Current Events > "Single mothers are not the problem" regarding poverty in the U.S.

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https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/10/opinion/sunday/single-mothers-poverty.html

When the American Enterprise Institute and the Brookings Institution formed a bipartisan panel of prominent poverty scholars to write a Consensus Plan for Reducing Poverty in 2015, its first recommendation was to promote a new cultural norm surrounding parenthood and marriage.

The reality, however, is that single motherhood is not the reason we have unusually high poverty in the United States, compared with other rich democracies. In fact, we recently published a study in The American Journal of Sociology, using data from the Luxembourg Income Study, which demonstrates that reducing single motherhood here would not substantially reduce poverty.
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Because fewer people are in single-mother families than youd think, even large reductions in single motherhood would not substantially reduce poverty. We can illustrate this in two ways. First, what would the poverty rate be if single motherhood in the United States was as common as it is in the typical rich democracy? Second, what would poverty in America be if single motherhood returned to the rate it was in 1970?
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What really differentiates rich democracies is the penalty attached to single motherhood. Countries make political choices about how well social policies support single mothers. Our political choices result in families headed by single mothers being 14.3 percent more likely to be poor than other families.

Such a severe penalty is unusual. In a majority of rich democracies, single mothers are not more likely to be poor. Denmark, for example, has chosen to provide universal cash benefits and tax credits for children, publicly subsidized child care and health care, and paid parental leave. Because of these generous social policies, single mothers and their children have a similar level of economic security as other families.

A common knee-jerk reaction against generous social policies for single mothers is that they pose a moral hazard and encourage more single motherhood. The problem with this argument is that it is overwhelmingly contradicted by social science. Did the 1996 welfare reform, which made social policies less generous for single mothers, cause a large reduction in single motherhood? No. Do rich democracies with more generous policies for single mothers have more single mothers? No. Do rich democracies with higher penalties for single motherhood have fewer single mothers? No.

Single motherhood is one of four major risks of poverty, which also include unemployment, low levels of education and forming households at young ages. Our research demonstrates a broader point about the risks of poverty. Poverty in America is not unusually high because more people have more of these risk factors. They are actually less common here than they are in the typical rich democracy, and fewer Americans carry these risks today than they did in 1970 or 1980. Even if one infers that risk factors result from bad choices and behaviors, Americans apparently make fewer such choices and engage in fewer such behaviors than people in other rich democracies or than Americans in the past.

The reality is we have unusually high poverty because we have unusually high penalties for all four of these risk factors. For example, if you lack a high school degree in the United States, it increases the probability of your being in poverty by 16.4 percent. In the 28 other rich democracies, a lack of education increases the probability of poverty by less than 5 percent on average. No other country penalizes the less educated nearly as much as we do.

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Shoot you should probably make sure to get a HS diploma then.

We should also make sure not to discount the effects of Children growing up in single parent households and we should do what we can to encourage a strong nuclear family

At least imo...I'm coming from the perspective of someone who has been married a little over a year and has a kid due in a week.

It's definitely a two person job hah

That being said, I'd be interested to see what the cost of increased subsidies would be

Seems like it could be handled better at the state level....maybe. also, communities used to be the thing that helped with this. I guess we're just too large to handle it at that level now...shame. or we're unwilling

Well, no shit?

I mean, of course it's not the qualities of the things themselves, but the consequences of them. Children of broken homes are disproportionately at risk because the family is just very likely to be poor. This is...the standard interpretation, isn't it?

The only person I've seen argue otherwise is Ann Coulter, and everyone knows she's just bullshitting.
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Such a severe penalty is unusual. In a majority of rich democracies, single mothers are not more likely to be poor. Denmark, for example, has chosen to provide universal cash benefits and tax credits for children, publicly subsidized child care and health care, and paid parental leave. Because of these generous social policies, single mothers and their children have a similar level of economic security as other families.

This is why. When the nanny state is indirectly paying for you to raise children on your own, effectively replacing the husband as the main breadwinner or a breadwinner, you can sort of hobble along. I'd be interested in seeing the long-term ramifications of this, though. AFAIK being raised in a single parent household does a lot of damage to children and strips men of their sense of masculinity and purpose.
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Also imo the way that the NY Times is framing these realities as "penalties" seems to be bullshit to me tbqh. Not having a nanny state that replaces the father or the main breadwinner doesn't mean someone is being penalized. It just means someone isn't being subsidized.

