The U.S. Department of Transportation is readying to add two new calculations into its funding mix. New Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy recently said that his department will use birth rates and marriage rates in determining where to administer grants, loans and contracts. An order was issued on January 29, 2025, which took effect immediately.
The order stated: “to the extent practicable, relevant, appropriate and consistent with law, mitigate the unique impacts of DOT programs, policies and activities on families and family-specific difficulties, such as the accessibility of transportation to families with young children, and give preference to communities with marriage and birth rates higher than the national average (including in administering the Federal Transit Administration's Capital Investment Grant program).”
The Urban Institute reported that this policy would leave some of the most vulnerable communities within individual states behind.
According to the Institute, “We do find evidence that this change would likely deprive historically underfunded urban neighborhoods of the funding necessary to support a diversity of transportation options. We also find that a disproportionate share of grants would be redirected to areas where funding is most likely to be invested in highways and major arterials, furthering sprawling development despite the fiscal benefits of dense development, the contributions of highway investment to climate change, and sprawl’s association with ecological degradation.”
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the areas with the highest marriage rates are the District of Columbia, Utah, Alaska, Colorado, Kentucky, Indiana, Tennessee and Kansas. The lowest rates are in Delaware, New Mexico, Louisiana, Rhode Island and Connecticut. Concerning birth rates, the highest states are South Dakota, Utah and Texas. And the lowest rating states are Vermont, Oregon and California.
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