Reports And Briefings

Americans Are Willing to Pay for Family-Friendly Apartments

Introduction

Since the Great Recession, there has been a massive change in the American housing market: more new housing is in the form of apartment buildings instead of single-family homes. In 2024, over one-third of new housing units were in buildings with 20 or more units; the first time since 1974 that such a high share has been reached.

If people want to live in apartments, that is their prerogative. But the rise in apartment construction is worrisome because prior IFS research has shown that very few Americans ideally want to live in apartments. More importantly, when most Americans think about starting a family, they overwhelmingly prefer not to live in an apartment. And yet, apartments keep being built. There are many reasons for this increase: delayed fertility and marriage have created a bigger market for small housing units; slower asset accumulation for younger generations has limited their housing options; apartment buildings yield more marketable floor area compared to the cost of land for developers; and the increasing bind of urban growth barriers and other limits to expansion have nudged developers to pursue more density inside cities rather than building entire new neighborhoods.

These factors are not going to disappear overnight. At the city, state, and federal levels, bi-partisan politicians are passing bills with the specific intent to open up more land for apartments. Multiple cities have passed laws eliminating parking minimums. The states of Texas and California have both passed multiple laws this year to specifically open up more land to build apartment buildings. The “One Big Beautiful Bill” included a re-authorization and expansion of the Opportunity Zone program, which only funds the construction of rental housing and predominantly includes apartments. 

As a result, we should expect apartment construction to be a significant, if not an increasing, percentage of new US housing stock. As such, for those who care about helping American families reach their fertility goals, it’s important to ask: could we make this wave of apartment construction more family friendly? Although we know that Americans generally do not prefer apartments when it comes to family life, are there some apartment designs that are less obstructive to family formation? What about apartments for specific types of families, like a newlywed couple living in their first home together? Or what about a family with only one child?

To answer these questions, we fielded a survey of over 6,000 Americans ages 18 to 54, providing them with a range of questions about family and housing, and asking them to rate specific buildable floorplans, architectural renderings, and apartment building amenities. What we found is striking: among apartments with a similar square footage, some apartment layouts are systematically better for family life than others. More open floorplans with fewer rooms per square footage had lower ratings from Americans interested in starting a family than identical-square-footage apartments with more division into rooms, and those ratings translate into a willingness to pay higher rent for more bedrooms. 

Family-friendly apartments are in short supply around the country, not least because almost none are being built. But we do not believe this is due to market efficiencies: family-friendly apartments have low vacancy rates, pointing to high demand, low turnover, and an undersupply that may arguably come from a mixture of regulatory barriers and genuine market perception failure among builders and investors. The takeaway is clear: if obstacles to family-friendly apartments can be removed, more such apartments will be built, and as a result, more young couples could have their first or second child earlier in life, raising fertility rates nationwide. Besides changes in private-sector practices, policymakers could especially consider ensuring that parking rules are per-unit rather than per-bedroom, and that public housing trusts have a mandate to produce family-friendly units.

Key Findings

1. People who live in small apartments are less likely to have children. Building more family-friendly apartments would likely increase birth rates for young Americans.
2. Apartments are a growing share of new housing but are getting less family friendly: smaller, with fewer bedrooms.
3. Americans are willing to pay more per square foot for an apartment with more bedrooms, and these units with more bedrooms are strongly associated with more openness to having children.
4. Family-friendly units are more cost-effective than developers and investors realize. One reason these units are underprovided is that developers use erroneous assumptions about vacancy rates that ignore the fact that smaller units have higher vacancy rates, higher turnover, and higher rates of budget-constrained residents who may miss payments. 
5. Exempting family-friendly units from floor area ratios, setting parking requirements per-unit instead of per-bedroom, accelerating permitting time for small projects, mandating that public housing trusts provide family-friendly units, and expanding Opportunity Zone-like rules for development could all increase the number of family-friendly apartments on the market.

The Rise of Apartments

There has been an explosion in apartment and condominium construction in recent years. The figure below shows the share of new housing units in America that are in apartment buildings with 20 or more units. After the subprime mortgage collapse of 2007-2008, apartments rocketed upwards as a share of home construction.

Figure 1. Share of completed housing units that are apartment buildings with 20+ units

The main reason for this was that single-family housing construction cratered. In 2006, 1.65 million single-family homes were completed, according to Census Bureau data. In 2009, just 520,000 were. But it was not only a decline in single-family homes. In 2006, 185,000 apartments in large buildings were completed. In 2009, 213,000 were completed. By 2019, there were 293,000 apartments finished even as single-family housing completions remained below a million. In 2024, 548,000 apartments were completed in large buildings, while single-family completions languished at just a million. 

This boom in apartment construction has many sources beyond the scope of this paper, and it is not our goal to disparage or discourage apartment living or apartment building. Both authors of this brief started their families while living in apartments in big cities, and one of the authors (Bobby) has spent his career as a developer putting up apartment buildings during the very wave of construction we are discussing here. 

But in the long run, the American people don’t want to raise their families in apartments. Prior research by the Institute for Family Studies found that about two-thirds of people in every state prefer detached single-family homes, and most of the remainder prefer townhouses or other options, not apartments. We also found that when it comes to raising a family, Americans reject apartments (vs. single-family homes) almost as much as they reject the idea of an extra hour of commuting, or hundreds of dollars of housing cost increases.

Thus, the future for American families will not be found in widespread apartment construction. Even so, young Americans are spending more of their lives in apartments. Whereas in 1960, under 3% of Americans ages 20 to 40 lived in apartments, today that share is over 10 percent. The huge runup is fairly recent, occurring mostly since 2010.

Figure 2. Share of 20- to 40-year-olds living in apartment buildings with 20+ units

Given that Americans are spending more of their prime years for family formation living in apartments, even though most Americans don’t envision raising a family in an apartment in the long run, it is important to make apartments as family friendly as possible. The fact is that large shares of Americans will spend their young adult years in an apartment, and maybe even get married while living in one, and may still be in an apartment when they have their first child. And since apartments are a large share of new construction, a lot of young Americans ultimately have no other option: either an apartment—or mom and dad’s basement.

Apartments are also getting smaller over time and less suitable for families. Sizes of new multifamily housing peaked in 2007 at 1,300 square feet on average—a figure which has fallen to 1,043 as of 2024, a 20% decline in under 20 years.

Figure 3. Average square footage of newly-built apartments

The number of bedrooms in new apartments has fallen as well. Apartments built since the 2010s are far likelier to be studios and one-bedrooms than two+ bedroom units that are more suitable for family life. Whereas three+ bedroom units represented 7-11% of construction in the 1990s and 2000s, they are just 5% today. On the other hand, studio apartments were just 10-12% of construction in the 1990s and 2000s, but account for over 15% today. There has been a similar shift away from two-bedroom units in favor of one-bedroom units. 

Thus, there is an ongoing seismic shift in American housing. Apartment-dwelling for younger Americans has continued to increase, even as the apartments they live in have gotten smaller. Moreover, a growing share of that reduced square footage is devoted, not to common areas, dens, or offices, but bathrooms—the ratio of bathrooms to bedrooms in apartments is rising steadily over time. As a result, young Americans today are vastly more likely to be living in housing environments they themselves see as unsuitable for family formation, and probably designed for roommates rather than a family, according to their own survey responses.

Figure 4. Share of occupied apartments in buildings with 20+ units as of 2023, by decade of unit construction

Previous work at IFS outlined how America could unleash more construction of the starter-homes young families need. But in the meantime, apartments are still going to be built. This report explores how to make those apartments more family friendly and specifically explores whether there is any reason to think young Americans would actually pay the rent on family-friendly apartments. While there may be hard-to-change economic reasons why apartment construction is booming, it seems reasonable to think that the average size of new apartments could be nudged back upwards, or that bedrooms-per-unit could be pushed back nearer 1.5 vs. the current 1.3. These changes would help more young families get started having that first child, even if they may still eventually move to a single-family home as their kids get older.

Data & Methods

In May 2025, the Institute for Family Studies, in partnership with Demographic Intelligence, completed the Multifamily Housing Survey of 6,288 Americans ages 18 to 54 on the survey platform Alchemer. 

We aimed to sample 6,000 respondents; ultimately, to achieve specified quotas for representativeness by age and marital status, 6,288 completed responses were collected. To get these 6,288 completions, 13,200 respondents were recruited to begin the survey. Of these, 5,660 were disqualified due to age, geography, or failure of basic attentional screeners. An additional 1,236 failed to complete the survey. Finally, 738 completions were disqualified due to failing speed checks or checks for straight lining of responses. Of the remaining 6,288 responses, 5,117 passed all quality-control benchmarks related to illogical question responses, response timing, and open-text responses, per quality-control advice articulated by the Pew Research Center. Respondents were sampled to ensure approximate representativeness for the United States population by age, sex, and marital status. Respondents were then weighted by age, sex, race, marital status, number of children in the home, geographic region, employment status, and education, to ensure a close fit to the April 2024 Annual Social and Economic Supplement to the Current Population Survey.

Within the survey, respondents faced several questions asking them to identify which of several apartment floorplans they preferred. Apartment floorplans and 3-D renders were provided by The American Housing Corporation.

Houses Americans Value

Different people naturally want different things from a house. We started out by simply asking respondents if a range of features of a house were “Very important,” “Somewhat important,” or “Not important,” and then we converted these answers to an index from 0 (not important) to 2 (very important). This gives us a baseline of what people want. We then segmented those responses into four groups by parenting status: childless people who don’t want any kids, childless people who want kids, people with kids who don’t want any more, and people with kids who want more. This figure shows how valuations of specific features varied across parenting status.

Figure 5. Average importance ranking of household trait

For some features, there are not big differences across groups: all groups placed a fairly low value on home offices and proximity to family or friends. Likewise, all groups valued a short commute. But for some features, there are large differences. The most important feature for families with kids is that a house has at least three bedrooms. For childless respondents who do not want kids, the most important feature is a short commute. In general, the biggest gaps are observed for bedrooms, yard size, bathrooms, kitchen size, fireplaces, and walk-in closet space. This all makes sense—families need space.

However, it is worth asking if this is true for young Americans. Maybe younger generations have different values and therefore do not really care about the same things. The figure below shows the same figures, but now just for Americans under age 30.

Figure 6. Average importance ranking of household trait for respondents under 30

When it comes to younger Americans, the gaps seem just as large. Those who want more kids value bedrooms, large kitchens, more bathrooms, and fireplaces. This all supports the notion that the decline in apartment size and bedroom count probably matters a lot for shaping family life.

How Americans Rank Apartments

To better understand how Americans think about starting a family in an apartment, we provided them with a range of comparisons of apartments. To begin with, respondents were given six apartments to rank: two were 750 square feet, two were 1,100 square feet, and two were 1,200 square feet. Within each size band, apartments varied by number of rooms: one bedroom with a large common area vs. one bedroom with a normal common area, and a separate den at 750 square feet; two bedrooms and large common area vs. two bedrooms and a spare den at 1,100 square feet; and two bedrooms vs. three bedrooms at 1,200 square feet. Respondents also saw floorplans of the six apartments to help them visualize the choice.

We then asked respondents to rank the six apartments from the one that would make them feel most comfortable having a(nother) child, to the one that would make them least comfortable. For each of the four parenting categories, we were interested in how they would rate subdividing the fixed square footage into more rooms. Do most people want a few rooms and a big open layout? Or is slicing an apartment up into more bedrooms better? 

The figure below shows the difference in average rating (1-6) between the “extra room” version of each apartment size vs. the “no extra room” version.

Figure 7. Difference in ranked value between extra room vs. no extra room 

In every case, the “no kids, don’t want” respondents have a clear preference for the more open layout. Yet also in every case, people with kids have a clear preference for more bedrooms. 

The fact that people who do not have kids but want them do not have such a preference probably attests to two facts: first, the base case of a two-bedroom apartment at 1,100 or 1,200 square feet probably is enough for many people to feel confident having a first baby; second, once you actually have kids, you may realize they take up more space than you realized, or that you’d really like another bedroom for family to come and visit and help with your child. Regardless, it is clear that the shift towards more open apartment layouts is uniquely tailored for the interests of childless people who don’t want kids.

