According to former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee (R), America’s poverty problem would be greatly reduced if single parents would simply tie the knot.
The potential 2012 GOP presidential candidate made the statements in the course of his appearance on Fox & Friend as part of the promotional tour for his new book, A Simple Government — Twelve Things We Really Need from Washington (And a Trillion We Don’t).
In the midst of discussing how the country needs “family responsibility over government control,” Huckabee offered up a rather dubious cure on reducing the nation’s poor.
“Do you realize in America, we have a $300 billion a year dad deficit in America,” he said. “If we talk about poverty, two-thirds of poverty in this country disappear if the mothers of children marry the fathers of those kids.”
Watch the video below:
That claim by Huckabee, a popular right wing memo promoted by former President George W. Bush and more recently by the Heritage Foundation’s Robert Rector, does not appear to be supported by the data.
In a government report released last year, marriage (and programs promoting it) did not lead to a decrease in poverty, especially among single mothers. The study from May 2010 on the marriage promotion programs promoted by the previous administration found they had “no effect on family economic well-being”
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