Remained below 4 for the past 18 months. In recent years, weve seen consistently solid gdp growth and job creation. And yet not withstand the successes for many parents across this country, raising a family has become harder and more expensive than ever before. The New York Times recently surveyed adults 20 to 45 who were parents or planned to be. One in four had fewer children or expected to have fewer children than they considered ideal. Economic concerns were foremost among the reasons that they fell short or believed they would. Over the past few years, the joint economic committees social Capital Project has been documenting trends in our associational life, that is, the web of social relationships through which we pursue joint endeavors, our families, communities, workplaces, and religious congregations. A critical source of meaning and social capital is, of course, the family. In fact, it is the central set of headwaters for social connectedness generally. Thats why two of the projects main policy objectives are making it more affordable to raise a family, and increasing the number of children raised by happily married parents. The goals of todays hearing are to examine factors affecting family affordability and to explore policy approaches that would allow more americans to start and raise the families they desire. Increasingly, family affordability has become a unifying concern among lawmakers and commentators on both the political left and right. We hear it in discussions around topics as varied as Child Tax Credits, declining fertility rates, increases in the cost of child care and housing, paid family leave, and student debt burdens. Motivating all of these discussions is a simple sentiment, it shouldnt be this hard to raise a family. The problem is multifaceted. It is complex, difficult to unravel and understand completely. Economic challenges such as debt loads and increases in the cost of living make family formation and expansion difficult for Many Americans. Even many families that are economically stable must deal with the challenges of balancing work and family. Parents want to afford the best neighborhoods and schools for their children, but that often leaves too little time to spend with them. Less time at least then they would prefer. As more families have sent two earners into the workforce, employers have been slow to accommodate their desire for worklife balance. Meanwhile, americans who might prefer something closer to a traditional singlebreadwinner family face prices for housing and other expenses that are bid up by dualearner households. And the growing ranks of Single Parents are hampered by their high poverty rates. The answer to how did we get here is complicated. Our first step must be to adequately diagnose the problems facing our families. What fuels the rising costs of healthcare, child care, education, and housing . How many people are hindered in family formation by excessive student loan debt, inadequate income, or poor job prospects . To what extent does declining fertility reflect changing preferences, economic barriers, or other factors . Does the rise of the dualearner family signal increasing hardship or simply changing values . The next step must be to come up with solutions. What is the best way to help more families afford time out of the workforce to care for newborns . Are there ways to increase workfamily flexibility that are minimally disruptive to employers . And less likely than others to discourage job creation. Are there Government Policies that unintentionally have contributed to increases in the cost of housing, higher education, and health care, which can be reformed . How can we make the tax code fairer to parents who bear the costs of supporting future generations of americans . We can make sure we have the workforce and the Taxpayer Base necessary to fund that over the programs of today but the programs of 20, 30, 40 years from now. Our panelists today will discuss some of these topics, and more. I look forward to their testimonies and to a productive conversation aimed at helping parents and strengthening our families. I now recognize vice chair maloney for opening remarks. Thank you so much to our panelists and chairman lee for calling this hearing. Nothing is more important that our families. Thank you for shining a spotlight on the challenges facing American Families. We cant agree there is a problem. Today, millions of American Families are working longer and harder, not to get ahead, but just to stay in place. Over the past four decades, wages have been stuck or have barely increased. Meanwhile the costs of child care, education, housing and other necessities have grown. Most families rely on two incomes just to make ends meet. Because thats what it takes to support an American Family today. Nearly 40 of American Adults report that they or their families have trouble paying for at least one basic need like food, health care, housing or utilities. The picture is no brighter when you look at specific costs. Take child care. The average cost of centerbased infant care is more than one quarter of Median Household Income for single working parents. That means those who need child care the most cant afford it. Or look at college education, which is almost a necessity in todays economy. Since the 1980s, the average cost of a fulltime undergraduate degree has more than tripled for public and private institutions. Todays typical graduate leaves college with 30,000 in debt. Or look at housing. Home prices are higher than ever and often out of reach. And over one third of renters spend more than 30 percent of their income