The Heritage Foundation is a conservative think tank, so not everyone will agree with all their ideas. However, they are also a very influential source of serious discussion on policy issues that can affect adoptive families. So when they came out with a new report on policies to support American families, we were curious about what they had to say on adoption.
Heritage Foundation report: “Saving the Family”
The new report begins by suggesting that the United States is suffering from the choices of citizens to reject marriage and have fewer children. It’s true that Americans are marrying later than before, though the jury is still out on whether, over their lifetimes, young Americans are avoiding marriage or just delaying it. It’s also true that the U.S. birthrate is now at 1.6, a record low well below the number of babies needed to keep the population stable. And it is also true, though not a recent change, that there are more single parent households than there used to be. For single moms, at least, economic hardship is more common than in two-parent households. The Heritage Foundation believes that these facts add up to a problem.
Their report lists many actions they believe the government should take in order to strengthen families. We would put encouraging and strengthening adoption on that list. When they turn to adoption, though, the foundation only mentions the adoption tax credit.
Their first suggestion is to give the adoption tax credit to biological parents as well as adoptive parents. Since the tax credit is based on the costs of adoption, it’s hard to see how this would even work, let alone make sense. Adoptive parents in Arkansas often have all the expenses of biological parents, since they can provide financial support for birth moms during g pregnancy, as well as the additional costs of the adoption process. The adoption tax credit is intended to help adoptive parents cover these additional costs, and thus make adoption possible for people with modest incomes.
But the report doesn’t think the adoption tax credit, as it is currently structured, does that job well. They suggest that since it is a credit, reimbursing all adoption expenses, it doesn’t encourage families to be frugal with their adoption expenses. They figure this could cause adoption agencies to raise their prices.
They also say that, since this tax credit is only partially refundable, people with higher incomes are likely to benefit more from the credit than less affluent families. A tax credit generally just reduces the amount of money people have to pay when filing their taxes. Families with lower incomes may not have to pay nay taxes — about half of Americans don’t. These people may not get a full reimbursement of their expenses, while households with higher tax bills will.
Their solution
According to the report, they seem to favor a more general family credit, designed to benefit larger families with one working parent most. Income taxes are designed to encourage particular behaviors, including having children. The adoption tax credit is designed to encourage adoption. The Heritage Foundation suggestions are devoted to increasing family size, as long as parents are married and working, but not to encouraging adoption.
The most common reason for governments to encourage adoption is to find stable, permanent homes for all children. However, a recent study found that adoption tax credits did not have the effect of reducing populations in foster care and orphanages. They do, however, seem to increase newborn adoptions and interracial adoption of foster children.
The report’s focus is primarily on encouraging earlier marriage, raising the birth rate, and reducing the cost of raising a family. They may have missed a real opportunity to consider adoption as a wonderful way to grow a family and to provide stable, loving homes for children who might otherwise experience hardship.
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