Floorplans Americans Choose

Ranking a lot of options, however, may not be the best way to capture preferences, especially since it’s hard for respondents to keep a mental picture of six different apartments at once. So, to further illuminate differences, we next showed each respondent a random pair of two floor plans alongside a furnished rendering of the common area of the apartment. All apartment renders had similar furnishings and lighting to the extent possible. Respondents were asked to rate which of the two apartments would make them feel most confident about having a(nother) baby. The next figure shows the relative “win percentages” for each apartment pairing, among respondents who ever wanted any (more) children.

For simplicity, we show just the head-to-head selection rates for apartments of the same square footage. When asked to choose between a 750 square foot unit with one bedroom vs. a bedroom and a separated den, 47% chose the one-bedroom, while 53% chose the room with the den. These effects are not enormous, but their persistence across unit sizes, and the fact that these effects are observed even in a survey question where we did not explicitly highlight that units varied only on bedroom count suggest that Americans interested in having children really do want and need more rooms, not just more square footage.

Figure 8. Share of respondents who chose given floorplan and apartment render vs. alternative

Focusing just on the 1,200-square-foot apartment comparison, it’s worth seeing how preferences shake out by parenting status: preferences for more bedrooms scale directly with actual or desired family size. Among the childless, there is a net preference for fewer bedrooms—but among those who have children, there is a net preference for more bedrooms. Bedroom counts simply are the sine qua non of family-friendly housing.

Figure 9. Share of each parenting status group who preferred a 3-bedroom over a 2-bedroom layout for a 1200-square-foot apartment

Tradeoffs Americans Will Make

It’s clear that Americans value more bedrooms in apartments: but will they pay for it? What tradeoffs will Americans actually make? To assess this, we used a conjoint framework, where respondents were asked to choose between two different apartments and select the one that would make them feel more confident in having a(nother) child. 

But in this case, the apartments varied across several traits: apartments were randomly assigned a floor/degree of access, a number of bedrooms, a square footage, a monthly rent, a description of neighborhood amenities, and a description of apartment building amenities. The next figure essentially presents the extent to which seeing a given trait altered the odds that respondents selected the apartment scenario containing that trait value. Positive values indicate that a trait was appealing to respondents; negative values show that it was unappealing. 

By far, the most important feature of an apartment is the number of bedrooms in a unit. The difference between two and four bedrooms is about as influential for respondents in their apartment selection as a difference of 600-900 square feet or an extra $1,500 in monthly rent.

The way conjoint surveys work, this does not literally mean that respondents would pay $1,500 more for two extra bedrooms: they may not have that much money available. Rather, it means that at a given budget constraint, extra bedrooms would give them as much expected value as that kind of change in rent. 

Other features matter too, of course. Respondents vigorously reject 10th-floor walkups, for obvious reasons. They also prefer ground-floor units. Plenty of other features of the neighborhood matter, but nothing matters quite like bedrooms. The fact that bedrooms matter so much more than square footage is consistent with the previous results: at a given square footage, Americans would prefer more bedrooms. There is more variance in bedroom count preferences than square footage preferences.

Figure 10. Conjoint survey results on apartment preferences, all respondents

But, of course, apartment builders are not marketing apartments to “Americans generally.” Below, we re-estimate the same conjoint model, but this time, we limit it to Americans under age 40 who reported living in urban areas.

Figure 11. Conjoint survey results on apartment preferences, urban respondents under 40

Next, we compare how a willingness to make tradeoffs varies across the parenting statuses used throughout this report. For ease of reading and because effect sizes are small, we do not present results for apartment amenities and neighborhood traits in the figure below.

Figure 12. Conjoint survey results on apartment preferences, by parenting status

The exact same pattern is clear: bedrooms are more salient than virtually any other feature of an apartment, even for younger, more urban respondents who are the target market.

By and large, across parenting statuses, Americans have similar pricing constraints, preferences around building access, and square footage preferences. But when it comes to bedrooms, there are large differences. For the childless-by-choice, there is little difference between two, three, or four bedrooms. But for those with children who want more, there is an enormous difference: more bedrooms make all the difference.

Figure 13. Vacancy rates by bedroom count in apartments in buildings with 20+ units

Some three- or four-bedroom apartments are indeed unoccupied, but their rent is still being paid—these larger vacant apartments tend to be seasonal use for snowbirds, vacation properties, beach condos for rental, timeshares, or units under contract but not yet occupied. As far as a builder is concerned, that kind of vacancy is no problem, since the unit is being paid for. But it should be noted that for society on the whole, large numbers of seasonally vacant units that could house families may not be a highly desirable outcome. Other vacancies, largely due to property abandonment, are similar across unit types.

Two facts immediately emerge from the figure. First, it really is the case that family-friendly units are in demand. Vacancy rates for these units are about 40% lower than for studio apartments, and about 20% lower than one-bedroom apartments. Because vacancies are lost money for landlords, that means that smaller apartments would need to rent for appreciably more per square foot to compete with family-sized apartments. Increased turnover leading to vacancy also meaningfully increases the operating expenses of the property: carpets are replaced, walls are repainted, and marketing dollars and staff time are spent on finding new tenants.

The second fact that emerges is that many family-sized apartments are sitting unoccupied. But rather than proving these units are not in demand, this actually shows that these units are in demand: the fact that nearly 13% of four-bedroom apartments in America have absentee residents paying rent, of which 7% are specifically for vacation usage, tells us that these units are so valuable that people will buy or rent them—even if they can’t actually live in them. For many people, “vacation” ends up meaning a three- or four-bedroom apartment (perhaps by a beach or near the ski slopes)—and yet these clearly highly desirable units are rarely built for living. Again, it should be noted that “seasonal use vacancy” is not a vacancy at all from a builder’s perspective: seasonal use vacancies still pay rent. Instead, seasonal use vacancies reveal what kind of apartments people see as highly desirable. And those seasonal use vacancies are overwhelmingly big apartments.

Do Family-Friendly Apartments Boost Fertility?

Finally, it must be asked: are fertility rates higher when families have access to larger apartments? The figure below, showing marital total fertility rates (to control for the fact that women in small apartments might simply not be partnered), answers that question in the affirmative. While fertility rates are low for married women in smaller apartments, they are high in larger apartments—in fact, married women in two- or three-bedroom apartments have somewhat higher birth rates than married women in two- or three-bedroom single-family homes.

Figure 14. Marital total fertility rates for U.S. apartment-residing women by bedroom count

Moreover, when we asked respondents in the survey to select the floorplan images that would make them feel most confident having another child, we also asked why they selected those images. Of respondents who selected the apartment floorplan with more bedrooms, the figure below shows the reasons they reported.

Figure 15. Share of respondents who said the reason they selected the floorplan they identified as making them most confident having a(nother) child because of the reason given, by apartment size selection, among respondents who have or want to have children

Among family-minded respondents who prefer the floorplan with more bedrooms, almost 50% say that the additional bedrooms are in fact the reason they selected that floorplan. Our respondents explicitly identified higher-bedroom-count apartments as making them likelier to have children and then re-affirmed in a follow-up question that the bedroom counts were the motivating factor for their apartment-floorplan selection. 

Respondents who chose the lower-bedroom-count floorplans are far less likely to say bedroom counts were their motivation. On the other hand, lower-bedroom-count floorplans overperformed in respondents’ aesthetic judgments, probably because their common spaces were larger, and the images provided to respondents focused on common spaces.

Moreover, while our survey did not ask respondents about the number of bedrooms in their current home, we did ask the kind of home they live in. We also asked if housing costs had recently influenced their fertility decisions. The figure below shows the share of respondents who said housing had influenced their family plans, among respondents whose ideal family size exceeded their current child numbers (i.e., among respondents who might be considering more children).

Figure 16. Share of respondents reporting that housing costs influenced their fertility decisions, among respondents whose ideal family size exceeds current family size

And finally, we asked respondents about the ideal type of home they would prefer. Then, among those who did not yet live in their ideal home (mostly respondents living in apartments), we asked why that gap exists. The figure below shows that Americans not living in their ideal home type are uniquely likely to say the reason for this gap is a lack of suitable home options if they are childless but want kids. Lack of diversity in home types is a particular barrier to people just starting out on family life: these people disproportionately need modest starter homes, as we have previously written, or, failing that, more family-friendly apartments.

Figure 17. Share of respondents reporting that a lack of houses of the kind they want to live in is a reason they do not live in their ideal type of house, by parenting status

Fertility rates are low for couples who live in small apartments—but not for couples who live in family-friendly apartments. That correlation probably isn’t spurious: across numerous question types, our respondents repeatedly articulated that more bedrooms would make them more willing to have desired children, and respondents in predominantly small apartments are far more likely to report housing-related constraints on fertility. There may be many reasons for this, but the obvious jump in birth rates at two-bedrooms strongly suggests that the main driver is simply the desire for a child to have their own nursery or room, a desire that is widespread in American society. 

Therefore, the dearth of family-friendly apartments amidst a massive boom in apartment construction is a significant headwind for American family formation. If builders built more family-sized apartments, it is very likely that more Americans would have children.

Why Haven’t Developers Delivered More Family-Friendly Apartments?

As shown above, new supply of family-sized apartments has not kept up with the wider apartment boom: just 5% of recent apartment construction is for three+ bedroom units, versus over 15% for studio apartments. This presents a conundrum: if family-sized units are as in demand as these findings suggest, why aren’t developers building them?

One key reason is that large-scale housing investments represent a uniquely cautious industry focused on delivering risk-adjusted returns. These projects are almost always financed by investors who want a demonstration that units are leasable and can achieve a market rent. Builders can save on design and construction costs by building the same or similar structures multiple times across multiple projects, and investors can see that similar projects are widely available for comparison elsewhere to establish expectations about rents. 

This being the case, builders, buyers, and lenders all have strong incentives to repeatedly build highly similar projects and, in particular, to repeatedly build any kind of structure that has already been shown to satisfy common building code rules and deliver minimally satisfactory profits. That a different building design might increase profits 1% is less important to developers than the fact that an untested building design could result in a massive, virtually unrecoverable loss. 

Construction of speculative new configurations of units would, therefore, be confined to small structures—but very few small apartment structures are actually built. Of the 4.5 million occupied, rented apartment units built since 2010 in buildings with five or more units and estimated in the 2023 American Community Survey, 51% were in buildings with 50 or more units, and another 19% in buildings with 20 to 49 units. Moreover, even if buildings have under 50 units, a housing development may have multiple buildings: a recent report suggested that the average apartment-building project has over 230 units. 

Apartment developments tend to be large investments, and thus unsuitable for risky bets on new housing configurations. Developments may require hundreds of units or more to procure cost-competitive insurance, and a single site may need well over 100 and as much as 200 units for an on-site property manager to be cost-effective. Large institutional investors may prefer not to purchase large numbers of small ($5-$30 million) apartment buildings due to the costs associated with managing numerous properties, and thus small projects can be starved of investors. 

Finally, developers and investors are mostly backward-looking in terms of demographics rather than forward-looking. Enormous investments in apartment-style housing have been based on the assumption that younger generations prefer to live in apartments. Yet, apartment-dwelling is a life-cycle phenomenon, and the large “Millennial” cohort born around 1980-1990 is now aging out of its likely years of peak apartment-dwelling. 

The figure below shows, for individuals born in the given year, what share lived in apartments at their various ages.

Figure 18. Share of birth cohort living in buildings with 10+ units by age

Developers have rightly sensed growing demand for apartments—but are likely not correctly anticipating the incoming life-cycle effect. As birth rates fall, each cohort is smaller, and thus while each cohort may have greater preference for apartments, that preference will increasingly be offset by larger, older cohorts aging out of peak-apartment ages. Apartment developments will likely face oversupply and vacancy issues within the next decade due to these effects, especially apartment developments that are incompatible with the life cycle factors that drive this dynamic: marriage and childbearing. In fact, family-friendly apartments really are less sensitive to these life cycle effects: whereas people in three+ bedroom units represent under 10% of all apartment-dwellers ages 25-34, they represent almost 15% of 40-year-olds. As apartment-dwellers age, they need more bedrooms for their kids, and as such, family-friendly units are better positioned to absorb ongoing cohort changes than other units. Failure to account for this ongoing demographic change likely accounts for some undersupply of family-friendly units.