on rent. How are families responding to stagnant wages and growing costs . By taking on debt. Consumer debt, excluding mortgages, is now 4 trillion, its highest level ever after adjusting for inflation. Folks are also putting off Home Ownership, which can deprive them of a key source of wealth accumulation. Everyone in this room agrees that its more expensive than ever to raise a family. But we may disagree about the causes. And we may disagree about the solutions. I welcome the robust discussion that this committee provides. The entrance of women in the workforce is not the problem. We may hear that americans got married less frequently or later in life as women took on careers, and that this hurt fertility rates. But women have become key drivers of our economic success. Womens earnings boost the economy by trillions of dollars and are critical to American Families. Womens share of Household Earnings increased from 36 in 1993 to 45 in 2016. Women could do even more if we made it easier for them to enter and stay in the workforce. There are two key, overwhelmingly popular ways to do that, offer affordable child care and paid leave from work. Lets take a lesson from other oecd countries that provide these services and have significantly higher female labor force participation. And while were at it, lets make sure that women are paid fairly so they have strong incentives to work. On average, a Woman Working full time yearround earns just 82 of her male counterpart. For black and Hispanic Women its far worse. For too many, the American Dream is slipping away or out of reach. Some would say that the solution is for the federal government to do nothing. I disagree. It has a key role to play in helping to restore that dream. What can it do . What can congress do . Lets start by lifting the minimum wage. The house has passed legislation to lift the minimum wage to 15 by 2025 and give 33 million americans a raise. Its time for the senate to follow suit. We should expand programs and initiatives that we know work, like the earned income tax credit and Child Tax Credit. The eitc substantially increases employment among single mothers and reduces poverty levels for their families. We should make the Child Tax Credit fully refundable to allow the poorest families to receive the full benefit. The working families tax relief act, which expands both the eitc and ctc, would benefit 49 million children, including 2. 7 million in new york state. And we should strengthen the supplemental nutritional assistance program. S. N. A. P. Not only provides a Healthy Foundation for americas current and future workforce, its also an investment in our economy. Every dollar of snap generates more than one and a half dollars in increased gdp. And, finally, we should join the rest of the industrialized world and provide paid leave to workers. There are only two countries in the world that did not provide paid leave for the birth of a child, america and new guinea. My bill, which was included in the National Defense authorization act that passed the house this summer, is a good start. It would provide 12 weeks of paid leave to federal employees after the birth or adoption of a child or to care for a Family Member who has a serious illness. Raising a family is hard and rewarding work. We need to do more to provide workers with tools to balance their work and family responsibilities. I appreciate the chairman statement on flextime, how that that would be very helpful for families. Todays hearing and our witnesses testimony will shed light on the actions we can take to make raising a family more affordable. It is incredibly important for the future of america, for the future of American Families and for the American Dream. I yield back. Thank you, vice chair maloney. I would like to introduce our distinguished panel of witnesses. Before i do that want to address the couple housekeeping matters. This is a joint committee of both members of house of representatives and of the senate. As fate would have it, both the scent of the house of representatives have decided to call votes right in the middle of this hearing. And so you may see members of the house and of the senate leaving and coming back. That has nothing to do with anything other than a responsibility to continue to vote while our colleagues are voting. Members of this committee, particularly those who are here, are very interested in this hearing. We will be here for every bit of time that we possibly can. I didnt want anyone to be alarmed when they see members filtering in and out. Okay, id like to introduce our witnesses now. First we have mr. Lyman stone whose adjunct fellow at the American Enterprise institute and Research Fellow at the institute for family studies. He has written a migration, Population Dynamics and regional economics. His work has been covered in the New York Times, the washington post, the wall street journal and numerous local outlets. Welcome mr. Stone. Next, mr. Ryan bourne who is the art sure chair for the public understanding of economics at the cato institute. Prior to his role at cato mr. Bourne was head of Public Policy at the institute of Economic Affairs and head of Economic Research at the center for policy studies in the uk. Mr. Bourne has written on a number of Economic Issues such as fiscal policy inequality, minimum wages and rentcontrolled and hes appeared on bbc news, cnn and sky news. He also writes weekly columns for the Daily Telegraph and the london paper city a. M. Thank you for being with us, mr. Next we have doctor Jane Waldfogel who is the Compton Foundation centennial professor for the prevention of children