How States Can Help Families

Editor's Note: This is part of Civitas Outlook's Family Policy Symposium.

It’s rare to bite into a marble cake and find it a better experience than either a plain vanilla or plain chocolate cake would have been. Same, too, with “marble cake federalism,” the label that inevitably gets used to describe how many of today’s anti-poverty and social safety net programs are run.

Social welfare spending is not among the responsibilities delegated to the federal government, such as immigration enforcement and national defense. But neither do states have free rein, since much of the funding comes from federal coffers with various strings attached.

Since the Great Society, states – who, unlike D.C., generally must balance their budgets – have been more than willing to give up some flexibility in exchange for federal dollars. And if you care about little more than ticking a box on a form and delivering a check, voucher, or in-kind benefit, “marble cake federalism” has a certain logic. But if your goal is a little broader than merely ascertaining whether this individual qualifies for that government program, a system in which D.C. cuts checks and carefully circumscribes certain areas in the sandbox in which states can tinker can get you where you need to go.

A more pro-family society will require more attentiveness to the economic pressures on families, as well as the pain points that make raising a child more difficult, be it the pressures of social media, wasted hours in traffic, or crime and disorder. The federal government can, and should, make some of the financial trade-offs somewhat less painful. But when it comes to daily life, states can – and should – experiment with different approaches to centering families’ needs in public policy.

States’ plenary police powers encompass crime, schools, and other quality of life indicators that can make it harder or easier for parents trying to raise kids. And there are only a few policy decisions that don’t end up touching questions of family formation. Sometimes it will be directly, as in the case of marriage penalties, which incentivize cohabitation, or family caps, which restrict public benefits to families who have additional children while on welfare. But often their influence is more indirect, such as the way we design our cities to be more or less stroller-friendly, or whether we make home ownership more or less affordable through our zoning and environmental policies.

Throughout their decision-making, policymakers must recognize that families have unique needs that autonomous individuals do not. Parents tend to have higher expenses and more variable incomes around the time of childbirth; they tend to need more accommodations – from public parks and schools to diaper changing stations – to be considered truly welcome in the public square. Particularly in an era of rising childlessness, helping parents shoulder the burden of raising the next generation means putting families at the forefront when designing mortgage programs, civic squares, or tax rates.

For states, the key question in evaluating any given policy should be “does this proposal make it easier or harder for couples to pair off, have kids, and raise a family?” That question, while not dispositive, can help point lawmakers in the right direction. Like any political philosophy, this requires prudence. Not all things that masquerade as pro-family actually are (zeroing out property taxes, for example, requires states to either cut spending on services like education, or shift the tax burden onto earners, who are disproportionately likely to be younger and parents of kids under 18). Some that don’t appear to have an immediate nexus with family formation turn out to matter a great deal (widespread marijuana usage, for example, is apt to make young men even less marriageable than they otherwise would be.)

This requires authentic federalism rather than central planning with federalist characteristics. Any federal program or block grant with the explicit goal of boosting birth or marriage rates would rightfully raise authoritarian hackles (and, as countries from Hungary to Japan demonstrate, would likely only move the needle slightly.) And merely tweaking the mixture of our marble cake, or adding pro-family trimmings onto existing anti-poverty programs, won’t craft a more pro-family future.

For example, one idea being discussed on Capitol Hill by some Republicans would make stay-at-home parents eligible to receive payments under the federally-funded, and state-administered, Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG). While the motivation is understandable, the solution is an awkward fit. The statutory goal of the program is to make child care affordable for low-income, predominantly single-parent households. Trying to transform the CCDBG into a back-door family support program would put the federal government in the odd position of creating, in effect, a lottery where some, but not all, stay-at-home parents would receive payments at the expense of households needing child care assistance to be able to work.

Some states may want to experiment with their federal dollars to try to soften marriage penalties or benefit cliffs, which can punish families for seeing their take-home pay increase. This is all to the good, but a pro-family policy agenda will require more than simply retrofitting existing anti-poverty programs to be slightly more accommodating of family life.

A more egalitarian version of supporting families would be through expanding the Child Tax Credit, which the One, Big, Beautiful Bill did, albeit marginally, last summer. Parents bear the cost of raising the next generation in a way that empty-nesters and non-parents do not, and there’s no way to address that imbalance without some form of transfer system through the tax code. When it comes to pocketbook issues, a robust federal Child Tax Credit can significantly help parents out.

But federal tax and spending policy will always be a blunt instrument for questions of marriage and family. Meaningfully addressing them will require a cultural shift rather than blunt-force spending or administrative tweaks. Congress can and should write some checks and cut some taxes, but the focus on what policy changes could make day-to-day life easier for families are best pioneered by states – ideally sooner rather than later. 

Patrick T. Brown (@PTBwrites) is a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, where he writes on pro-family policy and publishes the weekly newsletter Family Matters.