Thus, the market segment (known as the “Missing Middle”), which might be expected to innovate in providing more family-friendly housing, simply does not operate at a scale to provide much housing at all. Infamously, the construction industry has seen a decline in the marginal productivity per worker over the past half century, due to increased regulations, and a lack of technological innovation relative to other industries. This effect is magnified in smaller projects where even the builder’s administrative efficiencies vanish. Despite the fragmentation of the housing development industry, each individual player in it operates at a scale and with a risk-management strategy that makes it hard to justify building anything other than the kinds of buildings that have been built a thousand times already.

Why Don’t Developers Add Family Units to Large Developments?

The second main reason family friendly units are not being built relates to why they represent such a low share of even larger projects. Developers could add a few more three-bedroom units in large projects yet often do not. Why?

To begin, smaller apartments do command a higher contract rent per square foot, and builders anticipate selling the development at a calculation conducted per rentable square foot. While smaller apartments can be more expensive to construct per square foot due to higher prevalence of bathrooms and kitchens, the reality is that land, overhead, planning, financing, and regulatory costs are such an enormous share of apartment construction costs that this kind of variance might not change cost factors as much as might be expected. Moreover, whereas in the past, a three-bedroom apartment might have just one bathroom, today even many families who want to rent a three-bedroom unit may prefer two or even three bathrooms. Thus, builders and managers buy and sell apartment buildings at rent-per-square foot.

In most cases, buildings are priced and sold on fairly conventional assumptions about vacancy rates, rates of rental nonpayment, and costs to find tenants. Individual builders and property managers may vary in their assumptions, but industry experts suggest that builders and managers do not generally assume that vacancy rates and credit collection losses systematically or dramatically vary by bedroom count. Yet as we showed above, vacancy rates do vary across bedroom types. Smaller units spend more time unrented: studios spend 12% of their time unowned and unrented, one-bedrooms 8%, two-bedrooms 7%, and three-bedrooms 6%. 

But it turns out that payment risks vary, too. Residents of studio apartments pay an average of 32% of their income in rents vs. 25-26% for residents of larger apartments. Moreover, tenant tenure varies: in the 2023 ACS—again just looking at units rented in large apartment buildings and built since 2010—the average tenant had lived in their unit for 23.5 months for studio apartments vs. 29.2 months for three-bedroom apartments. All of this adds up to very real cost differences as buildings with more studio and one-bedroom units will have more vacant time without rent being paid, more costs repainting and relisting apartments due to turnover, and a larger share of tenants missing their rent because they are budget-constrained. Buildings full of small apartments are more expensive to operate.

To demonstrate this, we calculated effective rents for different bedroom counts using realistic data. In July 2025, Zillow estimated that asking rates were $1,429 for an average studio apartment, $1,333 for a one-bedroom, $1,555 for a two-bedroom, and $1,976 for a three-bedroom. In 2023, the ACS found values of $1,795, $1,800, $2,172, and $2,139, respectively. Thus, according to Zillow, three-bedroom apartments rented for 38% more than studios, and 48% more than one-bedrooms, while according to the ACS, they rented for 19% more in both cases.

But accounting for differential vacancies and losses, the story changes considerably: using the Zillow data, three-bedrooms have a true net rental return of 50% higher than studios, and 52% higher than one-bedrooms, while using the ACS data, it is 29% and 22%, respectively. To the extent builders adopt “industry standard” assumptions about stable vacancy rates (i.e., to the extent buildings are priced on contract rent per square foot), builders are leaving money on the table.

Additionally, as we demonstrated in the survey above, a large cohort of American renters value the extra bedroom for an apartment given the same square footage. A simple solution to builders thus directly presents itself: to build apartments with three bedrooms in apartments that they currently only designed for two bedrooms, which is likely to increase the demand—and therefore the rent—of those units.

It may not seem obvious why builders are fixated on rents per square foot: the whole point of building an apartment building is that additional square footage can be added by building additional stories. Square footage should not be the primary constraint on such structures, yet it is, for reasons we elaborate on below.

What Can Be Done?

The real estate industry is not about to reinvent itself overnight, shedding a wide range of structural characteristics that make it hard to build family-friendly apartments. But there are areas where changes could be made. We divide those changes into two categories: private sector practices and government policies. 

Private Sector Practices

1. Incorporate evidence provided from the survey in this report on pent-up demand and willingness to pay for family-friendly units by adding more such units to large projects: specifically, by increasing the total number of bedrooms in their buildings
2. Lenders, builders, buyers, and managers alike should insist that   investment return metrics incorporate variable vacancy rates, nonpayment rates, and tenant turnover rates appropriate for units of the given bedroom count, thus implicitly assuming higher occupancy and higher payment rates for buildings with more two- and three-bedroom units. Buildings with lower ratios of bedrooms to units should be seen as having systematically higher operating costs.
3. Invest in innovation in technology or construction techniques, which can reduce the construction cost for small- and medium-scale buildings, making it more likely for builders to take risks on family-friendly projects.

Government Policies

1. Accelerate the pace at which permits are issued for building projects in general, but especially for projects with under 50 units. Smaller projects have less community impact and should benefit from expedited permitting to enable builders to experiment with new building configurations in a more cost-effective manner.
2. Ensure that any parking requirements for buildings are set per unit, not per bedroom. Because land costs for parking (or, alternatively, underground parking) are a significant share of development costs, builders have strong incentives to design apartments in such a way as to minimize parking required. As a result, per-bedroom parking rules directly discourage multi-bedroom units and favor studio apartments.
3. Allow single-stair buildings up to four stories. Single-stair layouts are more amenable to multi-bedroom apartment floorplans, and allowing single-stair for smaller buildings will further open new avenues for small multifamily developments and, thus, for more experimentation in form and function.
4. Housing trust funds that finance or build apartments at public expense, whether state, federal, or local, should be given explicit, statutory guidance to prioritize housing the largest number of people, and producing the largest possible number of bedrooms, not simply the largest possible number of units. 

Conclusion

Apartment-building is booming in America, and that’s not likely to change in the near future. This boom is both cause and a consequence of declining family formation in America. Yet, there are places where market players such as builders and investors could possibly make more money building more family-friendly apartments. Sometimes, the barriers to doing this are institutional or informational—but government policy matters as well. As long as apartments make up such a large share of new housing, it behooves policymakers, developers, and the public at large to take every possible measure to build apartments that are more functional for families. 

IFS Responds to the Department of Education’s Proposed Priority on A.I. in Education

Comment

Docket ID ED-2025-OS-0118

20 August 2025

Secretary Linda McMahon

U.S. Department of Education

400 Maryland Ave SW

Washington, DC 20202

 

Re: “Proposed Priority and Definitions—Secretary’s Supplemental Priority and Definitions on Advancing Artificial Intelligence in Education

Dear Secretary McMahon,

This comment is submitted in response to the Department of Education's proposed priority to integrate artificial intelligence (A.I.) into US K-12 and higher education.¹ 

The Department’s proposed priority seeks to “support efforts that expand student understanding of AI and its real-world applications.”2 It also requests public input for the Department’s efforts at establishing “the appropriate integration of AI into education, providing AI training for educators, and fostering early exposure to AI concepts and technology to develop an AI-ready workforce and the next generation of American AI innovators.”3 

Generally, we agree with the Secretary that in a world where A.I. is “rapidly reshaping the future of education, work, learning, and daily life…it is increasingly important for students to develop AI literacy.”⁴ Sharing this concern, we support provisions (a)(i), (a)(vi), and (a)(vii) of the proposed priority, as they mark commonsense steps toward equipping the next generation of teachers and students with the skills they need to master this important new technology. That is, we support these provisions because they approach A.I. in education as a subject matter to be studied, like a computer laboratory, rather than a technology to be brought into every classroom, such as with ed tech, which has made computer technology the very basis of American education.

We also applaud the Department’s commitment to prioritize grantmaking for responsible or “appropriate methods” of A.I. integration that supports, rather than substitutes, the work of educators and classroom engagement.⁵  To this end, we are generally supportive of provision (a)(x) of the proposed priority, which aims to “[b]uild evidence of appropriate methods of integrating AI into education.”⁶  However, “appropriate” integration necessarily assumes the possibility of “inappropriate” integration. We encourage the Department to define inappropriate integration as not providing meaningful parental choice in how A.I. is used in the classroom, and, again, failing to focus A.I. in American education as a discrete subject. (More on both of these topics below.)

However, as written, the Department’s proposed priority undermines its own principles by implementing what is a top-down imposition that would foist untested and untrusted technologies upon our country’s educational institutions and, consequently, American children and families. If carried out as described, the Secretary’s grantmaking priorities will subvert the rights of parents and states to determine what is best for their families, place students in harm’s way, and, based on existing research and experience, undermine rather than advance learning outcomes. We respectfully urge the Secretary to direct the Department to prioritize research and acquire input from parents, educators, and communities to determine “appropriate methods” for integrating A.I. in education before funding the incorporation of A.I. technologies into the classroom. We believe that such an approach will be necessary to responsibly integrate A.I. in American education as well as earn the public’s trust and secure the flourishing of students.

A.I. Education vs. Educational A.I. Technology

The Secretary’s proposed priority is divided into two parts. Section (a) deals with expanding the “understanding of artificial intelligence” by incorporating A.I. education into existing curricula. Section (b) deals with expanding the “appropriate use of artificial intelligence technology in education.” Generally, the first is aimed at incorporating a new kind of “technological education” (i.e., education about technology) into American schools and the second is aimed at incorporating new technologies into American schools.

This distinction between “tech ed” and “ed tech” is critical in the comment that follows. As noted above, technological education in A.I. tools will be critical in a world where A.I. is “rapidly reshaping the future of education, work, learning, and daily life.” Accomplishing this, however, does not require all or most of education to be mediated by A.I. technologies, whether marketed as educational or otherwise. Put simply, learning about A.I. is not the same thing as learning by A.I., and it certainly does not necessitate the active incorporation of A.I. technologies into every classroom, every subject, every assignment, and every school-issued device.

In the past, America has circumscribed technological education to physical classrooms where certain technologies can be accessed, used, and learned for specific purposes. Historically, shop class, home economics, and computer learning were all incorporated into education in this manner. This simultaneously facilitated knowledge of these technical arts, while preserving the cognitive primacy of the oral and written word as mediated by hand-written or printed texts. Such an approach recognizes that all tools—from hammers to sewing machines to computers—are designed to assist humans with a specific task or set of tasks, and, furthermore, to allow them into subjects where they are inappropriate is to undermine those subjects.

This “focused” approach to technological education is especially important when it comes to incorporating new technologies into the classroom, as our experience with “ed tech,” i.e., the mandatory issuance of personal computers to students, underscores. This was a fundamental transition away from a liberal arts education, in which every subject had its own place in a larger curriculum along with its own way of doing things, toward one in which computers became the very basis of learning, childhood personality, and even in-school sociality. This paradigm has been a disaster,⁷ and incorporating A.I. under these conditions will inevitably result in it becoming the very basis of all the cognitive activity of American schooling. As American economist Oren Cass has helpfully put it: “the existence of the Computer Lab reflected the importance of learning how to use a computer, not the importance of using a computer to learn anything else.”⁸ The same should apply to A.I. in the classroom. That it is important for American students to learn how to use A.I. does not necessitate that A.I. technologies must be used to learn everything else. In fact, as we will discuss, there are reasons for it not to be used in this way. To that end, we are supportive of a “focused” approach to A.I. education that is reflected in provisions (a)(i), (a)(vi), and (a)(vii) of the proposed priority, and we encourage the Department to prioritize the integration of A.I. education in this manner.

Human Flourishing Eschewed Again

In his January 23, 2025, Executive Order, “Removing Barriers to American Leadership in Artificial Intelligence,” President Trump stated that his administration would work to develop policy that would “sustain and enhance America’s global AI dominance in order to promote human flourishing, economic competitiveness, and national security.”⁹

On its face, such language indicated a commitment by the Administration to curb libertarian impulses if and where these threaten the well-being of American families, workers, and children. But, to the surprise of many, the Administration has subsequently deemphasized this critical dimension of A.I. policy.

