Family First, Texas Strong

Progressives have long held that their liberal family policy agenda is key to strengthening America’s families. In spotlighting Minnesota’s drive to advance paid family leave, expand the child tax credit for poor families, and provide free school lunch to all children in the state, for instance, then-Washington Post columnist Catherine Rampell wrote that these progressive policies provide “further evidence that one major party cares about children and families; and the other does not.” If this view is correct, one would expect families to be more likely to flourish in blue states, with, for example, higher fertility rates and greater family in-migration. Blue states would be hothouses and magnets for families, places where men and women are especially likely to have and raise children, and attract families in droves. Indeed, many of the policies related to the blue-state suite of family policies—such as paid parental leave and free school lunches—poll well among parents.

But when it comes to family, revealed preferences tell a very different story from expressed preferences about what makes a family-friendly state. In recent years, American families have been migrating from blue states like California, New York, and Minnesota by the hundreds of thousands to red states like Idaho, Tennessee, and Texas, many of which have none of these progressive family policies. What they do offer families, however, is the opportunity to support themselves financially more readily than in blue states with lower taxes, stronger job growth, and more affordable single-family homes. Red states are also more likely to embrace the kinds of values and virtues that sustain a family-first way of life, as well as the institutions (e.g., churches) that reinforce the family. These economic and cultural factors have made red states more successful in fostering a strong family life, as indicated not only by family migration trends but also by markedly higher fertility rates in red states. Indeed, since 2000, states in which Trump won the 2024 popular vote have experienced a 7 percent increase in their child population, whereas states in which Harris won have experienced a 7 percent decrease. These trends suggest a supportive economic and cultural climate for families trumps the progressive family policies on offer from many blue states.

No state in the Union has attracted more families in recent years than Texas. In 2021-2022, for instance, the Lone Star state welcomed a net of more than 64,000 families with children, more than any other state. The state’s fertility rate of 1.81, according to data from the 2023 NVSS, is well above the national average. Texas’s relatively high family fortunes are a testament to its success — as with many red states — in offering a favorable economic climate and family-friendly culture that compare favorably with the economic and cultural alternatives in many blue states. Today, even though they often provide family policies that may be helpful at some margin to families, blue states like California and New York frequently present families with a bad deal economically in high taxes and high housing costs, and culturally with comparatively high rates of public disorder or crime, not to mention a public culture that tends to be hostile to the values and institutions that are most conducive to strong and stable families. Historically, states like Texas have made it easier to live a family-first lifestyle.

But even in Texas, there is a need to strengthen the economic and cultural climate for Lone Star families, lest the state lose the economic and cultural advantages that have made it so attractive to families. Family formation is headed down in the state, as a recent report from the Texas Public Policy Foundation and the Institute for Family Studies noted. Since 1990, the marriage rate has fallen by 45 percent, and since 2010, the fertility rate has fallen by 15 percent. Although the state is doing comparatively better than much of the country, it is still influenced by two key trends that inhibit family formation across the country: rising concerns about family affordability and declining support for the values and virtues that sustain strong families. State and local policymakers in Texas need to advance on both economic and cultural fronts to maintain, and even renew, its status as one of the nation’s most family-friendly states.

Economically, a big part of the Lone Star State’s appeal to families has been an ample supply of affordable single-family homes. This is important because when young adults are thinking about having or expanding their families, they overwhelmingly prefer “single-family housing in safe neighborhoods” compared to apartments in large complexes, as Wendell Cox and Lyman Stone have noted. But in many metro areas across the state, affordable single-family homes are increasingly out of reach for ordinary families. In the Dallas-Fort Worth metro, for instance, home prices have risen 170 percent since January 2012, making it harder for first-time buyers and those who would like to trade up to purchase a home. The DFW “housing shortage — now estimated at 84,000 units — is growing,” according to Tobias Peter and Edward Pinto at the American Enterprise Institute.

The solution to this affordability crisis lies in expanding the supply of affordable single-family housing and reducing regulations that increase the cost of construction. In Dallas-Fort Worth, for instance, if median lots on homes built since 2000 had been merely 25 percent smaller at 5,500 square feet, the result would have been 200,000 extra homes today — well over double what's required to eliminate the current deficit. Given the seriousness of the issue, the state needs to implement regulatory reforms —from reducing lot-size requirements to eliminating urban growth boundaries — to increase the supply of affordable homes for Texas families.  The Texas legislature, for instance, correctly moved to pass SB-15, which eliminates city-imposed minimum lot sizes above 3,000 square feet for new subdivisions, SB-640, which allows residential and mixed-use housing on commercial and light industrial land, and SB-2477, which streamlines the conversion of vacant commercial buildings into residential or mixed-use properties. The legislature should pursue additional measures not only to continue eliminating regulatory barriers to building more affordable single-family homes but also to maximize the likelihood that the state remains an affordable place to live and raise a family for working- and middle-class Texans.

Culturally, the state has experienced declines in marriage and fertility rates in recent years that are consistent with a broader national cultural shift away from family — what I have called the rise of a “Midas Mindset” in place of a “family-first mindset.” The state has only limited capacity to change Texas family culture, but it can implement policies to foster a more family-friendly mindset among young adults. For instance, in 2027, the Texas Legislature should follow in the footsteps of states like Alabama and Tennessee that have passed legislation incorporating the “Success Sequence” into family life/financial curricula for middle- and high school schools across the state. This is a research-backed three-step formula: 97 percent of young adults who follow the success sequence — that is, who complete high school, obtain a full-time job, and marry before choosing to have children —are not poor by the time they reach their late twenties and thirties. Young adults who have followed the steps are about 50 percent less likely to be emotionally distressed than their peers who have not, and about four times more likely to be living in an intact family in their thirties. Consequently, the state should mandate the teaching of this formula to middle and high school students in 2027. Lives ordered by the success sequence toward economic, emotional, and family stability will be the bedrock of a generation of flourishing families in Texas.

Discussions of family policy dominated by progressives often assume that providing greater material support to low-income families and measures to ease the challenges of balancing work and family are paramount to strengthening the American family. However, the fact that family formation is declining most precipitously in blue states — not to mention countries like Canada, Finland, and Sweden, which have enacted very progressive family policies calls this perspective into question. It’s possible that the policies prized by progressives may have some merit. But the relative success of red states like Texas when it comes to family formation strongly suggests that states need to focus more on ensuring that their economic and cultural climate is family-friendly. The most important set of family policies that states should pursue, in other words, are those that make family life more affordable for ordinary citizens and underline the value of getting married and raising a family for the next generation.

Brad Wilcox is Distinguished University Professor of Sociology at the University of Virginia, Senior Fellow at the Institute for Family Studies, and author of Get Married: Why Americans Must Defy the Elites, Forge Strong Families, and Save Civilization.