2/5 Building Social Capital At Home - THE CASE

Financially secure and stable households are crucial to parental and children’s well-being and development. Resources in a child’s early years—both inside the home from parents and outside of it from the community—have an outsized impact on a person’s life trajectory. Research by Nobel-prize winning economist James Heckman suggests that the quality of early childhood investments has intergenerational impact, including the economic and health outcomes of children’s children.

Yet forming a family usually occurs early in a person’s life when earnings are relatively low and child-related expenses (such as housing and child care) are high. The U.S. is an international outlier in not protecting the time between infants and their parents following birth. It also provides a smaller share of public resources to children than nearly any other developed nation. Employers, while expanding their family-friendly benefits in recent years, often lack policies such as flexible work and predictable scheduling that would make it easier to work while raising a family.

An increase in parenting alone has compounded the challenges of family affordability. The U.S. has the highest rate of single parent households in the developed world, which is correlated to heightened financial fragility. But there’s also been a thinning of social capital in communities—from church attendance to tight-knit and safe neighborhoods—which previously would have provided additional resources and supports to such families.

The result is a significant share of American families that report feeling financially fragile, unable to achieve their economic goals, and more stressed relative to their global peers. A broken immigration system and language barriers compound these challenges for Hispanic families, who currently comprise the largest share of children in poverty.

Policymakers, employers, and civil society should come together to make America the best place to raise children for the sake of parents, children, and the future of our country.