In fact, despite the President’s express commitment to pursue A.I. policy that promotes human flourishing, the Administration has largely remained silent on how it aims to achieve this goal or balance it with its other goals. For example, in its July 2025 A.I. Action Plan—by far the most comprehensive A.I. policy proposal published by the Administration—the White House excluded human flourishing from the three pillars of its plan, and all but one mention of it was made.¹⁰

The Department’s proposal is similarly silent on this critical dimension of education, which, if nothing else, is a process by which human beings are formed to be free, good, excellent, and happy—that is, flourishing. Questions and concerns regarding A.I.’s effects on student and teacher well-being have been eschewed in pursuit of economic and national security priorities. As written, the Secretary’s proposal assumes, without evidence and against experience, that A.I. technologies (to be distinguished from A.I. education) will improve learning outcomes for all students—whether they be advanced, below grade level, or experience disabilities.

What makes the current proposal concerning is not that A.I. technologies are intrinsically opposed to human flourishing as such, or that A.I. education should be excluded from a school’s curriculum altogether. Rather, the problem is the Department’s move to accelerate the integration of A.I. technologies in the classroom without the requisite public participation, and without evidence that doing so will improve learning outcomes and a vision for what flourishing even means for an American child. Left unchanged, such a proposal will be inimical to securing public trust and evidence-based education standards, not to mention the success of the project itself, all of which are vital for purely humanistic reasons, as well to accomplish the Administration’s stated goal of America leading well in the age of A.I.

During the president’s first term, the Administration—while optimistic about A.I. and generally discouraging of regulatory actions that would “needlessly hamper AI innovation and growth”—understood that A.I. regulation on a federal level needed to adhere to various principles “when formulating regulatory and non-regulatory approaches to the design, development, deployment, and operation of AI applications.”¹¹ In the Administration’s own words, a principled approach was crucial “to sustain and enhance the scientific, technological, and economic leadership position of the United States in AI.”  Developed under the supervision of then-White House Chief Technology Officer Michael Kratsios, such principles included, amongst others: (1) securing public trust in A.I., (2) allowing for public participation in all stages of the rule-making process, and (3) making policy decisions based on science (i.e. research evidence).¹²  While we do not believe that the third principle is sufficient in and of itself in this context (i.e., education is a perennial human endeavor and the weight of wisdom, history, and experience are also important to account for), we, nonetheless, agree that an evidence-based incorporation of A.I. into American schools is vastly superior to what we are currently entertaining: namely, incorporation of A.I. without evidence. We urge the Secretary, along with the rest of the Administration, to therefore pursue priorities and policies that adhere to these stated principles.

I. The Problem of Public Trust

Today, public trust remains arguably the greatest hurdle to integrating A.I. into society. From the workforce to education and beyond, the lack of public trust in A.I., in Big Tech companies in general, and in the Administration’s close relationship with technological interests dramatically undermines this effort. According to our research, the majority of lower-income adults today (52% of those who make $40,000-$99,000; 60% of those who make $40,000 or less) are concerned that A.I. is a threat.¹³ Likewise, we also found that less than a quarter of Trump voters were supportive of a federal A.I. moratorium that would restrict states’ abilities to regulate A.I.¹⁴ In fact, the majority of voters were opposed to the A.I. moratorium, with the highest opposition from younger generations (70% of 18-34 year olds).¹⁵ Moreover, with regards to education, other findings show that the majority of parents do not want A.I. in their children’s classrooms.¹⁶ 

It is absolutely critical that any integration of A.I. into education be evidence-based if public trust is to be secured. Therefore, we urge the Secretary (1) to offer greater clarity on “appropriate methods of integrating AI into education” by defining or issuing guidance on what “appropriate methods” involve, and (2) to prioritize research efforts to develop evidence-based “appropriate methods” for A.I. integration before embedding A.I. technologies into any K-12 classroom, teacher training, or other education-related activities and environments, as outlined under section (b) of the proposal.

II. The Problem of Public Participation

A. States Rights

In its first set of proposed grantmaking priorities, the Department included a proposal for “Returning Education to the States.”¹⁷ Through this priority, the Department seeks to empower States, Tribes, and local communities to “take the lead in formulating, developing, and implementing policies that best serve students, families, and educators.” The Department’s justification for the priority was simple:

One-size-fits-all mandates from the federal government create obstacles, limiting the ability of State, Tribal, local, and institutional leaders to make decisions in the best interest of their students and their workforce.¹⁸

We could not agree more. However, the Department’s latest proposed priority to integrate A.I. into schools threatens to repeat the very errors it seeks to avoid. Issuing guidance and proposed priorities designed to integrate A.I. technologies (not just A.I. education) into every institution of K-12 and higher education is a top-down mandate that does the opposite of “empowering States and Tribes to take the lead in formulating, developing, and implementing policies that best serve students, families, and educators within their communities.”

Clarification will be needed on how the Department’s proposed priority on integrating A.I. in education compliments its priority to empower State, Tribal, local, and institutional leaders to make decisions in the best interest of their students and their workforce.

B. Parental Rights

“Families deserve an education system that reflects the unique needs of the communities in which they live,” the Department wrote in its first set of proposed priorities.¹⁹ The input of parents and legal guardians is key to determining the unique educational needs of the families in each community. In seeking to prioritize integration of A.I. in education, the Department must ensure that it respects the rights and duties of parents and legal guardians as the primary caretakers of children.

As Georgetown University’s Dr. Meg Leta Jones has argued, existing administrative guidance regarding the integration of technology in education undermines parental rights and thus children’s safety.²⁰ In July 2020, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) released guidance on the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), stating that “schools may act as the parent’s agent and can consent under COPPA to the collection of kids’ information on the parent’s behalf.”²¹ The guidance limited the ability of schools to consent on behalf of parents to “the educational context – where an operator collects personal information from students for the use and benefit of the school, and for no other commercial purpose.”²²  Likewise, the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) has undergone expansive administrative interpretations to allow ed tech companies to access student’s records without parental consent. As passed by Congress, FERPA narrowly permitted educators and other school personnel to access records for “legitimate educational interests.”²³ As Leta Jones notes, today, “[e]ducational technology companies now routinely qualify as ‘school officials,’ despite FERPA’s requirements.”²⁴ Regardless of formal complaints regarding FERPA violations, the Department under the Biden administration refused to enforce them.

Unsurprisingly, violations of the data privacy of kids are systematic in America’s schools. According to its 2022 K-12 EdTech Safety Benchmark report (published in 2024), Internet Safety Labs found that of “the technology recommended and used by U.S. educational institutions,”

Nearly all apps (96%) share children’s personal information with third parties, 78% of the time with advertising and monetization entities, typically without the knowledge or consent of the users or the schools, making them unsafe.²⁵ 

It’s no wonder then, that, according to one survey, 91% of parents do not want their children using or interacting with A.I. technology in the classroom.²⁶ Before A.I. technology is integrated into any school, the Department should issue rules and guidance that reassert the original intent of FERPA and COPPA by outlining strict safety standards regarding the access of students’ data, eliminating the ability of educational technology companies to use and access student data without explicit parental consent, enforcing violations of COPPA and FERPA, and requiring parental consent for the integration of new technologies in the classroom. Put simply, the prior generation of ed tech transformed American education into a field for data enrichment and children as objects of extraction. A.I. cannot be safely incorporated into American education in any manner unless this systematic practice is corrected and curtailed.

III. The Problem of Evidence-Based Policy

A. Learning Outcomes

As noted above, the Department’s proposal presupposes that A.I. technologies improve learning outcomes. Generally, however, existing research shows that more technology in classrooms does not produce better academic performance. According to a landmark study by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, students who used computers “very frequently” at school had worse learning outcomes than those who used them moderately or less frequently.²⁷ And a 2019 review of existing research found that “[i]nitiatives that expand access to computers… do not improve K-12 grades and test-scores.”²⁸ In fact, as screens have become more ubiquitous in schools as well as American society, global test scores in reading, math, and science have been steadily dropping,²⁹ reaching their lowest in half a century in 2022.³⁰ Despite these and other findings, the US continues to spend $30 billion annually on integrating ed tech into schools.³¹

Though new, A.I. technologies will build upon the existing ed tech platforms and threaten to accelerate these effects. In a groundbreaking study this year by the MIT media lab, individuals who used large language models like ChatGPT to write essays over a four-month period “consistently underperformed at neural, linguistic, and behavioral levels” than their counterparts who did not do so.³² To be sure, the integration of A.I. technologies extend well beyond the use of applications like ChatGPT. But at the very least, these findings should deter the Department from funding the integration of A.I. technologies into the classroom until further research can be performed to determine the effects of these technologies on learning outcomes. To this end, we again underscore our support for provision (a)(x) of the proposed priority and other research-focused priorities by the Secretary.

B. Known Harms to Minors

Today, it is well known that ed tech—specifically digital devices and applications—exposes students to various harms. As already mentioned, almost all the ed tech apps used or recommended by schools share children’s personal data.³³ And laptops like Google’s Chromebook have long had poor content filters and overly complicated parental controls, making it easy for minors to access age-inappropriate content like pornography.³⁴

Current A.I. technologies, including those being marketed as ed tech, expose students to similar harms. A.I. teaching assistants and tutors are fundamentally social in nature, interacting with students in ways that mimic human conversation. Today, three-quarters of teens have interacted with A.I. chatbots, and a third of those users have reported being made to feel uncomfortable by something the A.I. has said or done.³⁵ A Common Sense Media report published this year concluded that A.I. chatbots “pose significant risks to teens and children under 18.”³⁶ Such risks include “encouraging harmful behaviors, providing inappropriate content, and potentially exacerbating mental health conditions.”³⁷ 

These risks already exist with Big Tech and ed tech products alike. Companies like Meta and X have chatbots that will engage in sexual conversation with users it knows are minors. Recently, X released an A.I. companion, accessible to minors, that engages users in a sexual and romantic manner.³⁸

Similarly, according to a Wall Street Journal exposé, Meta has made “multiple internal decisions to loosen the guardrails around the bots to make them as engaging as possible.”³⁹ This included removing explicit content bans when engaging in romantic or sexual discourse, even when the chatbot is engaging with minors.⁴⁰ Sadly, A.I. products developed by ed tech companies are not much more “age appropriate.” For example, ed tech company KnowUnity’s “School GPT,” has given users recipes for fentanyl and encouraged harmful eating behaviors.⁴¹ Other ed tech A.I. applications like CourseHero have even given instructions for synthesizing date rape drugs.⁴² 

This is to say nothing of the problems of A.I.-generated “deepfake” nude pictures. Already schools are having to discipline students that use A.I. to generate child sexual abuse material mimicking the personages of other students.⁴³

Some students have even disseminated such content to harass or extort their peers. Sadly, this is a growing problem. According to research published earlier this year, around 1 in 8 teens aged 13 to 17 personally know someone who has been a victim of deepfake.⁴⁴

Parents and schools have already been struggling for years to reign in these and other collateral harms of educational technologies. However, as currently written, the Department’s proposal threatens to expose American youth to sustained harms by supporting the integration of A.I. technologies in the classroom to assist students, including the use of A.I.-driven “virtual teaching assistants” and “tutoring.”⁴⁵ Given that A.I. companies are already using their technologies to prey on kids, the Department should instead be wary about allowing this industry to access children in general, much less without first delineating robust safeguards and guidelines to ensure their protection.

Conclusion

If the Department wishes to prioritize A.I. education and the integration of A.I. technology into classrooms, it should first define “appropriate methods” and develop robust guidelines to ensure that students and families will flourish. This, of course, will require research, which is why we commend provision (a)(x) of the proposed priority. But it will also require input from parents, educators, advocates, and technologists. We strongly urge the Secretary to prioritize research to determine what methods and uses of A.I. education and technology best serve students, and to seek public input to develop safeguards and guidelines to protect students before putting the weight of the federal government behind accelerating A.I. preeminence in the classroom.

