| This is mostly a problem within the African-American community, and to a smaller extent the Latino community: https://ifstudies.org/blog/the-majority-of-us-children-still... Mom-only households are 43.9% for Blacks, 12.0% for Whites. "In the words of Harvard’s Paul Peterson, “some programs actively discouraged marriage,” because “welfare assistance went to mothers so long as no male was boarding in the household… Marriage to an employed male, even one earning the minimum wage, placed at risk a mother’s economic well-being.” Infamous “man in the house” rules meant that welfare workers would randomly appear in homes to check and see if the mother was accurately reporting her family-status. The benefits available were extremely generous. According to Peterson, it was “estimated that in 1975 a household head would have to earn $20,000 a year to have more resources than what could be obtained from Great Society programs.” In today’s dollars, that’s over $90,000 per year in earnings. That may be a reason why, in 1964, only 7% of American children were born out of wedlock, compared to 40% today. As Jason Riley has noted, “the government paid mothers to keep fathers out of the home—and paid them well.” https://ifstudies.org/blog/family-breakdown-and-americas-wel... If we want this to improve, the simplest solution is to unlink being a single parent from getting extra welfare or preferential access to social housing. If we want to go even further, we could unlink welfare from having children at all, and just offer child tax credits instead and universal access to family planning. |