Why Two Parents Are Better Than One w/ Melissa Kearney (Encore)

Melissa Kearney is the author of The Two-Parent Privilege: How Americans Stopped Getting Married and Started Falling Behind. Her book confronts the politically controversial fact that children raised in two-parent homes have better personal and professional outcomes (ON AVERAGE) than those raised in single-parent homes. Specifically, two-parent homes produce children who are more likely to graduate from high school and college, more likely to stay out of jail, to achieve stable employment, high earnings, and eventually to get married themselves, thus replicating the same advantages they had for their children. For pointing this out, Kearney was excoriated by academic colleagues who accused her of having a right-wing political agenda, which is preposterous considering that she had spent the 20 years prior to writing her book researching social policy, poverty, and inequality. Melissa is the Gilbert F. Schaefer Professor of Economics at the Unversity of NotreDame. She holds a BA in Economics from Princeton and a PhD in Economics from MIT. This is an encore episode from 2023.

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