How To Talk To a Liberal About Poverty
Many progressive arguments that attribute poverty to factors other than out of wedlock childbirths can be refuted with the following two data points: (1) the success of immigrants, who frequently live in the same neighborhoods and go to the same schools, but find success in America, and (2) the fact that out of wedlock childbirths were much lower during the Great Depression (see this link for a graph), when economic times were much worse than they are today. This makes it unlikely that economics is a major factor in causing out of wedlock childbirths.
A final point that should be emphasized is that out of wedlock childbirths cause more than poverty, but they also cause a wide array of other social problems including substance abuse and problems in school.
Now onto the detailed responses to progressive arguments.
- Studies show that welfare does not cause out of wedlock childbirths
- If out of wedlock childbirths cause poverty, then how come blacks were poor in the past, when marriages were much stronger?
- Since marriage was so great in the past, how come people are wealthier today?
- Racism is the real cause of poverty
- Out of wedlock childbirths are caused by lack of jobs and other economic factors
- Out of wedlock childbirths are caused by the loss of manufacturing jobs in the cities
- Immigrants have lower rates of out of wedlock childbirths because they are a self-selected group
- Europe has higher rates of wedlock childbirths, but less poverty
- Most out of wedlock childbirths happen to women who are in their twenties - too late to interfere with education
- We should do what we can to help the poor, not try to blame the victim
- Welfare is not a lifestyle, it is a short term safety net that provides valuable assistance to women at a time in their life when they need it most
- Further Reading
Answer Section
Studies show that welfare does not cause out of wedlock childbirths
Incorrect. There are two main lines of evidence used by progressives to support this point. The first is that welfare benefits have been declining relative to inflation even as out of wedlock childbirths have increased. But Robert Moffitt has shown that when you also account for other benefits besides welfare, such as Medicaid, food stamps and public housing, welfare benefits have kept up with inflation (page 147 of The Marriage Problem).
The second argument is that some states have high levels of welfare benefits but low rates of out of wedlock childbirths. This argument is fatal to economic determinists. But the socially conservative position is that culture matters. The social “costs” of going against the grain of powerfully embedded social norms at least partially offsets the welfare benefits.
comparing single-parent families and average spending levels neglects the real issue: how attractive is welfare to a low-income unmarried woman in a given locality? When economist Mark Rosenzweig asked this question of women who are part of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth—a panel study of people that has been going on since 1979—he found that a 10 percent increase in welfare benefits made the chances that a poor young woman would have a baby out of wedlock before the age of 22 go up by 12 percent. And this was true for whites as well as blacks. Soon other scholars were confirming Rosenzweig’s findings. Welfare made a difference.
Why We Don’t Marry by sociologist James Q. Wilson.
There is more evidence on page 147 of Wilson’s book The Marriage Problem. James Wilson cites many researchers making the point that welfare contributes to out of wedlock childbirths, ranging from Mark Rosenzweig, the economists Jeff Grogger and Stephen Bronars, and by the 1998 research of Robert Moffitt. His original research in 1992 only found a small correlation between welfare and out of wedlock childbirths, but his more thorough 1998 research came to the opposite conclusion.
The short answer: Welfare benefits do cause out of wedlock childbirths - but culture is a even bigger cause.
The breakdown of the married, two parent family is only one cause of poverty. The institutionalized oppression was the leading cause of black poverty in the past. It takes many factors working in harmony to fight poverty. If even one is missing, poverty will result.
Since marriage was so great in the past, how come people were so poor?
The breakdown of the family is only one cause of poverty, albeit the most relevant today. As technology improves, we get wealthier. The economist Walter Williams explains in this article:
Let’s highlight some of the phenomenal progress Americans made during the 20th century. During that century, life expectancy rose from 47 to 77 years of age. Deaths from infectious diseases fell from 700 to 50 per 100,000 of the population. Major killer diseases such as tuberculosis, polio, typhoid fever and whooping cough were virtually eliminated. Infant mortality plummeted.
The 20th century saw unprecedented material gains as well. Controlling for inflation, household assets rose from $6 trillion to $41 trillion between 1945 and 1998. Today, more than 98 percent of American homes have a telephone, electricity and a flush toilet. More than 70 percent of Americans own a car, a VCR, a microwave, air conditioning, cable TV, and a washer and dryer. In 1900, no homes had the modern conveniences of today.
Today’s poor Americans have choices that yesterday’s millionaires could have only dreamt of, such as cell phones, computers and color television sets. Added to all this progress, most adults have twice as much leisure time as their turn-of-the-20th-century counterparts.
You say, “Williams, it would take an idiot to deny the human progress Americans made during the 20th century. What’s your point?” The productive people who made this progress possible are often painted as villains. I’m talking about the innovators and the risk-takers, in a word — entrepreneurs. Today’s heroes are often seen as the people who attack entrepreneurs — among them lawyers, politicians, media people, leftist organizations, college professors and others who often contribute little or nothing to human progress. My colleague, Thomas Sowell, calls the entrepreneurs, scientists and inventors the “doers” and their attackers the “talkers.”
