posted
This is Walter Williams latest article from townhall.com. For those of you who don't know, Williams is a world-renowned, black, conservative economist.
I think that this topic needs to be discussed and that this article could spark some good debate. IMO this article is spot on.
quote: In the wake of Hurricane Katrina's destruction of New Orleans, President Bush gave America's poverty pimps and race hustlers new ammunition. The president said, "As all of us saw on television, there is also some deep, persistent poverty in this region as well. And that poverty has roots in a history of racial discrimination, which cut off generations from the opportunity of America. We have a duty to confront this poverty with bold action."
The president's espousing such a vision not only supplies ammunition to poverty pimps and race hustlers, it focuses attention away from the true connection between race and poverty.
Though I grow weary of pointing it out, let's do it again. Let's examine some numbers readily available from the Census Bureau's 2004 Current Population Survey and ask some questions. There's one segment of the black population that suffers only a 9.9 percent poverty rate, and only 13.7 percent of its under-5-year-olds are poor. There's another segment that suffers a 39.5 percent poverty rate, and 58.1 percent of its under-5-year-olds are poor. Among whites, one segment suffers a 6 percent poverty rate, and only 9.9 percent of its under-5-year-olds are poor. The other segment suffers a 26.4 percent poverty rate, and 52 percent of its under-5-year-olds are poor. What do you think distinguishes the high and low poverty populations among blacks?
Would you buy an explanation that it's because white people practice discrimination against one segment of the black population and not the other or one segment had a history of slavery and not the other? You'd have to be a lunatic to buy such an explanation. The only distinction between both the black and white populations is marriage -- lower poverty in married-couple families.
In 1960, only 28 percent of black females ages 15 to 44 were never married and illegitimacy among blacks was 22 percent. Today, the never-married rate is 56 percent and illegitimacy stands at 70 percent. If today's black family structure were what it was in 1960, the overall black poverty rate would be in or near single digits. The weakening of the black family structure, and its devastating consequences, have nothing to do with the history of slavery or racial discrimination.
Dr. Charles Murray, an American Enterprise Institute scholar, argues in an article titled "Rediscovering the Underclass" in the Institute's On the Issues series (October 2005) that self-destructive behavior has become the hallmark of the underclass. He says that unemployment in the underclass is not caused by the lack of jobs but by the inability to get up every morning and go to work. In 1954, the percentage of black males, age 20 to 24, not looking for work was nine percent. In 1999, it rose to 30 percent, and that was at a time when employers were beating the bushes for employees. Murray adds that "the statistical reality is that people who get into the American job market and stay there seldom remain poor unless they do something self-destructive."
I share Murray's sentiment expressed at the beginning of his article where he says, "Watching the courage of ordinary low-income people as they deal with the aftermath of Katrina and Rita, it is hard to decide which politicians are more contemptible -- Democrats who are rediscovering poverty and blaming it on George W. Bush, or Republicans who are rediscovering poverty and claiming that the government can fix it." Since President Johnson's War on Poverty, controlling for inflation, the nation has spent $9 trillion on about 80 anti-poverty programs. To put that figure in perspective, last year's U.S. GDP was $11 trillion; $9 trillion exceeds the GDP of any nation except the U.S. Hurricanes Katrina and Rita uncovered the result of the War on Poverty -- dependency and self-destructive behavior.
Guess what the president and politicians from both parties are asking the American people to do? If you said, "Enact programs that will sustain and enhance dependency," go to the head of the class.
Dr. Williams has served on the faculty of George Mason University in Fairfax, VA, as John M. Olin Distinguished Professor of Economics, since 1980.
posted
Hang on; there seems to be something a little curious about his numbers. He is saying that, in the unmarried section of the population, 40% of blacks and 26% of whites are poor; in the married segments, the numbers are 9.9% and 6%. Now this certainly does demonstrate a correlation between being unmarried and being poor, though which way the causation goes is another matter. But he also seems to be saying that this means it is marriage, not race, that is the difference between rich and poor. And that's just ridiculous, because in both segments of his population, the blacks have a higher percentage of poor people! Either I completely misunderstand his argument, or he's manipulating the numbers to say what he wants them to say.
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posted
Leaving aside his hint that he believes this relationship to be causal (rather than correlative as the data support), I don't buy his assertion that this is the only difference.
Further, does he offer ideas on how to address the problem or does he just wish we were back in the 1950s?
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posted
I think the point is that marriage (or lack thereof) plays a larger role in poverty than race. I don't think he's saying that race has no bearing at all. There's obviously more to this, but I don't think it takes too much thinking to realize how much being a single parent can decrease one's money earning potential.
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Lack of education,training, living wage employment opportunities, and a supportive community CAN decrease one's earning potential - particularly as a single parent. Being a single parent does not mean decreased earning potential.
Poverty certainly should not be laid only at the doors of "race" - but it certainly plays a role in the poverty equation, just as gender does, age, experience, and many other variables.
I think the "single" parent connection to poverty has a hell of a lot more to do with the connection of what jobs are open to women (or men) that are at certain levels of education, training, and time in a field or working. What is the starting wage? What sorts of benefits? What's the possible progession in rank/responsibility/pay?
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Lack of education,training, living wage employment opportunities, and a supportive community CAN decrease one's earning potential - particularly as a single parent. Being a single parent does not mean decreased earning potential.
