President Trump signaled his commitment to making America “greater, stronger and far more exceptional than ever before” in his important Inaugural Address last week. Crucially, Trump made a personal commitment to fight for parents and their dreams for their children. Meanwhile, Vice President Vance declared at last week’s March for Life it was “the task of our government to make it easier for young moms and dads to afford to have kids,” recognizing national success not in terms of GDP but in “whether people feel that they can raise thriving and healthy families in our country.” Both of them are right.
For the Trump-Vance administration to make America greater than ever before, they will need to focus on this priority: the American family. There is an important political imperative for the administration to do so: parents and married Americans voted for the Trump-Vance ticket in greater numbers than their fellow citizens who aren’t married and don’t have children. But more importantly, nothing is more vital to reviving the fortunes of American civilization than strengthening the American family.
The polls tell us that more and more Americans are failing when it comes to that classic American ideal, “the pursuit of happiness.” Yet we know that nothing matters more to making that destination possible than renewing the fortunes of marriage and family life. No Americans are happier than married mothers and fathers, for instance.
Not surprisingly, then, Americans’ faith in the American Dream has plummeted in recent years. Only 36% of Americans in one recent Wall Street Journal/NORC Poll said the American Dream is still attainable. The connection is right there in the data. Recent research from Harvard economist Raj Chetty and his team indicates that nothing matters for the local health of the American Dream—measured in terms of poor children having a shot at financial success as adults—than the number of two-parent families in their community.
The research is clear: as the family goes, so goes America.
Our research at the Institute for Family Studies (IFS) indicates there are three impediments to Americans being able to get married and start a family: money, marriage penalties, and affordable housing.
Money. Too many working- and middle-class Americans feel like it’s too expensive to have and raise a family today. A massive 71% of families agree that having to choose between a middle-class lifestyle and having both parents work is untenable. Yet if Congress does not act, the $2,000 in support families receive per-child through the child tax credit (CTC) will be cut in half later this year. This is unacceptable, given the importance of making family life more affordable for ordinary Americans and the enormous costs that parents incur for raising the next generation of citizens, workers, and taxpayers.
The administration should push to renew and expand the CTC by focusing the tax credit on working families with at least $20,000 in income. The CTC should be expanded to $4,200 annually for each child under 5 with a further $3,000 for each school-aged child under 18. This is not only in line with J.D. Vance’s proposal during the campaign when he reminded voters that “President Trump has been on the record for a long time supporting a bigger child tax credit” but also consistent with the rising costs of feeding and housing a family today.
Marriage Penalties. A further obstacle to building strong and stable families in the nation are tax and welfare policies that penalize marriage most among some of Trump’s strongest supporters: the working class. The government offers a range of supports to lower-income families, from the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) to the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP, or food stamps) and Medicaid. The problem, however, is these programs often make it more expensive for couples with children receiving them to get married because putting a ring on it could lead them to losing the benefit. About 1-in-10 lower-income Americans report one reason they are not married is because of these penalties.
A simple fix is to double the income thresholds for married couples. To limit the costs of this policy move, this approach should be focused on married couples with children under 5 for means-tested programs such as Medicaid, SNAP, and the EITC. Another idea would be to give working-class married families with young children a $1,000 rebate if they have incurred a marriage penalty related to one of these programs. Congress should tackle these penalties this year, especially because it already fixed many of these types of marriage penalties facing the rich.
Affordable Single-Family Housing. Finally, families need somewhere to live. Too many Americans report that an affordable home is out of reach for them today. One YouGov poll found that almost two-thirds of Americans report that it is “very difficult or somewhat difficult” to find affordable housing where they live. And forthcoming research by our colleague Lyman Stone at IFS indicates affordable single-family homes are a top priority for younger Americans who have or desire children.
Trump and Vance should move on efforts to make housing—especially the kind of single-family homes that are most attractive to young families—more affordable. Trump’s Freedom Cities proposal is one great policy idea for creating new housing for American families. The plan to build 10 new D.C.-sized cities on federal land would help cross the Rubicon in housing development if it prioritizes neighborhoods with single-family homes. This plan should be supplemented by a parallel effort to build 100 new towns on federal land across the nation, especially in states where the federal government controls significant amounts of territory. Senator Mike Lee, whose state of Utah is almost two-thirds federal land—and who has been calling for the U.S. to honor its original commitment to release land to the state from back when it joined the Union—promises to be one important voice in support of this effort. But the bottom line is that the federal government must open its enormous share of unused or underused federal land to new homesteading to help make family formation more affordable in America.
The renewal of the American civilization depends upon strong and stable families. Housing supply and marriage rates are huge drivers of family formation. There’s much more than mere words that the federal government can do to make that process easier and more attractive. If Trump and Vance wish to make American families great, they should take action in the early days of their administration to make that vision possible.