Racism is the real cause of poverty
The racism theory of poverty is in decline, as evidenced by the sociologist William Julius Wilson’s book, ‘The Declining Significance of Race.” He is a leader in challenging the family breakdown theory of poverty on economic grounds. In particular, there are many data points that falsify the racism theory of poverty.
- Census Data show that the poverty rate for married blacks is just under 10%, but the poverty rate for black single mothers is just under 40%. A fourfold increase in poverty based on family structure is hard to reconcile with racism.
- More generally, the former Clinton advisor William Galston has found that you have to do three things to avoid poverty: graduate from High School, wait until age 20 to marry, and wait until you marry to have children. Racism should not stop you from doing any of those three things in current times. (Galston’s findings are based upon this study by Charles Murray, as reported by James Wilson on the references for page 11 of The Marriage Problem).
- College educated black males with six years of work experience have seen their earnings rise from 75% of whites to 98% of whites (Civil Rights by Thomas Sowell, page 52).
- In 1969, the economist Richard Freeman examined black and white homes with comparable rates of library cards and magazines, as well as for comparable schooling, and found no difference in earnings (Civil Rights by Thomas Sowell, page 80)
- At least as far back as 1984, blacks of West Indian descent earn 94% of what whites make, compared to 62% for blacks as a whole (Civil Rights page 77). This is hard to reconcile with racism; a racist does not care about the about the cultural background of someone with dark skin. In a similar vein, married, two-income black couples make slightly more than comparable white couples (Civil Rights page 52).
- In the early 20th century, racist white farmers paid Japanese workers less money than white. But then it became clear that the Japanese worked harder, a huge advantage for farmers with many Japanese employees, and a disadvantage for farmers who hired whites. A bidding war erupted for Japanese workers until the Japanese were actually slightly higher paid. (Civil Rights page 114).
- African Immigrants outperform native born blacks - but they fall back to the level of native born blacks if they adopt the culture of American blacks and the broken families along with it.
Out of wedlock childbirths are caused by lack of jobs and other economic factors
- The famous Democratic Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan got his start in politics by running the Bureau of Labor Statistics. He found that black out of wedlock childbirths closely tracked unemployment. But in the 1960’s something strange happened: the correlation reversed itself - out of wedlock childbirths began skyrocketing even as unemployment declined. These two diverging graphs which used to be closely related were called the “Moynihan Scissors.” Note that this is true even when you focus on nonwhite unemployment. Read about the Moynihan Scissors here and see the graph of the Moynihan Scissors here (scroll down a bit).
- There are more economic opportunities for blacks today than when they suffered from the one-two punch of segregation and the Great Depression. But black out of wedlock childbirths were only 19% during the Great Depression compared to 69% today. But blacks have vastly more opportunity today than during the Great Depression and Jim Crow. (See a graph of the increase in out of wedlock childbirths since the early 20th century here.)
- Asian, Arab, and African immigrants have had comparable job prospects to blacks, but have not had an epidemic of out of wedlock childbirths.
Out of wedlock childbirths are caused by the loss of manufacturing jobs in the cities
This is an important variant of the more general “lack of jobs” objection. It is sometimes called the job mismatch theory or the disappearing jobs theory, and is popularized by William Julius Wilson. It suffers from many of the same defects as the general lack of jobs objection:
- There are more economic opportunities for blacks today than when they suffered from the one-two punch of segregation and the Great Depression. But black out of wedlock childbirths were only 19% during the Great Depression compared to 69% today. But blacks have vastly more opportunity today than during the Great Depression and Jim Crow. (See a graph of the increase in out of wedlock childbirths since the early 20th century here.)
- Immigrants have lower rates of out of wedlock childbirths despite poverty that is even worse than that of blacks. In the cases when there isn’t work nearby, they will take long bus rides to available work. (The Marriage Problem, page 108 and this article about African immigrants).
- Christopher Jencks has found a decline in marriage rates even among black men with steady jobs. 80% of black men with steady jobs were married in 1960, but only 66% were in 1980. The difference is that men with jobs were less inclined to marry. (The Marriage Problem), also:
Why We Don’t Marry by James Wilson.Second, Christopher Jencks has shown that there has been as sharp a decline in marriage among employed black men as among unemployed ones, and that the supply of employed blacks is large enough to provide husbands for almost all unmarried black mothers. For these people, as Jencks concludes, “marriage must . . . have been losing its charms for non-economic reasons.”
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Moreover, the argument that single-parent families have increased because black men have not been able to move to wherever factory jobs can be found does not explain why such families have grown so rapidly among whites, for whom moving around a city should be no problem. For these whites—and I suspect for many blacks as well—there must be another explanation.
