The latest report on the health of the U.S. family found that marriage "held its own" in the last year, but too few American children are being raised in intact families.

The Family Research Council's Marriage and Religion Research Institute (MARRI),  has released its fourth annual "Index of Family Belonging and Rejection" study which is the most robust measure of the health of the U.S. family currently available.

Some of the more significant findings include:

•    Only 46 percent of American 15- to 17-year-olds were raised with both their biological parents married to one another (belonging to each other) since before or around the time of their birth.

•    The parents of 54 percent of American 15- to 17-year-olds have rejected one another.

•    Regionally, the Northeast (50 percent) has the highest Family Belonging Index and the South (42 percent) has the lowest.

•    Utah (57 percent), Minnesota (56 percent), and Nebraska (55 percent) have the highest Family Belonging Indices of all the states.

•    The District of Columbia (17 percent), Mississippi (32 percent), and Louisiana (36 percent) have the lowest Family Belonging Indices of all the states.

•    Family belonging is strongest among Asians (65 percent) and weakest among Blacks (17 percent).

"The good news is that marriage held its own in the last year," said MARRI director, Patrick Fagan, Ph.D.. "The bad news is that more than half the children of the nation have parents who turned out to be false Valentines: they did not love each other through thick and thin. But the good news is there are many real Valentines out there. And interestingly the most Valentine-like group is Asian Americans. If you want commitment you will find more of it there than anywhere else."

Belonging to each other is very important because family structure has profound effects on an area's economic wellbeing as well as in all major areas of concern: health, happiness, peace and law-abidingness, Fagan explained.

There is also no more important factor in determining outcomes in a host of government focused policies such as TANF [Temporary Assistance for Needy Families], food stamps, SSI [Supplemental Security Income] and housing, and even college education than family intactness.

"Family intactness is as important in determining an area's employment rate among men as is the fraction of its adults that have completed high school," Fagan writes. "Marriage is society's foundational relationship. The biggest challenge we face is how to make miracles: How do we raise children who will marry even though they grew up within broken families. This is our central challenge: how to belong to another even if our parents didn't."

He concluded: "There is a lot of work for Valentine to do in the U.S. today."

Click here to read the full report.

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