Divorce Rates Can Be Cut

David Blankenhorn, President of the Institute for American Values and host of the press conference at the National Press Club, expressed skepticism about the significance of that decline before seeing the study. "I am now persuaded that Community Marriage Policies, do, in fact, push down the divorce rate. This is a very important, nationally significant finding. As Norval Glenn, a noted scholar at the University of Texas who has read the study, said, ‘The technical analysis is bulletproof.'"

The study's findings have strong implications for the debate over the Administration's Healthy Marriage Initiative, which would authorize up to $1 billion of federal funds to help couples who choose marriage, to be successful. Dr. Wade Horn, Assistant Secretary of Health and Human Services, who will speak at the press conference, says, "Some critics of the Healthy Marriage Initiative, have charged that we don't know how to help more couples to build lifelong marriages or to reduce the likelihood that half of new marriages will end in divorce. This pioneering research by Dr. Stan Weed and colleagues proves them wrong."

What is Marriage Savers? How has it helped cities reduce divorce rates?

First, it works with a local coalition of clergy over a period of months to create a Community Marriage Policy. The group includes Evangelicals, Mainline Protestants, Catholics and minority pastors. They develop a written pledge, which clergy sign in a public ceremony, typically in front of a courthouse. Mike and Harriet McManus often speak at the signing in which clergy pledge to take five steps to revitalize marriage:

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