Why We Don’t Marry by James Q. Wilson.
Asian, Arab, and African immigrants have faced the same poverty living in the same cities, but have found success, rather than an epidemic of out of wedlock childbirths.
The first two arguments [why men who father children out of wedlock are unmarriageable] are pure bunk, as a new study from Robert Rector of the Heritage Foundation makes clear. The study, based on data from the “Fragile Families” database maintained by Princeton and Columbia researchers, estimates the economic and social situations of 225,000 children, extrapolating from interviews with 4,700 families—most of them headed by unwed parents. The study finds that more than 70 percent of the unmarried parents maintain a stable romantic relationship at the time of their child’s birth (just under 50 percent are cohabiting). What’s more, a full 82 percent of the fathers are employed at the time of their child’s birth, and two-thirds of the dads have graduated high school. On average, the men are 25 years old and have worked for 50 weeks in the year before the birth of their baby. Only 2 percent are in any way violent, and just 12 percent have problems with drugs or alcohol.
… The Urban Institute found that 70 percent of marriages entered into because of a child’s birth or impending birth still endured 12 years later—not much worse than the figure for more traditional marriages where the ceremony occurred before pregnancy (85 percent). “Shotgun” marriages are less fragile than many believe.
Getting Hitched by James Q. Wilson
The first two arguments [why men who father children out of wedlock are unmarriageable] are pure bunk, as a new study from Robert Rector of the Heritage Foundation makes clear. The study, based on data from the “Fragile Families” database maintained by Princeton and Columbia researchers, estimates the economic and social situations of 225,000 children, extrapolating from interviews with 4,700 families—most of them headed by unwed parents. The study finds that more than 70 percent of the unmarried parents maintain a stable romantic relationship at the time of their child’s birth (just under 50 percent are cohabiting). What’s more, a full 82 percent of the fathers are employed at the time of their child’s birth, and two-thirds of the dads have graduated high school. On average, the men are 25 years old and have worked for 50 weeks in the year before the birth of their baby. Only 2 percent are in any way violent, and just 12 percent have problems with drugs or alcohol.
… The Urban Institute found that 70 percent of marriages entered into because of a child’s birth or impending birth still endured 12 years later—not much worse than the figure for more traditional marriages where the ceremony occurred before pregnancy (85 percent). “Shotgun” marriages are less fragile than many believe.
Getting Hitched by James Q. Wilson
Immigrants have lower rates of out of wedlock childbirths because they are a self-selected group
There are numerous problems with this position.
- This argument might make sense if the only immigrants finding success were well-educated professionals. But as this article demonstrates, African immigrants are less likely to be poor than native born blacks simply because of a willingness to take low paying jobs. In the second generation immigrants that do become poor, which is to say, those that have out of wedlock childbirths, are the ones that adopt the culture of native born blacks. In other words, this is a cultural problem, not a problem of an unfair system in which only supermen can survive.
- The former Clinton advisor William Galston has found that you have to do three things to avoid poverty: graduate from High School, wait until age 20 to marry, and wait until you marry to have children. (Galston’s findings are based upon this study by Charles Murray, as reported by James Wilson in the reference section for page 11 of The Marriage Problem). Meeting all three of these conditions are well within the capability of the vast majority of Americans.
Historically, all ethnic and religious groups in the United States had low rates of out of wedlock childbirths. White out of wedlock childbirths have increased from about 1% to 28%, and black out of wedlock childbirths have increase from 11% to 69% today. (See a graph of the increase in out of wedlock childbirths since the early 20th century here.)
If Americans as a whole, black and white, had low rates of out of wedlock childbirths in much poorer times in the past, then they can realistically do so again. It does not take an elite, self-selected group to avoid out of wedlock childbirths.
Europe has higher rates of wedlock childbirths, but less poverty
Incorrect. Out of wedlock childbirths are also a problem in Europe. However, there are some interesting differences between the two. In Europe single cohabitating parenthood is more popular among the affluent, whereas marriage is strongest among the working class. But in the United States the opposite is true: single parenthood and cohabiting single parents are more popular among the working class and marriage is more popular among the affluent (The Marriage Problem, page 7). Upscale social liberals in the United States still believe in marriage when it is their own children at stake.
These two patterns obscure the effects of out of wedlock childbirths on poverty on a national basis. Nevertheless out of wedlock childbirths are just as destructive in Europe as they are in the United States. See this newspaper article in the Telegraph, and this more technical article.
That is true, but half of all first out of wedlock childbirths happen to women in their teens - fortunately this has been on the decline. (see The New World of Welfare, page 422). Women who have one child out of wedlock tend to have more children out of wedlock as they enter their 20’s. Preventing that first out of wedlock childbirth will keep women on a healthy path in their life.
