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New study: marriage and church attendance help kids finish high school

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From the Marriage & Religion Research Institute. (I grabbed the PDF in case it disappears)

Excerpt:

The 1997 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth shows that students who now worship weekly and who grew up with two married parents are most likely to have received a high school degree.

Examining current religious attendance and structure of family of origin, 93 percent of students who grew up in intact married families and who attend weekly religious services have received a high school degree. Only 68 percent of students from all other family structures who never attend religious services received a high school degree. Eighty-nine percent of those who never worship but grew up in intact families and 81 percent of those who attend religious services weekly but come from other family structures received high school degrees.

Examining current religious attendance only, 87 percent of students who attend weekly religious services received a high school degree. In contrast, only 70 percent of those who never worship received a high school degree. Between these two extremes are those who attend at least monthly (81 percent) and those who attend less than monthly (76 percent).

Examining structure of family of origin, 91 percent of individuals who grew up with married biological parents received a high school degree. They are followed by those who grew up in a married stepfamily (80 percent), those who grew up with a single, divorced parent (76 percent), those who grew up in a cohabiting stepfamily (68 percent), those who grew up with an always-single parent (63 percent), and those who grew up in an intact cohabiting family (60 percent).

See the original article for footnotes, including links to other studies that confirm this finding.

The reason why this matters is because finishing high school is very important in order for people to avoid being poor.

Black economist Walter Williams explains.

Excerpt:

Avoiding long-term poverty is not rocket science. First, graduate from high school. Second, get married before you have children, and stay married. Third, work at any kind of job, even one that starts out paying the minimum wage. And, finally, avoid engaging in criminal behavior.

If you graduate from high school today with a B or C average, in most places in our country there’s a low-cost or financially assisted post-high-school education program available to increase your skills.

Most jobs start with wages higher than the minimum wage, which is currently $5.15. A man and his wife, even earning the minimum wage, would earn $21,000 annually. According to the Bureau of Census, in 2003, the poverty threshold for one person was $9,393, for a two-person household it was $12,015, and for a family of four it was $18,810. Taking a minimum-wage job is no great shakes, but it produces an income higher than the Bureau of Census’ poverty threshold. Plus, having a job in the first place increases one’s prospects for a better job.

Finishing high school is a major factor to prevent poverty, but research shows that the greatest preventer of child poverty (and child abuse) is marriage. Marriage stability also increases with regular church attendance. So, church attendance promotes both the completion of high school as well as the stability of marriage. Therefore, regular church attendance prevents poverty by helping two of the causes of poverty-avoidance.

Now… should we expect the secular left to promote church attendance based on this evidence? I think not.

One other point. The more marriage declines, the more children are raised without fathers, which makes it much less likely that children will accept the faith of their parents, leading to lower church attendance for the children of these fatherless homes. It’s a vicious cycle. The policies of the left that undermine marriage stability, like sex education, taxpayer-funded abortion, no-fault divorce and single motherhood welfare, actually cause the decline in church attendance that drives marriage rates and high school graduation rates down.

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NHS makes patients wait unnecessarily in order to avoid “raising expectations”

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From the UK Telegraph. (H/T Secondhand Smoke)

Excerpt:

NHS managers are making patients wait longer than necessary for operations, with one claiming that treating them quickly “raises expectations” At least 10 primary care trusts (PCTs) have told hospitals to increase the length of time before they see patients in order to save money, an investigation by The Daily Telegraph has found. In some areas, patients endured delays of 12 or 15 weeks after GPs decided they needed surgery, even though hospitals could have seen them sooner. The maximum permitted time between referral and treatment is 18 weeks. In one case a manager said the policy keeps patients in line as “short waiting times also create more demand for treatment due to the expectations this raises”. It comes after an NHS watchdog suggested that if patients are forced to wait a long time, they will remove themselves from lists “either by dying or by paying for their own treatment”.

Wesley J. Smith writes:

And the lessons are? Patients are people, not objects to be maneuvered to meet check list goals.  Centralized control has no place in health care.  Bureaucrats are not patient friendly.  What a disgrace.

Indeed. The best way to run a health care system is to let consumers hold onto their own money. When you keep your own money, you make the decisions. Not some health insurance company nor some government bureaucrat.

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Everything you need to know about Paul Krugman and the New York Times

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Government Spending Vs Jobs
Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid took control in 2007

From Newsbusters.

Excerpt:

Exactly what country does New York Times columnist Paul Krugman actually reside in?

Before you answer, consider the following sentence from his article Monday:

Although you’d never know it listening to the ranters, the past year has actually been a pretty good test of the theory that slashing government spending actually creates jobs.

For the past year to be a good test of this theory, there would have needed to be a slash to government spending, right?

Was this the case?

Hardly.

In fiscal 2010, total federal outlays were $3.72 trillion. In fiscal 2011 which ends September 30, we’re projected to spend $3.83 trillion. That’s a $111 billion increase.

Yet this Nobel laureate in economics thinks government spending was slashed.

In reality, since the last time such outlays declined year over year was 1965, we should really be testing Krugman, Obama, and the Democrats’ theory that dramatic increases in government spending creates jobs.

Democrats have been radically increasing outlays since they took over Congress in 2007. During this time, as spending rose by 41 percent, the economy lost roughly seven million jobs sending unemployment skyrocketing from 4.4 percent to 9.1 percent.

If Krugman wasn’t delusional, the above referenced sentence from his Monday column would read, “Although you’d never know it listening to the ranters like Barack Obama, the Democrats, Robert Reich, and me, the past four years have actually been a fabulous test of the theory that exploding government spending actually creates jobs.

Isn’t that really the only conclusion that one could draw given what’s happened since this recent Keynesian experiment began in 2007?

Of course, it’s unfair to expect this Nobel laureate in economics to make such an obvious determination.

He thinks a $111 billion increase in spending is a slash.

I think that Paul Krugman is going beyond mere mendacity these days, as his Keynesian worldview is disproved right before his eyes. The whole country is being treated to a massive disproof of all of his ideas, and this must be causing him some mental strain.

Is Paul Krugman seen as reliable?

I’m not the only one to point out how nutty Krugman has become of late.

Here’s a bunch of non-conservatives:

Why does the New York Times hire a deluded person? Because they don’t so much report the news as they provide their readers with “confirmation” of a worldview that allows them to feel that they are right without having to care about reality. In short, Krugman is a well-paid writer of fiction.

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