Latest American Family Survey Finds Mounting Economic Worries

The most recent American Family Survey—an annual collaboration by the Wheatley Institute at Brigham Young University, the Deseret News and BYU’s Center for the Study of Elections and Democracy—found families are experiencing increasing economic concerns and a decrease in worries about cultural issues.

The latest findings from the 10th annual survey were presented in a webinar last week hosted by the American Enterprise Institute.

The survey found good news and bad news when it comes to building a lasting, big-tent bipartisan coalition to support pro-families policies, said Christopher Karpowitz, co-director of the Center for the Study of Elections and Democracy and professor of political science at Brigham Young University.

The good news: The survey has consistently found that “when it comes to day-to-day family life, red and blue families in the United States look very similar,” Karpowitz said. “Both red and blue families love their children.”

On the other hand, Karpowitz and Jeremy Pope, co-director of the Center for the Study of Elections and Democracy, said there are increasing signs of partisan stress points within the pro-family movement. Pope said Democrats have a blind spot when it comes to supporting the institution of marriage and Republicans have a blind spot when it comes to supporting pro-family government programs that are popular in both parties.

And both side suffer from the whiplash that comes with frequent changes of administration and party control in Congress.

“This coalition needs to be long-lasting and big,” Pope said. “If government is going to have any sort of effect, it can’t just have a program for a couple of years or fire everyone in a government agency and think that will help families grow. It has to do something that’s sustained.”

Highlights from the survey;

• When presented with a list of most important issues facing families, respondents’ top three answers were lack of government programs to support families, parents not teaching or disciplining their children sufficiently and the costs associated with raising a family (30%).
• There were very few partisan differences among respondents asked to reflect on their own families’ challenges. Democrats reported more concern than Republicans about their family’s mental or physical health struggles and about a lack of good jobs or wages for family members. Republicans were more likely to emphasize a lack of religious faith or church attendance in their family and were slightly more worried than Democrats about crime and other threats to personal safety.
• Nearly 8 in 10 Republicans believe that marriage is needed to create strong families, compared with just 4 in 10 Democrats.
• Neither party wants the government encouraging people to have children, with support for that policy registering around 25 percent.
• Most Americans think government programs would be more helpful for families generally than for their family in particular, but they rate housing, food, and health care programs consistently higher than others.

Given the survey’s findings that economic concerns are dwarfing worries about social issues, AEI’s Brad Wilcox suggested during a panel discussion of the survey that the new administration focus on programs that lift up working-class families. “We are doing a ton programmatically to support lower-income families and there is frustration among the working class for programs that reward people who are playing by the rules,” Wilcox said.

Melissa Kearney, Neil Moskowitz Professor of Economics, University of Maryland and director of the Aspen Economic Strategy Group, acknowledged the survey’s identification of economic worries for families, but pushed back against the “play by the rules” policy focus. “I’m not in favor of framing things as giving support to people who are playing by the rules,” Kearney said, “Often, people who look like they are not playing by the rules have a lot of struggles and barriers and need our help the most.”