Respectfully,

Michael Toscano

Director, Family First Technology Initiative

The Institute for Family Studies

Jared Hayden

Policy Analyst, Family First Technology Initiative

The Institute for Family Studies

References

1. U.S. Department of Education, “Proposed Priority and Definitions—Secretary's Supplemental Priority and Definitions on Advancing Artificial Intelligence in Education,” July 21, 2025, 90 FR 34203, Docket ID ED-2025-OS-0118.
2. Ibid
3. Ibid
4. Ibid
5. Ibid. See also: Linda McMahon, “Guidance on the Use of Federal Funds to improve Education Outcomes Using Artificial Intelligence (AI),” Department of Education, July 22, 2025, https://www.ed.gov/media/document/opepd-ai-dear-colleague-letter-7222025-110427.pdf.
6. Op. Cit., Dept. of Ed., “Advancing Artificial Intelligence in Education.”
7. Jared Cooney Horvath, “The EdTech Revolution Has Failed,” After Babel, Nov. 12, 2024, https://www.afterbabel.com/p/the-edtech-revolution-has-failed
8. Oren Cass, “Bring Back the Computer Lab,” Commonplace, July 21, 2025, https://www.commonplace.org/p/bring-back-the-computer-lab.
9. President Donald Trump, “Executive Order No. 14179: Removing Barriers to American Leadership in Artificial Intelligence,” January 23, 2025, 90 FR8741
10. President Donald Trump, “Winning the Race: America’s AI Action Plan,” July 2025, https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Americas-AI-Action-Plan.pdf.
11. Office of Management and Budget (OMB), “Draft Memo: Guidance for Regulation of Artificial Intelligence Applications,” Jan. 1, 2019, https://bidenwhitehouse.archives.gov/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/Draft-OMB-Memo-on-Regulation-of-AI-1-7-19.pdf. See also: Office of Management and Budget, Request for Comments on a Draft Memorandum to the Heads of Executive Departments and Agencies, “Guidance for Regulation of Artificial Intelligence Applications,” Jan. 13, 2020, 85 FR 1825.
12. Op. Cit., OMB, “Draft Memo.”
13. Grant Bailey and Michael Toscano, “AI Lovers Are Coming, But We Don’t Have to Accept Them,” The Institute for Family Studies, Aug. 13, 2025, https://ifstudies.org/blog/ai-lovers-are-coming-but-we-dont-have-to-accept-them.
14. Michael Toscano and Grant Bailey, “Americans Oppose the AI Regulation Moratorium By a 3-to-1 Margin,” The Institute for Family Studies, June 25, 2025, https://ifstudies.org/blog/americans-oppose-the-ai-regulation-moratorium-by-a-3-to-1-margin.
15. Ibid
16. Scrolling2Death, “What Parents Really Think About Tech in Schools: Survey Results,” July 22, 2025, https://www.scrolling2death.com/post/what-parents-really-think-about-tech-in-schools-survey-results.
17. Dept. of Ed., “Proposed Priorities and Definitions—Secretary’s Supplemental Priorities and Definitions on Evidence-Based Literacy, Education Choice, and Returning Education to the States,” May 21, 2025, 90 FR 21710, Docket ID ED-2025-OS-0020.
18. Ibid
19. Ibid
20. Meg Leta Jones, “AI is the Latest Threat to Parental Rights in Education,” The Institute for Family Studies, July 30, 2025, https://ifstudies.org/blog/ai-is-the-latest-threat-to-parental-rights-in-education.
21. Federal Trade Commission (FTC), “Complying with COPPA: Frequently Asked Questions,” July 2020, https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/resources/complying-coppa-frequently-asked-questions.
22. Ibid.
23. 34 CFR § 99.31(a)(1)(i)(A).
24. Op. Cit., Leta Jones, “Parental Rights.”
25. Internet Safety Labs, “2022 K-12 EdTech Safety Benchmark: National Findings – Part 1,” Dec. 13, 2022, https://internetsafetylabs.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/2022-k12-edtech-safety-benchmark-national-findings-part-1.pdf.
26. Op. Cit., Scrolling2Death, “What Parents Really Think About Tech In Schools: Survey Results.”
27. Organization of Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), “Students, Computers and Learning: Making the Connection,” Sept. 15, 2015, https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/students-computers-and-learning_9789264239555-en.html.
28. Sophie Shank, “Will Technology Transform Education for the Better?” J-PAL Evidence Review, Jan. 1, 2019, https://www.povertyactionlab.org/publication/will-technology-transform-education-better.
29. OECD, “PISA 2022 Results (Volume I): The State of Learning and Equity in Education,” Dec. 5, 2023 https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/pisa-2022-results-volume-i_53f23881-en/full-report.html.
30. Oluwafemi J. Sunday, et al., “The effects of smartphone addiction on learning: A meta-analysis,” Computers in Human Behavior Reports Vol. 4 (2021), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chbr.2021.100114.
31. Brad Littlejohn and Jared Hayden, “The Dangers and Possibilities of AI in Schools,” Commonplace, May 27, 2025, https://www.commonplace.org/p/the-dangers-and-possibilities-of-ai-in-schools.
32. Nataliya Kosmyna et al., “Your Brain on ChatGPT: Accumulation of Cognitive Debt when Using an AI Assistant for Essay Writing Task,” MIT Media Lab, June 10, 2025, https://www.media.mit.edu/publications/your-brain-on-chatgpt/.
33. Op. Cit., Internet Safety Labs, “2022 K-12 EdTech Safety Benchmark."
34. National Center on Sexual Exploitation, “Chromebooks,” June 2021, https://endsexualexploitation.org/chromebooks/.
35. Common Sense Media, “Talk, Trust, and Trade-Offs: How and Why Teens Use AI Companions,” July 16, 2025, https://www.commonsensemedia.org/sites/default/files/research/report/talk-trust-and-trade-offs_2025_web.pdf.
36. Common Sense Media, “AI Risk Assessment: Social AI Companions,” April 10, 2025, https://www.commonsensemedia.org/sites/default/files/pug/csm-ai-risk-assessment-social-ai-companions_final.pdf.
37. Ibid.
38. Amanda Silberling, “Elon Musk’s Grok is Making AI Companions, Including a Goth Anime Girl,” TechCrunch, July 14, 2025, https://techcrunch.com/2025/07/14/elon-musks-grok-is-making-ai-companions-including-a-goth-anime-girl/. According to X’s own guidelines, children above the age of 13 are permitted to use its AI companions: X, “xAI Consumer FAQs,” May 12, 2025, https://x.ai/legal/faq.
39. Jeff Horwitz, “Meta’s ‘Digital Companions’ Will Talk Sex With Users—Even Children,” Wall Street Journal, April 26, 2025, https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/meta-ai-chatbots-sex a25311bf?gaa_at=eafs&gaa_n=ASWzDAgqAVDBHIu874OLUMt5iUpObs1HTZlTp_CSAKuF0wzmTDCFOI72EmZLMDMcD-o%3D&gaa_ts=68a5ef22&gaa_sig=n29kNw70Fmngx6G1qqtR1MVno-bP-uJMuOAmxzLWbzerP-4PYP5CD-ERyijrKFmM0SYe-5IR90fMBH7TjyWUYw%3D%3D.
40. Ibid.
41. Emily Baker-White, “These AI Tutors for Kids Gave Fentanyl Recipes and Dangerous Diet Advice,” Forbes, May 12, 2025, https://www.forbes.com/sites/emilybaker-white/2025/05/12/these-ai-tutors-for-kids-gave-fentanyl-recipes-and-dangerous-diet-advice/.
42. Ibid.
43. Natasha Singer, “Teen Girls Confront an Epidemic of Deepfake Nudes in Schools,” New York Times, April 8, 2024, https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/08/technology/deepfake-ai-nudes-westfield-high-school.html. See also: Op. Cit., Littlejohn and Hayden, “The Dangers and Possibilities of AI in Schools.”
44. Thorn, “Deepfake Nudes & Young People: Navigating a New Frontier in Technology-Facilitated Nonconsensual Sexual Abuse and Exploitation,” March 3, 2025, https://info.thorn.org/hubfs/Research/Thorn_DeepfakeNudes&YoungPeople_Mar2025.pdf.
45. Op. Cit., Dept. of Ed., “Advancing Artificial Intelligence in Education,” (b)(iv).

In Pursuit: Marriage, Motherhood, and Women’s Well-Being 

by: Jean M. Twenge, Jenet Erickson, Wendy Wang, and Brad Wilcox 

Marriage and fertility rates have reached all-time lows in the U.S. in recent years, as fewer people marry or have children. These trends are likely to continue in the future. In 2023, only 72% of 18-year-old women in the U.S. said they were likely to have children, down from 85% in the late 2000s.¹

Though there are likely many reasons for the declines in marriage and childbearing, one possible factor is the way marriage and parenthood, particularly for women, are portrayed in the media and in online discussions. Popular press articles often declare that single women without children are happier than married mothers, with headlines such as: “Women are happier without children or a spouse, says happiness expert,” or “4 reasons why single women are the happiest people on Earth—by a psychologist,” and “Why so many single women without children are happy.” Discussions on online forums such as Reddit ask, “Why do you think that single unmarried women without children are happier than married women with children?” 

These headlines are consistent with older survey data suggesting parents are less happy than non-parents, especially in the United States.² They are also consistent with studies finding that parenthood is more positive for men than for women.³ However, parenthood may increase other aspects of well-being, especially finding meaning in life.⁴

In addition, studies repeatedly find that married people are generally happier than unmarried people.⁵ Being married is the most important differentiator of happiness in America, with married people 30 percentage points happier than unmarried people.⁶ However, little of this research has focused specifically on women, and it is unclear how marriage and motherhood are linked to one another and to women’s happiness.  

There is a significant gender divide in the perception of marriage and happiness. A majority of both men (58%) and women (53%) agree that men who marry and have children are better off than those who do not. But only 32% of women believe that women who marry and have children live fuller, happier lives.⁷ At the same time, 55% of single women believe single women are generally happier than married women.⁸ In a 2024 Pew Research survey, less than half of single women (45%) said they eventually wanted to have children, while a majority of single young men (57%) said parenthood was an important life goal for them.⁹

Clearly, many single women today perceive getting married or becoming a mother to be transitions of loss. But is this perception true?  

New data paint a different picture. In the 2022 General Social Survey (GSS), the nation’s leading social barometer, married mothers are happier than single childless women as well as married childless women and unmarried mothers.¹⁰ Other surveys have found similar results.¹¹

To better clarify how marriage and motherhood are linked to women’s happiness, we fielded the Women’s Well-Being Survey (WWS) of 3,000 U.S. women, ages 25 to 55, conducted by YouGov in early March 2025 (for details, see About the Data and Methodology). We wanted to know: Why are married mothers the happiest group of women? 

Happiness

Consistent with previous surveys, our new survey finds that married mothers are happier than unmarried women or women without children. Nearly twice as many married mothers say they are “very happy” as unmarried women without children.  

Figure 1. Estimated share of U.S. women ages 25-55 who report being ‘very happy’ 
Source: IFS/Wheatley Institute, Women’s Well-Being Survey, March 2025 

Married mothers are also significantly more likely to be very happy than married women without children and unmarried women with children. The analyses presented in this report control for age, family income, and education, so these factors cannot be the reason for the differences.  

Married women are also more likely than unmarried women to say that life was enjoyable most or all of the time: 47% of married mothers and 43% of married childless women say life is enjoyable, compared to 40% of unmarried mothers and 34% of unmarried childless women.¹²

Figure 2. Estimated share of U.S. women ages 25-55 who report that their life has felt enjoyable most or all of the time in the past 30 days. Source: IFS/Wheatley Institute, Women’s Well-Being Survey, March 2025 

Why are married mothers happier? Both marriage and motherhood appear to play a role, though in different ways.  

Social Connection

Some past research has argued that marriage is linked to greater isolation, finding that, as The Atlantic put it, married people are  

less likely to visit or call parents and siblings—and less inclined to offer them emotional support or pragmatic help with things such as chores and transportation. They are also less likely to hang out with friends and neighbors.¹³

Single people, in contrast, had more contact with friends and extended family members. This research, focusing primarily on adult experiences in the 1990s and 2000s, suggests that married women might feel more isolated and alone.¹⁴

However, our survey finds that married women are markedly less likely to feel lonely: 11% of married mothers and 9% of married women without children feel lonely most or all of the time, compared to 23% of unmarried mothers and 20% of unmarried childless women. Thus, married women are only about half as likely as unmarried women to often feel lonely, with motherhood having less impact on loneliness.  

Figure 3. Estimated share of U.S. women ages 25-55 who report having been lonely most or all of the time in the past 30 days. Source: IFS/Wheatley Institute, Women’s Well-Being Survey, March 2025 

Contrary to a popular narrative that marriage entails social isolation, these findings show that married women are less lonely. While getting married and having children may mean less time hanging out with friends, marriage and children are also associated with other kinds of social engagement, including volunteer work, church attendance, and community connections.¹⁵ Moreover, in this new survey, married mothers are just as likely to say they feel satisfied with their number of friends as other women. In addition, unmarried women without children are more likely to report difficulties with making new friends than married and unmarried moms. The relationship between family status and friendship for adults may have changed since the pre-digital era when the previous research was conducted. That is, since the rise of the smartphone, marriage and motherhood may have become more important for facilitating social connections and protecting against the atomization now being induced by new technologies. So it’s possible that, today, women with family ties have more social ties than women without a spouse or children.  

Physical Touch

Americans spent 67 fewer hours per year in face-to-face social interactions in 2017 than they did in 2003; younger Americans (ages 15 to 25) spent 140 fewer hours per year.¹⁶With people spending more time online and less time with others in person, there are fewer opportunities for physical touch, leading to what some call “touch hunger.”¹⁷

Physical touch has not been frequently explored in survey data on well-being, but new research suggests it may play an important role in women’s emotional and social health. Touch, especially from a spouse, has been linked to relaxation, increased trust, greater feelings of safety, and increased emotional resilience in multiple studies.¹⁸ Touch elicits the release of oxytocin in the brain, promoting relaxation and reducing stress, while decreasing the sympathetic nervous system’s stress response.¹⁹ Lack of physical touch has been linked to feelings of loneliness and isolation.²⁰ 

The link between touch and emotional well-being in adulthood appears to be an extension of the important role of touch for development beginning in infancy. The attachment relationship that lays the foundations for development beginning in infancy is grounded in touch. As a mother and infant touch, oxytocin and prolactin hormones surge in her body, enhancing the bond through which she regulates her infant’s emotions and lays the foundations for the infant’s development. Not only does touch profoundly impact the infant, but it also strengthens the experience of well-being for the mother. Evidence suggests that touch continues to play an important role in bonding, emotional regulation, and well-being across the life course.  

Figure 4. Estimated share of U.S. women ages 25-55 who report that the statement, ‘I regularly receive physical affection from someone’ describes them ‘very well.’ Source: IFS/Wheatley Institute, Women’s Well-Being Survey, March 2025 

In the WWS, married women (both with and without children) report significantly higher levels of touch than unmarried women. Specifically, 47% of married mothers and 49% of married women without children report high physical touch levels; meanwhile, only 23% of unmarried mothers and 13% of unmarried women without children do.  

Figure 5. Estimated share of U.S. women ages 25-55 who report a high level of physical touch. Source: IFS/Wheatley Institute, Women’s Well-Being Survey, March 2025

More frequent touch is itself a significant predictor of increased happiness. Only 7% of women who report low levels of touch are very happy with their lives. In contrast, 22% of women who report high levels of touch are very happy.  

Figure 6. Estimated share of U.S. women ages 25-55, by level of physical touch, who report being ‘very happy.’ Source: IFS/Wheatley Institute, Women’s Well-Being Survey, March 2025 

Thus, one factor that explains why married women are happier than their unmarried peers is that they have more regular opportunities for kissing, hugging, and snuggling. For example, 58% of married women with children and 61% of married women without children report that they often get hugs or kisses, while only 36% of unmarried mothers and 18% of unmarried women without children report the same.  

Figure 7. Estimated share of U.S. women ages 25-55 who report that the statement, ‘Most days I get a hug or a kiss’ describes them ‘very well.’ Source: IFS/Wheatley Institute, Women’s Well-Being Survey, March 2025 

Similarly, married women are much more likely than unmarried women to say they hold hands often. Married women with children are almost twice as likely to hold hands frequently as unmarried women with children, and married women without children are over four times as likely to hold hands as often as unmarried women without children. 

Figure 8. Estimated share of U.S. women ages 25-55 who report that the statement, ‘I often hold hands with someone’ describes them ‘very well.’ Source: IFS/Wheatley Institute, Women’s Well-Being Survey, March 2025 

Finally, similar percentages of married mothers (48%) and married childless women (49%) say that they regularly get to snuggle and cuddle with someone, whereas only 26% of unmarried mothers and 14% of unmarried women without children do. 

Figure 9. Estimated share of U.S. women ages 25-55 who report that the statement, ‘I regularly get to snuggle or cuddle with someone’ describes them ‘very well.’ Source: IFS/Wheatley Institute, Women’s Well-Being Survey, March 2025 

Interestingly, within each of these categories, married women with and without kids report similar levels of touch. However, among unmarried women, those who have children tend to report higher levels of touch than those without children. The extra opportunities for touch that a child provides may not make a major difference for married women, but having a child might allow for many more opportunities to give and receive touch for unmarried mothers. 

Meaning and Purpose

Motherhood is connected to happiness and well-being through other means, including finding meaning and purpose in life. For example, mothers are more likely to strongly agree that “what I do in life is valuable and worthwhile”: 33% of married mothers and 30% of unmarried mothers agree with this statement, compared to 24% of married women without children and 20% of unmarried women without children. Mothers are also more likely than childless women to strongly agree that “my life has a clear sense of purpose.”  

Figure 10. Estimated share of U.S. women ages 25-55 who strongly agree that their life ‘has a clear sense of purpose.’ Source: IFS/Wheatley Institute, Women’s Well-Being Survey, March 2025 

In addition, 49% of married mothers say their life feels meaningful all or most of the time, compared to 43% of unmarried mothers, 41% of married women without children, and 32% of unmarried women without children. Overall, women with children find more purpose and meaning in their lives than women without children. 

Motherhood Challenges

To be fair, the WWS found that motherhood comes with many challenges as well. Mothers are more likely than non-mothers to feel overwhelmed and exhausted each day. About 64% of married and unmarried mothers report feeling overwhelmed on a daily basis, compared to 56% of married and single women without children. Additionally, 79% of unmarried mothers and 77% of married mothers feel exhausted every day, though 71% of unmarried childless women and 72% of married childless women do as well. 

Mothers also say they have less time to themselves: 59% of unmarried mothers and 58% of married mothers report they wish they had more time for themselves, compared with 40% of married childless women and 43% of unmarried childless women. Yet, as we have shown, married mothers simultaneously report greater happiness, meaning, and purpose.  

Conclusion

Contrary to the common narrative that women who marry and have children are unhappy, the 2025 Women’s Well-Being Survey finds that married mothers are happier than women who are unmarried and women who do not have children. Both marriage and motherhood contribute to well-being in different ways. Married women are more likely than their unmarried counterparts to report feeling deep connection and meaning in their relationships. They are also less likely to be lonely and more likely to receive physical affection—both strong predictors of happiness. Mothers are also more likely to find meaning and purpose in life.  

Despite the challenges associated with family life for women—including more stress and less time for oneself—there is no question that marriage and motherhood are linked to greater female flourishing on many other fronts. Moreover, marriage shapes and magnifies the experience of motherhood. Unmarried mothers with children still identify more purpose and meaning than childless women, but they are less happy, more stressed, and lonelier than married mothers.  

Marriage appears to offer a stabilizing and supportive context that lifts the burdens of motherhood, while strengthening happiness, connection, and meaning. That reality should invite our best efforts, both culturally and politically, to support and strengthen single mothers even as we also work to increase the likelihood and quality of marriages. The opportunities for greater touch, less loneliness, and more meaning seem to provide married mothers the most joyful lives. 

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Endnotes

1. Jean M. Twenge, Generations: The Real Differences between Gen Z, Millennials, Gen X, Boomers and Silents— and What They Mean for America’s Future, 2nd edition (Atria Books, 2025).

2. Jennifer Glass, Robin W. Simon, & Matthew A. Andersson, “Parenthood and happiness: Effects of workfamily reconciliation policies in 22 OCED countries,” American Journal of Sociology 122 (2016): 886-929.

3. S. Katherine Nelson, Kostadin Kushlev, et al., “In defense of parenthood: Children are associated with more joy than misery,” Psychological Science 24 (2013): 3–10.

4. Roy F. Baumeister, Kathleen D. Vohs, et al., “Some key differences between a happy life and a meaningful life,” The Journal of Positive Psychology 8 (2013): 505-516; Paul Bloom, The Sweet Spot: The Pleasures of Suffering and the Search for Meaning (Ecco, 2012); Op. Cit., S. Katherine Nelson, S. Kostadin Kushlev, et al. (2013).

5. Steven Stack and J.Ross Eshleman, “Marital status and happiness: A 17-nation study,” Journal of Marriage and the Family 60 (2018): 527-536.

6. Sam Peltzman, “The Socio-Political Demography of Happiness,” George J. Stigler Center for the Study of the Economy & the State, Working Paper No. 331, July 12, 2023.

7. Daniel A. Cox, “Is marriage better for men?” American Storylines, November 30, 2023.

8. Daniel A. Cox, “Why fear governs so many of the choices single young women make,” American Storylines, November 28, 2024.

9. Carolina Aragao, “Among young adults without children, men are more likely than women to say they want to be parents someday,” Pew Research Center, February 15, 2024.

10. Brad Wilcox and Wendy Wang, “Who is happiest? Married mothers and fathers, per the latest General Social Survey,” Institute for Family Studies Blog, September 12, 2023.

11. Wendy Wang and Brad Wilcox, “Women want more children than they're having. America can do more to help,” Deseret News, August 13, 2024.

12. These numbers, along with other reported survey results, are weighted marginal means that adjust for family income, age and education.

13. Mandy Len Catron, “What you lose when you gain a spouse,” The Atlantic, July 12, 2019.

14. Natalia Sarkisian and Naomi Gerstel, “Does singlehood isolate or integrate? Examining the link between marital status and ties to kin, friends, and neighbors,” Journal of Social and Personal Relationships 33, no. 3 (2016): 361-384.

15. Nicholas H. Wolfinger, “Marriage means community engagement: a Response to Mandy Len Cantron,” Institute for Family Studies Blog, July 22, 2019.

16. Jean M. Twenge and B.H. Spitzberg, “Declines in non-digital social interaction among Americans, 2003–2017,” Journal of Applied Social Psychology 50, no. 6 (2020): 363–367.

17. Krystine Batcho, “Are you hungry for touch in a touch-free world?” Psychology Today, June 15, 2018; T. Field, “Touch for socioemotional and physical well-being: A review,” Developmental Review 30, no. 4 (2010): 367-383.

18. James A. Coan, Hillary S. Schaefer, and Richard J. Davidson, “Lending a hand: Social regulation of the neural response to threat,” Psychological Science 17, no. 12 (2006): 1032-1039; Aljoscha Dreisoerner, Nina M. Junker, et al., “Self-soothing touch and being hugged reduce cortisol responses to stress: A randomized controlled trial on stress, physical touch, and social identity,” Comprehensive Psychoneuroendocrinology 8 (2021): 100091; Tiffany Field, “Touch for socioemotional and physical wellbeing: A review,” Developmental Review 30, no. 4 (2010): 367-383.

19. Julliane Holt-Lunstad, Wendy A. Birmingham, and Kathleen C. Light, “Influence of a ‘Warm Touch’ Support Enhancement Intervention Among Married Couples on Ambulatory Blood Pressure, Oxytocin, Alpha Amylase, and Cortisol,” Psychosomatic Medicine 70, no. 9 (2008): 976-985.

20. A. Heatley Tejada, Robin I. M. Dunbar, M. Montero, “Physical contact and loneliness: Being touched reduces perceptions of loneliness,” Adaptive Human Behavior & Physiology 6, no. 3 (2020): 292-306.

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Author Bios

Jean M. Twenge is Professor of Psychology at San Diego State University and the author of more than 190 scientific publications and books.

Jenet Erickson is a Fellow of the Wheatley Institute, Associate Professor in Religious Education in the School of Family Life at Brigham Young University, and a Senior Fellow at the Institute for Family Studies.

Wendy Wang is Director of Research at the Institute for Family Studies. She formerly served as a Senior Researcher at the Pew Research Center.

Brad Wilcox is Senior Fellow at the Institute for Family Studies. He is also a Visiting Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, and Distinguished University Professor of Sociology at the University of Virginia. 