Okay, so I suppose being a single parent has no effect on these things either? This about this. How many single parents are capable of working full time, going to school to increase their skills, and taking care of children at the same time? Then you must also figure the cost of child care into the equation. In a family with two parents, there are two people dividing the needs of the family, making it less difficult for one of the parents to work and get an education/work experience. Along with that, when you have two people working low wage jobs, their combined income tends to put them above the poverty line. The absolute minimum wage for two people working full time comes to 20,000 dollars per year. The poverty line is drawn at $16,090 for a three member family this year. Basically, it is almost impossible for a married couple to go below the poverty line if both people work full time. A single parent with one child is considered in poverty if they make less than $12,830. Working full time, you have to make less than $6.15 an hour to go below poverty. I can go walk into Walmart and make $6.50 an hour stocking shelves right now.
The major failing of those numbers is that it doesn't describe the exact situations of the numbers. What is the average number of children in each household for the study? Do both parents in the two parent part of the study work full time? Do single parents work full time? Is the cost of child care taken out of the total income for each household? Before you rush to judge the validity of these number, perhaps you should look into what the study actually studied, rather than dismissing them because they go against your political views.
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posted
By the logic of the salutatory effect of a two-parent family, it'd be even better to have three parents, and 4 would be better than 3, and so on until we decide that the highest possible number of parents is exactly what every child needs in order to fend off poverty.
At which point we might as well just conclude that we are all responsible for all children.
Which is the conclusion I started out with when I first started thinking about this issue back when I was just a mere liberal.
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posted
Which would be completely logical until you start thinking about real world situations. A two parent family can live in the same size dwelling as a single parent family very easilly. The larger the family, the larger the dwelling must be to adequately house them. As a house/apartment gets larger, it becomes more and more difficult and costly for everyone to be provided for. Include food costs, transportation, clothing, etc. and things quickly reach a point of diminishing returns.
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posted
Oh, wait, we all have to live together in order to make this work? Wow!
You know, I thought you were talking about economics.
Let's see...We should be able to find, then, that what really makes people come out of poverty is the "presence" of more than one parent, rather than the ability to contribute a wage to the household.
So...
Rich people who divorce should be more likely to be poor people than poor people who live together.
Have I got it right? Or have we slipped a gear here somewhere?
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posted
Oh wow. Way to be snarky, Bob. That's a good way to influence people into seeing things your way. I agree it would be GREAT if everyone would contribute to raising the children of the world. But how would you go about legislating such a plan? How would you organize it? How would it work? What steps would you have to take to get from where we are now, to where we should be? How efficient would such a program be? I'd honestly love it if all the wealthy people in the world would loosen their greedy little mittens and start redisributing their wealth among the poor of the world (Did you think I was rich or something? Come on, my toy box when I was little included a large box of wood scraps that we lovingly reffered to as building blocks). I'd love to see poverty disapear completely.
My point earlier was that from an economic standpoint, the very view the study was done from, those numbers are completely logical.
But let me give you some information. My sister is a single parent. She lives in poverty, not because she hasn't been trained. She has a degree in accounting, got a 4.0 grade average and was recognized in the "Who's who in American Junior Colleges" a few years ago. And she's in poverty. Why do you think that is? My parents spend almost a quarter of their yearly income helping her and her daughter survive. They do it because they love her, and they want her daughter to have a happy childhood. They don't get anything out of it. In fact, they're risking the prosperity of their own retirement years in order to help one child. I only WISH there were more people who were willing to do that.
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I just think the oversimplistic argument presented by the author of the article is fallacious. Surely the "all other things being equal" clause is going to be put out there somewhere.
He didn't even mention age of people in his rich and poor statistics.
It's certainly hard for a single parent to "make it" in this world. That's not under dispute.
What is under dispute is that it explains poverty in any way that allows us to ignore race as an issue or other factors that relate to poverty.
It's logical until you consider the other things that go into it.
Sorry about your sister.
I know MANY young couples who can't make ends meet and have good starting points too.
There are places in this country where the workers can't afford to live there even with two jobs for each adult.
It's just all too simplistic and, frankly, to berate Bush for finally understanding that he's a "have" and there are many many "have nots" in this country is just insane.
That's what I've been objecting to. Not your posts, really.
I just think the author has a personal axe to grind and I don't get it.
The logic, however, is pretty laughable to me. If it can't be consistently about 2 people heading a family, but has to have "all things being equal" inserted, then it's just like saying kids are better off in homes with more money coming in.
posted
And, I'm sorry, I shouldn't have been so snarky. It really wasn't aimed at you personally. I apologize.
I'm not going to edit, cuz I hate that. But I do apologize to you for not addressing your points and just going off on a weird reductio ad absurdum argument back there.
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posted
Sorry I missed the conversation. Dinner and pumpkin carving called.
Boris - I am a single parent that worked several PT jobs while earning my BA, kept better than a 3.75 GPA, cared for my child with significant special needs, and still was able to be active in my church and community.
I am by no means the only single parent I know that has done such things.
I absolutely think that I put the cart before the horse by waiting to get my college degree until after becoming a parent, and that doing what I did was not easy. But it can be done. By most anyone with sufficient motivation.
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