and youth problems at Columbia University school of social work. And the codirector of the columbia Population Research center. Dr. Waldfogel has written extensively on the impact of Public Policy come on the wellbeing of children and families here car work has focused on more family policies, inequality in Early Childhood care and education, poverty, social mobility, and the blackwhite achievement gap. She is author of eight books and has published numerous articles in peerreviewed academic journals. Welcome, dr. Waldfogel. And we have ms. Rowefinkbeiner who is the executive director ceo and cofounder of an Organization Called moms rising. She has been involved in Public Policy and grassroots engagement over two decades and has received numerous awards for her work pictures also an awardwinning author of books and articles of frequent public speaker on the contributor and host of the Reader Program breaking through with kristin rowefinkbeiner powered by moms rising. Thank you. We thank all of you for joining us today. We look for tearing her testament and we will now hear from you in the order in which you are introduced. Go ahead, mr. Stone. [inaudible] just hit the button until it turns red. Iq. Its an honor to be here. Thank you for inviting me, mr. Chairman and ms. Vice chairman. Its an honor to be a today to testify on topics that are important to American Families. I am a fully with the American Enterprise institute, the institute for family studies. For my testimony today the views offered are solely my own. Most of my written testimony discusses fairly concrete questions a family affordability. The upshot is that contrary to popular narratives childrearing in america is not really that much more expensive than in the past. Some elements of raising a family have gotten more expensive, but the evidence suggests that the problem facing families is not simply a budget crunch. According to a wide variety of surveys, the average American Woman says she wants to have around 2. 3 2. 5 children. This value has been approximately stable for 30 years. And yet if current birth rates hold, the average young American Woman today will only end up having about 1. 7 children. That means for every ten women in america, there would be about six missing children. This is a new problem. From 19902007 the2007 the fertility gap was consistently just onethird as large. So what is going on . Instead of affordability, we should be discussing achievability. What is Holding People back from having the family they reliably say they want in surveys . The answer is basically marriage. Increasingly postponed marriage can account for at least half of the increase in the fertility gap over the last decade, and virtually 100 of the of the increase since 2000. But incentivizing marriage is a tricky question in a diverse society. Americans are justifiably uncomfortable with being lectured about getting hitched by anyone, especially the federal government. There are some good policy options available. First of all it must be said the federal government already has a marriage policy, and a policy is this. Workingclass people should not get married, middle class and wealthy people should. This is the poly stance of the tax code, offer welfare programs, almost everything te government does. A tax code gives you a handy if you have ceo in the family, as theres thus is unlikely to an equivalent amount and are tax brackets are of great benefit families with the most lopsided spousal incomes. But he to get eitc getting marriage can reduce your benefits by thousands. Theres a very real tax on marriage. In my written testimony i show how the marriage penalty can amount to 15 to 15 or even 25 a families income. Its no mystery why workingclass americans are getting married last. To be clear, the problem is tt government benefits per se, but their eligibility rules that discourage workingclass people from marrying. And the result is neighbors with scattered families, inconsistent fathers, overworked mothers and diminished opportunity for children. Fewer kids over all. So theres a very real way to make family life more achievable. Next the massive government buys against marriage, and especially workingclass marriage. The second respond to the marriage of first first explanr decreased in achievement is to reconsider our justifications for policies like the Child Tax Credit. The justification for the Child Tax Credit is not the parent are inherently cashstrapped, but rather parenting is inherently valuable to society. In other words, we should have a parenting weight because parenting is important work, and workers deserve to be paid. How we provide such wage may vary but we as a society should treat parents more generously than we presently do, and in a way that its blissfully communicates to parents that we see parenting as where the labor. When societies provide a parenting wage, the fertility gap shrinks. If theres not also a change in marriage norms of behavior, fertility rates will not rise by a lot. The best strategy is a onetwo punch. For family achievability to improve in america, its vital we in penalties for workingclass parent and increasing source social commitment to the work of parenting by providing a parenting which get whatever happens to fertility rates, the children who are born according to society a great opportunity, healthier families which engages any valuable public catechesis, parenting matters. Thank you. Mr. Chairman, members of committee, thank you for inviting him to testify today. Ensuring a family can erase affordably in america should be an uncontroversial Public Policy objective. Yet