When it comes to family flourishing, not every state is created equal. Nine of the top 10 states with the healthiest families are conservative, according to a new study released this week.
The 2025 Family Structure Index ranks all 50 states based on three criteria: the percentage of married adults between the ages of 25 to 54, the average number of lifetime births per woman, and the percentage of children aged 15 to 17 who are living with their married parents.
The outcomes tracked closely with conservative political ideology, especially in states with a strong religious base, according to Brad Wilcox, professor of sociology at the University of Virginia and a fellow at the Institute for Family Studies.
The state of Utah scored the highest rating on two out of three measures: the marriage rate and the percentage of persistent, intact families.
Not one of the 50 states has a birthrate that meets the replacement level of 2.1. The closest, South Dakota, has a fertility rate of 2.01. Every other state’s birthrate falls below 2.0.
Among those on the wrong side of the spectrum, Vermont has the lowest fertility rate at 1.35. The state with the lowest percentage of married adults is New Mexico, at 49.5%, the only state where married people represent a minority in the prime age demographic.
The majority of teenagers in 17 states are raised in broken or single-parent homes. In Louisiana, barely one in three teens (35.9%) lives with his or her own parents. The state with the fewest teenagers being raised by intact families, Kentucky (41.2%), scored well on other measures, ranking 13 overall.
The top 10 states on the Family Structure Index are:
- Utah
- Idaho
- Nebraska
- South Dakota
- Wyoming
- Kansas
- North Dakota
- Iowa
- Texas
- Minnesota
The 10 worst states on the Family Structure Index are:
- Illinois
- Oregon
- Louisiana
- California
- Vermont
- Massachusetts
- Nevada
- New York
- New Mexico
- Rhode Island
Family advocates nationwide began analyzing the results—and presenting policies to restore the health of families.
“At the root of what is hurting our communities is broken families,” Aaron Baer, president of the Center for Christian Virtue, which commissioned Institute for Family Studies to carry out the family structure study, told The Washington Stand.
Center for Christian Virtue released its own analysis, “The Hope and a Future Report,” to further examine the outcomes on a state level.
“The Hope and a Future Report reveals some devastating realities about the challenges our children face, but also provides real solutions about righting the course in Ohio and America,” Baer told The Washington Stand. For instance, “The average number of lifetime births per Ohio woman (the Total Fertility Rate) has declined by 11%, from 1.9 births per woman in 2010 to 1.7 births per woman in 2022.”
Struggling families and single-parent homes correlate with malign social outcomes, Center for Christian Virtue found.
Areas with fewer intact families experienced more violence. Canton, where two out of three children are raised outside wedlock, has 12 times the level of violent crime as the Columbus suburb of Dublin, where 84% of teens live with their parents.
Children raised in areas with fewer strong families and a robust culture of marriage were also less likely to graduate high school. “Comparatively high family instability across the state is undoubtedly one reason Ohio ranked 28th in on-time high school graduation,” said the Center for Christian Virtue. “We know that states with a greater share of married parents have substantially higher graduation rates, even after controlling for states’ median income, race/ethnicity, education level, and age composition.”
The results hold true from coast to coast. The Institute for Family Studies study’s data prove that “family structure is a key driver of economic well-being, and our state is failing to provide the conditions for strong, stable marriages and families,” Michael Geer, president of the Pennsylvania Family Institute, told The Washington Stand. The Keystone State “should be a national leader in family stability” yet it is “shockingly underperforming.”
“States that support strong family structures reap the rewards of lower poverty rates, better educational outcomes, and economic prosperity,” Tom Shaheen, vice president of Policy for the Pennsylvania Family Institute, told The Washington Stand.
“If we continue down this path, we will see increased poverty, declining social mobility, and long-term damage to Pennsylvania’s communities,” said Geer. “Pennsylvania must take immediate action to strengthen marriage and family life or risk further decline.”
In a separate report, the Institute for Family Studies found red states that voted for Republican President Donald Trump in the 2024 election have a higher fertility level than blue states that supported Democrat Kamala Harris.
“Those counties that voted for Trump tended to have much higher fertility rates than those that did not,” wrote Grant Bailey and Lyman Stone of Institute for Family Studies late last year. “Counties that had less than 25% of their vote share for Trump, such as D.C., had a median total fertility rate of 1.31. In contrast, counties that had more than 75% of their vote share for Trump had a median total fertility rate of 1.84.”
The partisan childbearing gap is strong and growing, having increased 85% between 2012 and 2024. “Over a quarter of the variance in county fertility rates can be accounted for by political partisanship. Essentially, the parties are divided by family,” found Bailey and Stone. “Republican counties do not significantly differ from Democratic counties in the proportion of babies born to married parents, contrary to years past.”
Simple voting patterns cannot change demographic trends. Center for Christian Virtue offers three concrete plans to strengthen families—and, unlike other think tanks, some of the steps can only be implemented by the church.
“Restoring a Hope and a Future for our children is possible. It starts with a commitment to addressing the root cause driving the challenges in our communities. Changing course will require both Church and State solutions,” says the report.
The state should eliminate marriage penalties, teach the Success Sequence in school, and promote marriage broadly in the public imagination, say experts.
The Success Sequence, created by scholars at the Brookings Institution, found that if young people graduate high school, get a job, and get married before having kids, “it is nearly impossible to live in poverty,” in Center for Christian Virtue’s words.
They also found those at the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder saw the greatest gains from following those steps, which sometimes lifted 99% of the population out of poverty.
“Ohio should require public schools to teach the Success Sequence as part of their curriculum,” says the Center for Christian Virtue report. “Ohio should create a public education and media campaign focused on increasing the marriage rate and promoting strong and stable marriages,” it adds.
Churches should “emphasize marriage and family,” underscore the “value of a faith-based marriage and family life,” and encourage couples to cast the burdens of marriage on Christ.
“Couples who attend religious services together are significantly more likely to be happily and stably married,” notes Center for Christian Virtue. “Churches must routinely proclaim an inspiring vision of marriage where the beauty, goodness, power, and difficulties of marriage and family life can be shared in age-appropriate ways to the entire congregation.’
The title of “The Hope and a Future Report” comes from Jeremiah 29:11: “For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope.” The self-affirming verse has displaced the gospel message of John 3:16 as the most popular Bible verse in America.
Originally published by The Washington Stand