Today Institute for Family Studies (IFS) senior fellow Brad Wilcox and the Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF) Center for Health and Families released new research on strengthening marriage and families in Texas. Families are the smallest unit of society and ensuring that they are properly supported at the state and local level will preserve and increase Texas’ economic strength.
“The nuclear family is the building block of society,” said Greg Sindelar, TPPF’s CEO, “Finding ways to strengthen and support families is vital to Texas’ continued success. Healthy families mean a healthy Texas, and our goal is nothing short of making Texas the best place to start and raise a family.”
TPPF’s new research was created in conjunction with Brad Wilcox, Future of Freedom Fellow, Institute for Family Studies; Professor of Sociology and Director of the National Marriage Project, University of Virginia.
It focuses on four primary ways to strengthen Texas families:
1. Teach the Success Sequence in Texas schools,
2. Promote and incentivize marriage through evaluating existing programs, providing pre-marital resources, investigating property tax breaks, creating public education programs promoting marriage, and reporting family structure data in agency reports,
3. Create a temporary Commission on Men and boys to research the unique challenges of our men and recommend possible solutions, and
4. Reduce regulator barriers to housing affordability.
“Children across the Lone Star State are markedly more likely to thrive in school and life if they have the benefit of growing up in a strong and stable, two-parent family”, said Brad Wilcox of the Institute for Family Studies and the University of Virginia. “What we see in this new research is that kids in Texas are generally much better off—from child poverty to domestic violence—if they have the benefit of growing up in an intact family.”
The report, sponsored by TPPF and IFS, comes just weeks after the Institute for Family Studies released a research brief that showed how families with children are leaving blue states for red states, like Texas.
READ:
Brad Wilcox, Andrew C. Brown, J.D., Nicholas Zill, Nicholas Armstrong, Noah Torres, Caroline Welton, and Amylynn Smith, “For the Sake of the Kids: Strengthening Families in the Lone Star State”, Texas Public Policy Foundation, September 26, 2024
https://www.texaspolicy.com/for-the-sake-of-the-kids/
To watch the research launch event, Thursday September 26, 2024, 11.30am - 1.30pm (Central Time), Austin, TX, “Strengthening Family for a Stronger Texas":
https://www.texaspolicy.com/events/strengthening-families-for-a-stronger-texas
ENDS
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