Study: Only 46 Percent of Children
Grow Up in Intact Homes

BY MICHAEL FOUST                                                                                                                 ©2011 Baptist Press
O
nly 46 percent of children in the United States will reach age 17 having grown up in a home with biological parents who are married -- a figure that has a significant impact on the nation's graduation, poverty and teenage birth rates, according to a new report.

"We have never faced anything like this in human history," said the Family Research Council's Pat Fagan, one of the co-authors of the study.  Compiled by Fagan and psychologist Nicholas Zill and released by the Family Research Council's Marriage & Religion Research Institute, the data shows that:

The authors call their report the index of family belonging, and they say there is a direct correlation between a low "family belonging" rate, and high poverty and low graduation rates. A north-to-south trip on the Mississippi River, from Minnesota to Mississippi, is a good example of this correlation, the authors say.

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