are twice as likely to drop out of school as those from two parent homes, three times more likely to have a baby out of wedlock, five-fold more likely to be in poverty and twelve times more likely to be incarcerated.
Our PowerofOne African American Healthy Marriage Initiative is a regional site of the National Healthy Marriage Initiative. Congress recognized the fact that two-parent, married families represent the ideal environment for raising children and incorporated marriage, family formation and fatherhood as key components in the welfare reform legislation, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), enacted in 1996. Our initiative promotes a culturally competent strategy fostering healthy marriage and responsible fatherhood, improving child well-being and strengthening families within the African American community. This initiative has reached out to external partners and stakeholders and identified broad-based national and local coalitions for the successful development and implementation of this very important program.
YOU CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE.