Abstract
Marriage and family strengthening programs have historically had small magnitude effects on changing relationship outcomes. The present study explores the possibility that although these statistical effects are small, they can be shown to represent meaningful financial impacts. Secondary data from 2092 control and 2042 intervention couples who were married with children and participating in the Supporting Healthy Marriage (SHM) project were analyzed. Intervention participants had the opportunity to receive standardized curricula (e.g., PREP) and marital counseling. Similar to meta-analytic findings, conventional analysis of these data found only a modest impact on proximal relationship outcomes (e.g., satisfaction). Offering counseling in conjunction with curricula, although costlier and only demonstrating marginally significant improvements in averting divorce, appears to offer a substantial financial return on investment. The implications of these findings are discussed.
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Notes
All dollar amounts are in US dollars.
Conventionally, ROI in the private sector is presented as (earnings/profits-costs) over costs. We present our findings as a means for communicating the value generated per $1.00 or program cost.
If we assume the costs provided by the eight centers implementing the SHM, we can solve for level of spending using the following equation: \(\$ 9986.82(1828) = [{1452_c} + \$ 706.14(1452)] + [{376_c} + \$ 706.14(376 + {36_{\rm{x}}})]\) where c is the curriculum cost and x represents the parameter that is solved for representing total cost of counseling per couple. After we solve for x, the value in the first set of brackets gives the total cost for couples receiving only a curriculum and the second set of brackets gives the total costs for those receiving a curriculum and counseling. If we assume a curriculum cost per couple of $198 for those only receiving a curriculum, then this would yield an average spending per couple on counseling of $44,157.28. If we instead assume a curriculum cost per couple of $3323 for those only receiving a curriculum, then this would yield an average spending per couple on counseling of $28,964.47. When we assume a curriculum cost of $198, this yields an average of spending of $904.14 per couple for those receiving only a curriculum and $45,061.42 per couple for those receiving a curriculum and counseling. If we instead assume a curriculum cost of $3323, this yields an average of spending of $4029.14 per couple for those receiving only a curriculum and $32,993.61 per couple for those receiving a curriculum and counseling. Based on these estimates for counseling seeming implausible and based on us being unable to obtain more detailed information about spending by these eight grantees, we chose to use reasonable estimates from experts and other sources.
It could be argued that the control group participants receiving no services are a more suitable reference group. We explored this possibility by looking at planned contrasts between this reference group and intervention participants receiving curricula or counseling services. The comparison between this control group and the curricula group generally replicated our intervention main effects, suggesting that thinking the relationship was in trouble, satisfaction, and commitment outcomes were more favorable for those receiving curricula. In addition, both couples receiving curricula and couples receiving counseling were less likely to have a husband who binge drank and more likely to have youth with mostly A grades. Differing from this pattern of findings, wives receiving counseling were more likely to think their marriage was in trouble than control wives.
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Acknowledgements
Preparation of this manuscript was supported through a cooperative agreement with the Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families, Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation (90PD0283). The opinions expressed in this paper do not necessarily represent those of the Administration for Children and Families. The authors would like to thank anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments on an earlier draft of this manuscript.
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Preparation of this manuscript was supported through a cooperative agreement with the Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families, Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation (90PD0283). The opinions expressed in this paper do not necessarily represent those of the Administration for Children and Families. The authors have no other conflicts of interest to report.
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This article does not contain any studies with human participants or animals performed by any of the authors. The data source for all analyses was the SHM survey data, housed by the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR: Hsueh & Knox et al. 2014). These data were received by the first author under an agreement with ICPSR, where there was an institutional review board (IRB)-approved data monitoring and security plan.
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Shamblen, S.R., Gluck, A., Wubbenhorst, W. et al. The Economic Benefits of Marriage and Family Strengthening Programs. J Fam Econ Iss 39, 386–404 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10834-018-9565-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10834-018-9565-8