Introduction

The “One Big, Beautiful Bill” (OBBB), enacted in July 2025, included numerous changes to child-related policies. Most notably, the Child Tax Credit (CTC) maximum benefit was increased from $2000 to $2200, that new value was indexed for inflation going forward, new “Trump Account” investments were established for children born 2025 and later, caps on employer-provided dependent care assistance were raised from $5,000 to $7,500, and the claimable percentage of expenses for the Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit (CDCTC) was increased for many filers. Nonetheless, there remain areas where modest changes to the current legislative language could generate large benefits for American families and fix the failure to keep family benefits on par with recent inflation. In this research brief, we outline three changes to family policies in the OBBB that could appreciably strengthen and support American family life. Taken together, these differences would result in the average American working family receiving $500 per child more per year.

First, the CTC’s total maximum value should be increased from the $2,200 level in the OBBB, to $2,600 to preserve its 2017-set value in real terms. Second, to incentivize work, the CTC’s phase-in should begin at the first dollar of income, rather than at $2,500. And finally, the CDCTC should be fixed by removing the marriage penalty for single-earner couples. Its current discriminatory language denies benefits to many working families with child care costs simply because of how couples choose to allocate their responsibilities and paid work. As marriage and birth rates continue to plummet to new lows, Congress should not rest on the limited victories for families achieved in the OBBB, but should instead go further, demonstrating continued commitment to marriage, work, and family life.

Key Findings

1. The One Big Beautiful Bill (OBBB) implemented many new supports for families, but benefits for families are below the inflation-adjusted value of benefits in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017. 
2. The Child Tax Credit in particular was not increased enough to protect the inflation-adjusted value of President Trump’s 2017 tax credit for families; it would need to be increased to $2,600 for the TCJA’s pro-family accomplishments to be safeguarded.
3. To increase work incentives, the Child Tax Credit could also be adjusted to phase-in with the first dollar of earnings, instead of after $2,500 in earnings.
4. The OBBB made some enhancements to the Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit (CDCTC), but it did not fix the longstanding discriminatory design of this policy. 
5. Most of the discriminatory design of the CDCTC can be fixed by allowing benefits to be claimed based on the higher- rather than lower-earning spouse, and by increasing benefits for third children.

Protect the Child Tax Credit

There are two primary mechanisms in the U.S. tax code that have historically benefited families with children directly: dependent personal exemptions (PE), and child tax credits. Personal exemptions—allowing households to exclude some income for each child—date back to the earliest days of the tax code: U.S. law has always recognized the unfairness of ignoring children in the household when calculating tax liabilities, since families with children intrinsically have lower income-per-person, and thus less ability to pay. The 2017 TCJA repealed personal exemptions and instead provided an expanded child tax credit. This benefited most families, but there were complications: the personal exemption had been inflation-adjusted since President Reagan’s reforms in the 1980s, while the CTC was not inflation-adjusted. Likewise, the PE tended to give bigger benefits to higher-income families.

The maximum benefit from the personal exemption was very large, but most families were not at tax brackets high enough to claim such a large benefit. In order to estimate the value of child benefits over time, we convert personal exemption nominal values to estimated tax benefits deriving from those exemptions. To do this, we estimate the value of the personal exemption based on the tax experiences of typical tax filers, rather than the maximum credit (specifically, we take the greater of the Average Effective Income Tax Rate reported by the IRS times the Personal Exemption Value, or the Marginal Tax Rate of Median-Income Household times the Personal Exemption Value). For the CTC, since most claimants claim the full credit value, we simply use the full credit value. We then adjust both estimates for inflation, to track real values over time.

As can be seen, in real terms, tax benefits for families with kids declined from the 1970s through the late 1980s, then rose in the late 1990s and early 2000s. They likely rose again with the TCJA, and especially with the special 1-year expansion of the CTC in 2021 due to COVID, but in general, TCJA benefits have eroded. In 2025 dollars, the original TCJA benefit was worth $2,544. 

Thus, to preserve the pro-family shift achieved in the TCJA, we suggest Congress consider expanding the CTC’s maximum credit value to $2,600. Versus the existing OBBB, we estimate that this expansion, occurring via the nonrefundable portion of the CTC, would cost approximately $3-$5 billion in 2026, and approximately $30-$70 billion over 10 years, depending on future inflation, tax rates, and birth rates.

Increase Work Incentives

Families do not get any benefit from the refundable CTC until they have at least $2,500 in income, and at such low incomes, they have no tax liabilities to render them eligible for the nonrefundable CTC. As such, families with zero earnings face smaller work incentives than families with some earnings. For example, if a married couple with two children with $5,000 in earnings had the possibility of increasing earnings by $10,000, under current law, their credit value would increase by $1,500, an effective work-incentive rate of 15 percent. But if the same couple had $0 in earnings and had an opportunity to increase to $10,000 in earnings, their credit value would only increase by $1,125: just an 11% work incentive. Thus, the $2,500 threshold actually reduces the work incentives in the CTC.

We propose a simple fix: the refundable CTC should phase in at the first dollar of eligible income, rather than the 2,501st dollar. This fix would cost, at most, $375 in lost tax revenues per family in the impacted range, though many families would get far less. At the extreme upper maximum estimate, this would cost $4.5 billion in 2026, and likely nearer $2 billion.  Likewise, across 10 years, it would cost under $65 billion, likely under $30 billion. In prior research, we have extensively outlined the argument for the first-dollar-phase-in, but it’s worth repeating the arguments in favor of this policy design:

1. Increases incentives for zero-earning families to enter the workforce
2. Reduces complexity of the CTC
3. Specifically provides greater support to working low-income families

Combining the two CTC-related suggestions, the figure below shows the tax rates faced by a married couple with two children based on standard tax rates and the CTC, but not other tax provisions, under the OBBB as passed vs. our proposed fixes.

As the figure shows, our proposal greatly reduces taxes for working families at modest incomes and provides a modest tax break for middle-income families with children.

How does our proposal affect work incentives? The figure below shows Implicit Marginal Tax Rates (IMTRs). Implementing first-dollar-phase-in increases work incentives for the lowest-income families, though mostly by pulling work incentives down the income ladder from some other working-class families. But the expansion of the credit size reduces IMTRs, thus increasing work incentives for a nontrivial range of working-class to middle-income families.

And finally, we assess how these changes influence marriage penalties. We find that these fixes: slightly increase the incentives for very low-earning couples to marry (under $10,000 in combined earnings); reduce the incentives for couples with combined earnings of $22,000 to $44,000 to marry; and increase the incentives for couples with earnings of $44,000 to $64,000 to marry. On the whole, changes to marriage incentives are very small. The small reduction in marriage incentives for a few working-class families is purely due to a shift of those incentives towards lower incomes, incentivizing more marriage further down the income ladder.

Reduce Family Discrimination

The first federal subsidies for child care expenses were implemented in 1954 through a deduction system, which was converted into the Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit in 1976, and modified several times since. The OBBB changed the CDCTC to make it considerably more generous, offering much higher adjustment factors for most eligible families. The CDCTC is a famously complex tax credit: families are eligible for it based on a combination of total household income, number of children, income of each parent in the household, educational status of parents, working hours, type of child care purchased, statutorily set adjustment factors that phase-in and phase-out with income, and other factors. This complexity disguises one central key fact of the CDCTC: it is an openly discriminatory tax provision. Its benefits do not scale for larger families but cap at the second child, leaving families with more children no additional benefit. Moreover, the CDCTC completely excludes married-couple families with one income, where the other spouse stays home to care for their child(ren), even if that family has child care expenses that would otherwise be eligible. 

This discrimination is based on the prejudicial and incorrect assumption that in families where one spouse stays home, there is no need for child care: yet stay-at-home spouses often have a range of duties drawing them away from their children, and they are prohibited from claiming child care expenses incurred at these times. The federal government has no business deciding for families which child care expenses are legitimate, and which are not. Families are best suited to make their own decisions. In the 2019 National Survey of Early Care and Education, 65% of families with children under age 13 either had three or more such children, or had a non-working spouse: thus, 65% of families with children who were age-eligible for the CDCTC faced discrimination against them based on their family status.

Moreover, the NSECE shows that one-earner families do have lots of child care expenses—families with one earner and two parents in the NSECE still average around $2,000/year in expenses on center-based care, camps, preschools, babysitters, and other child care. One-earner couples with three or more children average over $3,000/year in expenses, and 30% of those families average over $6,000/year. It simply is not the case that one-earner families do not have child care expenses.

As such, we propose three fixes to the CDCTC: first, where 26 U.S. Code § 21 section (d) (1) (B) states that the basis for credit calculation shall be the “lesser” of two spousal incomes, we suggest lesser be changed to “greater,” so that any family with a working parent is eligible for the CDCTC. This would maintain the work-incentive function of the CDCTC while removing the statutory discrimination against one-earner families. It may also be necessary to strike “employment-related expenses” from section (a) (1), and to strike the entirety of section (b) (2). In principle, the IRS allows “employment-related” to refer to the higher-earning spouse, so these changes may not be strictly necessary, but removing them would clarify the categorical eligibility of one-earner households.

Secondly, we propose that a section (c) (3) be added, reading, “$9,000 if there are three or more qualifying individuals with respect to the taxpayer for such taxable year.” In essence, this change increases the cap on claimable child care expenses for families with three children under age 13 from $6,000 to $9,000. While it is understandable that taxpayers don’t wish to subsidize enormous child care costs for an open-ended number of children, denying the many three-child families in America a proportional benefit is unfair. 

These two changes reduce the share of families with young children facing discrimination from 65% to 5 percent. 

Finally, we suggest that section (a) (2) (A) (ii), which excludes spending on overnight camps from CDCTC claims, be stricken entirely. There is no reason to allow parents to claim the CDCTC for a camp that returns kids home at 8 PM, but not for one that returns them home at 8 AM the next day.

These three fixes would transform the CDCTC in important ways. 

• First, they would simplify the credit: one line of the credit form (identifying the lower-earning spouse) could be removed, allowing taxpayers to simply specify the higher-earning spouse; moreover, families would no longer have financial incentives to deny their kids participation in campout nights at summer camp, an absurdity of the current law. If provisions related to employment-relatedness are also stricken, this would dramatically simplify child care eligibility determinations by the IRS, reducing filing burdens for families and reducing auditing costs for the IRS.
• Second, this change would eliminate discrimination based on family work divisions and reduce discrimination based on family size. 
• Third, this proposal would help fix the longstanding decline in the value of the CDCTC by making more families eligible and raising the cap on eligibility.

To begin with, its’s worth reviewing the history of the CDCTC. In terms of real value, the CDCTC peaked in the mid-1980s, and has since declined, except for a huge COVID-era increase in 2021—at least among families who claimed the CDCTC. But very few families actually claim the CDCTC. Many are ineligible for income reasons: they lack enough tax liability to claim the CDCTC, which is nonrefundable, an issue these families face with the nonrefundable CTC as well. Others are ineligible for categorical reasons: they have just one earner, or used the wrong kind of child care, or did not pay for child care at all, or some other of many reasons the CDCTC excludes individuals. Still others may have been eligible but simply forgot to, failed to, or could not figure out how to claim their credits.

As a result, if we look at the value of the CDCTC per family that claimed a child tax credit (i.e., a benchmark for children in the tax population), the CDCTC is far smaller. Real benefit value on this basis increased from 1998 to 2016 as more families claimed the CDCTC due to rising child care costs, even as the CTC-claiming population was fairly stable. With the CTC expansion in 2017, more families claimed the CTC. In sum, the average tax family with reported children can expect less than $200 off their tax bill from the CDCTC. Adding the CDCTC to our earlier graph on CTC and PE, we can see how small the CDCTC is as a benefit for families:

What effect would our proposed change to the CDCTC have? To estimate this, we use the 2023 American Community Survey to simulate the effect of different CDCTC eligibility rules. 

The results are striking. First, the OBBB considerably expands the CDCTC. While public commentary has described OBBB changes to the CDCTC as relatively minor, they do not appear minor: total spending on the CDCTC is likely to rise considerably. 

Second, removing the discrimination against one-earner families increases benefits further. Whereas OBBB changes disproportionately benefited higher-earning families, eliminating one-earner discrimination provides roughly stable benefits to families from $40,000 to $200,000 in income, and thus much larger relative benefits for lower- and middle-income families.

