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by jrock08 3641 days ago
> Consider African Americans: 73% of kids born to single mothers

Why the value judgement on single mothers? Also, the 73% is out of wedlock, not necessarily single mothers. Single mother numbers are actually 67%.

>and huge level of incarceration.

Incarceration policies put in place by republicans and democrats.

>How is it not a failure of political science and Democrats that represent African Americans on all levels of government?

It is a failure of American political policy. However, the answer isn't to build a wall or stop immigration. The answer is to improve education, train people for the jobs that actually exist in our economy, and if all else fails, figure out what we do when there just aren't enough jobs, not just pretend like manufacturing is going to come back. American manufacturing has never produced more goods than the present, but it also employees almost no one, because automation is amazing [1].

[1] Page 4 and 5: http://www.cs.rice.edu/~vardi/workawesome16.pdf

1 comments

>Why the value judgement on single mothers? Also, the 73% is out of wedlock, not necessarily single mothers. Single mother numbers are actually 67%.

Because if you look at black communities with low single motherhood you also see less poverty, violence and incarceration rates at the same time. Even for white people single motherhood is often the biggest factor that decides whether you end up in poverty or not.

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/426433/family-goes-so-...

Could it be the other way around? Poverty leads to single motherhood.
Explain. I can see an easy causality chain from single motherhood to low income to less education to poverty, but not in the opposite direction.
Poverty in parents is highly predictive of poverty in children. Single motherhood is also correlated with poverty. It's possible that single motherhood increases the chance that a child will also live in poverty as an adult, but the vast majority of the effect is probably explained by generational poverty.