The economic benefits of marriage and family strengthening programs

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Marriage and family strengthening programs have historically shown rather small magnitude effects in relationship outcomes. Despite findings that the Safe and Healthy Marriage (SHM) program did not significantly impact relationship dissolution, this study endeavored to show that these programs can be shown to have very large and important financial impacts on the population. Expected Value-Return on investment (EV-ROI) models previously developed were (a) expanded and (b) applied to an evaluation of the SHM program funded by the ACF. These EV-ROI analyses were compared to an analysis of program effects using more conventional tests of statistical significance and effect size calculations, similar to those already reported. Evidence suggested that while conventional statistical significance tests showed sparse program effects, the EV-ROI analysis suggested that the program does produce long-term financial return on investment through averting divorces.