Being subsidized should not be the norm, and the numbers are being compared against nation states where subsidies / nannyism is much more rampant.
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FLUFFYGERM posted...

Such a severe penalty is unusual. In a majority of rich democracies, single mothers are not more likely to be poor. Denmark, for example, has chosen to provide universal cash benefits and tax credits for children, publicly subsidized child care and health care, and paid parental leave. Because of these generous social policies, single mothers and their children have a similar level of economic security as other families.

This is why. When the nanny state is indirectly paying for you to raise children on your own, effectively replacing the husband as the main breadwinner or a breadwinner, you can sort of hobble along. I'd be interested in seeing the long-term ramifications of this, though. AFAIK being raised in a single parent household does a lot of damage to children and strips men of their sense of masculinity and purpose.

LMAO, I'd love to see any reputable study saying this. Single parent households are less than optimal due to poverty, not this other stuff. That seems to come from nowhere other than your worldview.
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Single parent households are more likely to end up in poverty because there's just one parent doing all the parenting/working instead of two. And there IS evidence that children of single mothers are more likely to commit crime than children who had two parents.

It's a tough regression problem due to the number of variables out there, but to deny that it is a factor is to be dishonest. You lean really left and it seems to me that the far left is almost making it a virtue to be a single parent that relies on the state, so I find it funny that you're accusing ME of holding to "just my worldview" or w/e lol. I could easily say that about you.

Here's an interesting read from a source that leans left.

https://www.theatlantic.com/sexes/archive/2012/12/the-real-complex-connection-between-single-parent-families-and-crime/265860/

In any case, the solution to this is for the left to go back to embracing the nuclear family and strong marriages, rather than for the left to champion the State taking over the role of the father or the mother.
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FLUFFYGERM posted...

Single parent households are more likely to end up in poverty because there's just one parent doing all the parenting/working instead of two. And there IS evidence that children of single mothers are more likely to commit crime than children who had two parents.

It's a tough regression problem due to the number of variables out there, but to deny that it is a factor is to be dishonest. You lean really left and it seems to me that the far left is almost making it a virtue to be a single parent that relies on the state, so I find it funny that you're accusing ME of holding to "just my worldview" or w/e lol. I could easily say that about you.

Here's an interesting read from a source that leans left.

https://www.theatlantic.com/sexes/archive/2012/12/the-real-complex-connection-between-single-parent-families-and-crime/265860/

In any case, the solution to this is for the left to go back to embracing the nuclear family and strong marriages, rather than for the left to champion the State taking over the role of the father or the mother.

I don't have a problem with any of the economic stuff you said necessarily. I'm only talking about "single motherhood destroy's the manhood of men" thing.
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The solution is to do both and not leave people behind because of "personal responsibility".
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legendary_zell posted...

I don't have a problem with any of the economic stuff you said necessarily. I'm only talking about "single motherhood destroy's the manhood of men" thing.

The State subsidizing single motherhood does destroy healthy masculinity.

legendary_zell posted...

The solution is to do both and not leave people behind because of "personal responsibility".

Or we can expect our educated citizens to be responsible adults and not take away someone's resources to subsidize the mistakes someone else makes.
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FLUFFYGERM posted...

legendary_zell posted...

I don't have a problem with any of the economic stuff you said necessarily. I'm only talking about "single motherhood destroy's the manhood of men" thing.

The State subsidizing single motherhood does destroy healthy masculinity.

legendary_zell posted...

The solution is to do both and not leave people behind because of "personal responsibility".

Or we can expect our educated citizens to be responsible adults and not take away someone's resources to subsidize the mistakes someone else makes.

These are both purely worldview statements. See what I mean?
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As the article in the OP notes: "subsidizing single motherhood" does not increase its prevalence, nor does "punishing it" as we do reduce it.

So if it's single motherhood that is "destroying healthy masculinity," government programs that make it easier for single parents to afford their needs aren't going to worsen that problem.
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FLUFFYGERM posted...

The State subsidizing single motherhood does destroy healthy masculinity.

Presumably you have hard evidence supporting such a strong claim, yes?
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