Too many Canadians know firsthand the emotional toll of family breakdown. And few would dispute there’s a financial cost, too; a split household means paying rent twice, for example. There’s also a public toll as a consequence of family breakdown, since the state often pays out benefits to help support broken families. It’s this national financial burden that we aim to measure in the Cost of Family Breakdown in Canada, a report to be released in May, 2009. // A U.S. study last year determined that $140-billion in public spending could be saved if all children lived with their own married parents. In the U. K., the extra costs to the taxpayer of poverty in single-parent households were measured at $66-billion, equal to more than 6% of total government spending. // A marriage is a private relationship, but it is also a public institution. Strong marriages are public goods because they generate social capital from which we all benefit.
Aggregation of real-time updates on relationship and marriage news, research, and global trends compiled by
Marc Payan
