Congress Should Pass a Pro-Marriage Baby Bonus

The time is right for Congress to pass a baby bonus, and the Niskanen Center’s Leah Libresco Sargeant has helped them do their homework. Her new report, which she detailed on these pages, is a compelling, comprehensive case for targeted assistance to new parents. 

Congress is currently trying to figure out which tax cuts it can get across the finish line this year, and expecting large across-the-board increases to the Child Tax Credit (CTC) is probably unrealistic. But focusing new efforts around childbirth is much cheaper than other options. And a baby bonus would be a salutary, highly salient way of demonstrating support for new parents.

Sargeant’s paper walks through the calculation and administration of such a benefit. Her arguments are all sound, and her rationale correct: the purpose of a baby bonus is not—despite what its most fervent championsand detractors claim—to induce women into having babies. It’s to give parents a floor, a guarantee of a little more financial stability during a unique time when household incomes go down, expenses go up, and sleep gets a little harder to come by. In fact, as I wrote in a report for IFS in 2022, a baby bonus coupled with the improvements to Family and Medical Leave Act’s job protections would essentially create paid leave through the backdoor. 

However, there is one facet of the Niskanen paper that conservatives should spend some time pondering. Sargeant proposes making the benefit available at the flat rate of $2,000 per baby; according to reporting from the New York Times, the White House is considering upping that to $5,000 per birth. 

Yet that structure is intentionally neutral towards marriage, and when it comes to childbirth, that’s not good enough. Conservatives have long pointed out the incontrovertible evidence that having two parents in the household is better than one, and that public policy should be oriented towards that end. It would be a missed opportunity for a Republican Congress to adopt a plan that treats dads as (essentially) optional, or outside the realm of public policy. Policymaking sends signals about what we see as normative; conservatives should insist on recognizing the importance of married parents throughout our social benefit programs, including a baby bonus. 

It would be a missed opportunity for a Republican Congress to adopt a plan that treats dads as (essentially) optional, or outside the realm of public policy.

Additionally, the higher number proffered by the White House starts to blur the line about the intended aims of the policy. The conservative movement has long blamed the AFDC program for helping contribute to the decline in marriage, by providing few-strings-attached cash to low-income women and making men less economically necessary. Offering $5,000 to unmarried women to have babies would meaningfully run the risk of increasing the number of children being born to single moms by a potentially non-negligible amount. 

Better policy design can mitigate that risk. Sargeant suggests a modest income requirement at the household level, which would benefit married couples slightly more—giving them two potential earners to achieve eligibility. But focusing on the financial stability aspect of a baby bonus—and recognizing the benefit that both maternity and paternity leave can have for families—should push us towards a per-married-parent, rather than per-baby, approach. 

The cost for this type of bonus—giving married couples $4,000 upon the birth of a new child, and unmarried women $2,000—would run roughly $11-12 billion a year (making it $2,000 for married couples and $1,000 for single moms would be just under $6 billion.) If a flat-rate baby bonus emerged as the necessary byproduct of bipartisan negotiations (the left, obviously, being allergic to anything that smacks of the normative claim that marriage is better for kids), I’d still support it. Providing all new parents some stability is especially appropriate for conservatives concerned about reducing abortions, rather than only giving benefits to married parents. But with control of Congress and the White House, the pro-family party should aim for policies that send an unmistakable signal that it’s better for moms and babies to have a committed, married father in the house around childbirth.

When I, or Sargeant, have previously made the case for a baby bonus publicly, we’ve been careful to stress what it is not—an inducement meant to coax women who may be on the fence into having another baby. So framing it as a “pro-natal incentive” misunderstands the goal of the benefit, which is to help ease the financial stresses of new parents in the market economy. Constructed the proper way, a baby bonus could a tangible, yet affordable, demonstration that healthy families, healthy babies—and, yes, healthy marriages—are the key to a healthy society. 

Patrick T. Brown (@PTBwrites) is a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, where he writes the weekly “Family Matters” newsletter.