Third, allowing a third-child benefit disproportionately benefits a few families with incomes around $20-$40,000 who had unusual tax liability patterns, as well as higher-earning families. But remember, a higher-earning family with more children is not as rich as it might seem. Healthcare subsidies under the Affordable Care Act extend to 400% of the poverty line, representing an understanding that families in this range are basically middle-income. A family at 400% of the poverty line with one child has $107,000 in income; with two, $129,000 in income; with three, $151,000 in income. The large benefit increases shown above are not flowing to families who have the highest purchasing power per family member; it just so happens that it takes a lot of money to support a family of five in America today.

How much would such a change cost? Fixing one-earner discrimination as we propose costs about $2-$4 billion in 2026, and plausibly $25-$50 billion over the next decade. Fixing third-child discrimination costs about $3.5-$5 billion in 2026, and plausibly $35-$60 billion over the next decade. Thus, our proposed reforms here cost a combined $60-$110 billion over the next decade.

America Can Afford to Fix Family Policy

Over the next decade, these combined proposed fixes would cost between $115 and $245 billion for taxpayers. That is a considerable sum. But it is worth paying—and the revenue can be raised without raising income taxes. Preserving the pro-family legacy of the TCJA, eliminating unfairness in child care programs, and rationalizing family policy is worth a modest price; and the price is, indeed, very modest. 

The fixes we have proposed pencil out to around $11-$25 billion in additional budgetary costs per year. This is a not a small sum in principle, but it is a drop in the bucket compared to federal revenues, and we have sensible suggestions on how the money could be raised without raising income taxes or cutting other family programs.

As we argued in previous research on the CTC, policymakers could consider special per-usage-minute excise taxes on pornography providers or producers, social media companies, and higher tax rates on gambling—similar to excise taxes already charged on gun manufacturers, gasoline, airline tickets, fishing equipment, indoor tanning services, ship passengers, expensive insurance policies, and alcohol, for example. In 2023 the Federal government raised $209 million from excise taxes on fishing gear and bows-and-arrows, and $68 million from taxes on tanning salons; these are small amounts overall, but they point to the absurdity of leaving addictive pornography and social media untaxed. Likewise, excise taxes on gambling (especially addictive online gambling) already exist: a paltry 0.25% of wages are charged as an excise tax, which raised $375 million in federal revenues in 2024 vs. industry revenues of almost $72 billion. 

Across all excise taxes, the Federal government raised almost $100 billion in revenue in 2023 alone; new excise taxes for addictive digital products or higher rates for existing products like alcohol would be a reasonable way to cover the entire revenue needs envisioned in this brief. Excise tax revenues would need to rise by only 10-25%, a perfectly feasible sum, especially if policymakers considered levying taxes on heavy electric vehicles to replace losses on gasoline taxes. 

There are plenty of revenue options available for policymakers to pay for these fixes. For comparison, the OBBB raised annual spending on agricultural insurance subsidies by $6.3 billion per year, added $1 billion per year to Mars mission spending, $1.2 billion per year to Air Traffic Control improvements, $2 billion per year to Coast Guard readiness, $100 million a year to expanded inland waterways development, $200 million a year to expand the Adoption Credit, $200 million a year reducing taxes on distilled liquors, $4 billion a year on expanded detention facilities for illegal immigrants, and $800 million more a year on nuclear waste management. We highlight these not to suggest they are good or bad expenditures—but simply to note that the scale of spending change we suggest is, well within the range of budget items that never made the news at any stage of budget debates: these are small spending items.

Yet, the benefits to families are large. The difference between the OBBB and our proposal is, for a typical family, almost $500 per child. Most of those benefits flow to working-class and middle-income families, since the first-dollar phase in, one-earner discrimination fix, and third-child discrimination fix all disproportionately benefit these families. At a time when falling birth and marriage rates show that American families are clearly struggling, it is advantageous for Congress to at least ensure families get as good a deal as President Trump delivered for them in the TCJA. The OBBB did not fully deliver that. But with a few enhancements, Congress can.

Abstract

Married-couple households are more affluent, less likely to be poor, and experience fewer hardships than other types of households, such as single-parent families or people living on their own. This research brief explores why, focusing on differences across household types in income, non-income resources, such as wealth, and demographic and socioeconomic characteristics, such as age and education.

In our recent study, published in Demographic Research, we find that married-couple households experience fewer hardships than other households while single-parent families with children experience the most. Other household types, such as cohabiting couples and people living alone, fall in between. The biggest reason for the married-couple advantage is wealth—married couples often have more savings and assets to fall back on. Income also plays a significant role, followed by demographic and socioeconomic characteristics.

In short, the income- and wealth-building capacity of married-couple households are important for helping them avoid hardships. Meanwhile, a more moderate portion of the married-couple household advantage reflects the selection of more fortunate demographic and socioeconomic groups into marriage—for instance, people with higher levels of education are more likely to marry than others. 

The U.S. individual income tax structure and the safety-net assistance system exact financial penalties on married couples, which worsen when children are in the family. The effect of these penalties is the opposite of what public policy should be. Research has established that society benefits immensely from stable and healthy marriages. This policy brief is divided into two sections. Section 1 focuses on the U.S. Tax Code and restoring the income tax to its primary purpose, while eliminating the marriage penalty. Section 2 presents a way for Congress to eliminate marriage penalties from safety-net programs.

Pronatal Policy Works, and America Can't Afford to Forego it

What would happen to American fertility if the child tax credit were appreciably increased? Many are skeptical of the influence of cash transfers on fertility, but that skepticism is misplaced. Cash-for-kids works. It is relatively cost-effective, and its fertility effects help families achieve their own stated family goals. The pronatal outcomes of an increased child tax credit are a good reason to support such an investment.

Key Findings:

• Financial incentives—such as child tax credits—can indeed boost fertility by a demographically significant degree, and have done so in many contexts around the world.
• We suggest raising the nonrefundable child tax credit (CTC) to $2,000 and making it claimable against payroll taxes, raising the refundable additional child tax credit (ACTC) to $2,500, and indexing both values to keep up with inflation.
• This reform to the child tax credit could plausibly boost fertility by 3–10%, raising U.S. population in 2100 by at least 5 and perhaps as much as 35 million people. 
• This plan would also increase incentives for parents to marry and increase incentives for parents to work, creating not only more births, but stronger families.

How the Character of Men's Work Is Linked to Their Family Status

Grant Martsolf, Brad Wilcox, Good Jobs, Strong Families. How the character of men's work is linked to their family status (The Institute for Family Studies, Penn’s Program for Research on Religion and Urban Civil Society (PRRUCS), 2025)

Media Coverage

John DiIulio, "The best natalist policy: good jobsThe makings of a second Baby Boom," UnHerd, May 26, 2025

Chris Bullivant, Grant Martsolf, Brad Wilcox, "Is the collapse of blue-collar marriage a foregone conclusion," The Washington Examiner, April 30, 2025

Grant Martsolf, "Good jobs, strong families in working-class America," Family Studies, April 29, 2025

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Introduction

Over the last half century, the U.S. economy has shifted, moving away from manufacturing and towards being an information and service economy. The mid-1980s, for instance, were punctuated by news of the closures of major steel manufacturers, including Homestead Works, Aliquippa Works, and Duquesne Works in Pittsburgh, PA, and Republic Works in Youngstown, OH. The closures were part and parcel of a period of massive deindustrialization. Between 1984 and 2004, the U.S. economy lost between 6 and 7 million manufacturing jobs that provided reliable and high-paying employment with good benefits for millions of working-class Americans.

The move away from manufacturing had a significant impact on America’s working class. Real wages of the median Americans with a high school diploma or less (a common measure of “working class”) declined by 11% between 1979 and 2019, while those of the median worker who had finished college increased by 15 percent. Many industrial communities, especially across America’s “Rust Belt,” experienced significant disinvestment and fell into blight. These economic shifts, both in the Rust Belt and nationwide, took a devastating toll. They pushed working-class men’s labor force participation down and led to declines in religious and secular expressions of community life in areas hit hardest by deindustrialization. Families not only broke apart but failed to form. In the wake of this economic dislocation and social breakdown, deaths of despair—that is, deaths from drug overdoses, suicides, and alcoholism—surged among working-class women and especially men.

The transformation of the American economy has been especially impactful on working-class men. As manufacturing receded, employment in service industries surged, especially in healthcare, financial, and information services. Many of these service jobs require a college degree. And most of the significant growth in jobs that do not require a college degree has been concentrated in industries and occupations that are female dominated. Since 1990, the healthcare industry alone has added roughly 9 million jobs to the US economy. Nearly 80% of Americans who do not have a college degree and work in healthcare are women.nbsp;In fact, declines in real wages for working-class workers were concentrated among men; working-class women have seen their real wages rise since 1979.

Over this same period, Americans have also experienced a significant reduction in marriage and family stability. Since 1970, the marriage rate has fallen by more than 60% to the point where only about 1 in 2 adults are married. Declines in marriage and family stability have been especially precipitous for working-class Americans since 1980. For instance, only 39% of non-college-educated Americans ages 18-55 are married, compared to 58% of college-educated Americans.

Our hypothesis in this Institute for Family Studies (IFS) report is that the nature and character of work play a key role in affecting male marriageability. We contend that features of work like job stability, predictable hours, good benefits, and high pay help men to flourish and, in turn, elevate their appeal as husbands. Moreover, we note that class divides in marriage today are driven in part by differences in the character of work, with college-educated men generally benefiting, in terms of marriage and family formation, from jobs that are more stable, predictable, higher status, and remunerative. But we also suspect that the character of work varies among working-class men themselves, such that some jobs among working-class men are more likely to facilitate marriage and family formation than others.

In this report, we examine family formation among working-class men, defined here as men without college degrees, within the context of distinct employment environments. We also examine differences in married family formation rates—measured here in terms of being married with children at home—between working-class and college-educated men, and we investigate the extent to which these differences might be explained by differences in “good job” variables—primarily differences in pay, benefits, and stability. We then explore differences in the rates of married family formation among working-class men by industry and estimate the extent to which differences across industries are explained by the same “good job” variables. We conclude with a discussion of how public policies might better support working-class men in their jobs to improve their family prospects.

Part 1: Family Formation Among Working-class Men

Trends in family formation rates

In this section, using historical Census data from 1980-2021, we discuss recent family formation trends among working-class men. Working class throughout this report is operationalized as completion of less than a college education. Here, college education is defined as completion of at least four years of college. Importantly, this is slightly different than the operationalization of “working class” because the measures of educational attainment in historical Census data are slightly different from the CPS data used in subsequent analyses.

There is ample evidence that college-educated Americans are more likely to get married, stay married, and avoid having children out of wedlock. This is partly because more educated men and women have more stable incomes, more shared assets, greater civic supports for their marriages, and networks that are dominated by married peers, as Wilcox argued in Get Married.

However, this has not always been the case. In fact, before the 1980s, men who did not complete college had higher rates of married family formation compared to those who did complete college. In our analysis of Census data, we found that in 1980, 59% of all prime working-age men (ages 25-55) who did not complete college were married with children living in their homes, compared to 55% of men who did complete college.

Over the course of the next 40 years, all men in America were increasingly less likely to be married and living with children. By 2021, only 37% of prime working-age men were married living with children compared to 58% in 1980 (Figure 1). But the overall decline in married family formation was more significant for men who had not completed college. Over the last 40 years, men who had not graduated from college were now actually less likely than college-educated men to be married and living with their own children. By 2021, 34% of non-college-educated, prime working-age men were married and living with their own children compared to 44% of college-educated men. 

Introduction

The last quarter century has seen a dramatic increase in grade inflation on student report cards in elementary, middle, and high schools throughout the United States. So much so that a student’s grade point average (GPA), which was once as useful as SAT or ACT scores, has become almost worthless as a predictor of how well the student would do in college or graduate school. And high school graduation rates have continued climbing even as the 12th-Grade results of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) have remained stagnant or even declined. There has also been a notable decline in disciplinary actions by schools for student misconduct or lack of application.

Progressive education reformers have sought to make family background less of a determinant of how well a student does in school. Yet evidence from two nationwide household surveys of parents conducted nearly a quarter of a century apart demonstrate that family factors, such as marital stability, parent education, family income, and race and ethnicity, are as important as ever—or even more so

Housing is a core part of the family formation process, yet surprisingly little is known about what kinds of houses Americans want for their families. We remedy that gap in our recent report, Homes for Young Families: A Pro-family Housing Agenda, which presents evidence from a survey of nearly 9,000 Americans ages 18-54.