Heritage report warns: Family decline threatens America’s next 250
The Heritage Foundation released a new report last week outlining a plan to save the American family. The report, titled “Saving America by Saving the Family: A Foundation for the Next 250 Years,” encapsulates how policy and culture can solve what the organization expects will be a bipartisan issue: saving the deteriorating American family.
On Monday, Kevin Roberts, Heritage Foundation’s president, shared the dire numbers.
“If we stay on this trajectory of declining marriage rates, and particularly of declining fertility rates where we’re at 1.59, the replacement rate as you no doubt know is about 2.1,” Roberts told The Daily Signal, “by as early as 2050, demographically speaking, the United States will have passed the point of no return in which its population can reproduce itself.”
One Heritage solution involves the federal Child Tax Credit, which Roberts reminds is a policy The Heritage Foundation pioneered many decades ago. The report calls for revising the child tax credit to incentivize marriage rather than reward single parents.
“The particular proposal we’re most proud of, and actually the most optimistic about, is expanding the usage of the adoption tax credit,” Roberts said.
The adoption tax credit is currently $17,280. Heritage proposes continuing to apply this tax credit for adoptions with the government granting a 25% bonus to parents who have been married at least three years for each child adopted over two years old.
“We are not saying in this paper that government is the answer,” said Roberts. “We are saying that government, however—federal policy, to be specific—is a necessary component. It’s not a sufficient answer to this. It’s a necessary component … at the top of the list, culture, society, [and] people exercising their freedom for individual options.”
Roberts is confident that President Donald Trump and his administration will embrace the policies the foundation presents in the report.
“The reason for that is the rhetoric, the good rhetoric from the administration, including the president himself, has signified that they understand that this is a civilizational problem,” said Roberts.
The foundation’s president also confirmed the family policy plan is getting positive feedback from lawmakers in Washington.
“I can report, including firsthand, that our conversations on Capitol Hill with members of both the House and Senate and staff have gone exceedingly well. There’s tremendous gratitude by many thoughtful members of Congress that we have opened up this conversation,” Roberts shared.
Roberts speculates that ‘Saving the American Family’ will be a winning issue for Republicans in the upcoming midterms. “We need to lead with economy and affordability,” he said. “But this is related to those two questions, and so if it’s framed within that, I think it can be very helpful this fall.”
[Editor’s note: This story originally was published by The Daily Signal.]