There are two pathologies of out of wedlock childbirths. One is women who are young and poor, and who would like to marry. The other is older and educated women who choose not marry. Of these two groups, it is the former that causes the immediate problems - this question for more information about other affects of fatherlessness beyond poverty.
Finally, there is a grain of truth to this argument. Out of wedlock childbirths are merely the most visible symptom of a general cultural problem
We should do what we can to help the poor, not try to blame the victim
out of wedlock childbirths are the most visible and important cause of poverty, but more generally poverty is caused by cultures that do not equip their people to value marriage, education, and hard work. We cannot cure poverty until we change this culture.
But there is a more practical and important issue: poverty is only one of the factors associated with out of wedlock childbirths. Children raised outside of traditional marriages also have higher rates of substance abuse, bad grades, dropping out of school, low self-esteem, depression, and criminal behavior. No amount of welfare spending in the world can fix that.
Almost everyone—a few retrograde scholars excepted—agrees that children in mother-only homes suffer harmful consequences: the best studies show that these youngsters are more likely than those in two-parent families to be suspended from school, have emotional problems, become delinquent, suffer from abuse, and take drugs. Some of these problems may arise from the economic circumstances of these one-parent families, but the best studies, such as those by Sara McLanahan and Gary Sandefur, show that low income can explain, at most, about half of the differences between single-parent and two-parent families. The rest of the difference is explained by a mother living without a husband.
And even the income explanation is a bit misleading, because single moms, by virtue of being single, are more likely to be poor than are married moms.
Why We Don’t Marry by James Q. Wilson.
Marriage helps avoid bad outcomes for children, and increases the chances of good outcomes:
Cornell professor Jennifer Gerner was baffled some years ago when she noticed that only about 10 percent of her students came from divorced families. She and her colleague Dean Lillard examined the records of students at the nation’s top 50 schools and, much to their surprise, found a similar pattern. Children who did not grow up with their two biological parents, they concluded when they published their findings, were only half as likely to go to a selective college.
Marriage and Caste by Kay S. Hymowitz
The problem with welfare is not that it is a lifestyle. The problem is that it disrupts family formation. Put yourself in the shoes of a poor woman with a steady boyfriend who becomes pregnant. You could marry, but if you stay single while continuing to see each other (or live with each other), then you get just as much income from work and Welfare benefits. You also get the EITC, Medicaid, public housing and other benefits. The pull towards avoiding marriage is powerful. But in a few years the couple drifts apart (single cohabitating relationships have a tendency to do that). The woman at this time is on her feet and doesn’t need welfare, but now her child has an absentee father.
This scenario is typical:
a new study from Robert Rector of the Heritage Foundation makes clear. The study, based on data from the “Fragile Families” database maintained by Princeton and Columbia researchers, estimates the economic and social situations of 225,000 children, extrapolating from interviews with 4,700 families—most of them headed by unwed parents. The study finds that more than 70 percent of the unmarried parents maintain a stable romantic relationship at the time of their child’s birth (just under 50 percent are cohabiting). What’s more, a full 82 percent of the fathers are employed at the time of their child’s birth, and two-thirds of the dads have graduated high school. On average, the men are 25 years old and have worked for 50 weeks in the year before the birth of their baby. Only 2 percent are in any way violent, and just 12 percent have problems with drugs or alcohol.
… The Urban Institute found that 70 percent of marriages entered into because of a child’s birth or impending birth still endured 12 years later—not much worse than the figure for more traditional marriages where the ceremony occurred before pregnancy (85 percent). “Shotgun” marriages are less fragile than many believe.
Getting Hitched by James Q. Wilson
Further Reading
A consolidated list of the references throughout this post, and a few other articles that were not used, but are valuable enough to be included.
- Book: Civil Rights by Thomas Sowell.
- Book: The Marriage Problem by James Q. Wilson.
- Article: Getting Hitched by James Q. Wilson
- Article: Marriage and Caste by Kay S. Hymowitz
- Article: Why We Don’t Marry by James Q. Wilson.
- Article: Dan Quayle Was Right by Barbara DaFoe Whitehead. A reprint of a long article in the left-leaning magazine, ‘The Atlantic.’ A long look at the research, and documents the change as intellectuals studying poverty came to realize the importance of the married, two-parent family.
- Article: How Welfare Reform Worked by Kay S. Hymowitz. Another scholarly look at the research and the change of opinions among the sociological community towards family.
- Article: Victories in the Marriage Debates by Maggie Gallagher. Researchers document the shift in scientific consensus to recognize the importance of married, two-parent families.
- Article: Closed Hearts, Closed Minds by Norval Glenn. Reviews textbooks on families used by future professional social workers, nurses, therapists, teachers, and doctors and finds errors, distortions and misattributions, all designed to minimize the importance of marriage. A longer version of the article is available here.
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