Monday, December 21, 2015

Where Do (Low Income) Babies Come From?


            The proposal for reducing poverty authored by the group of progressive scholars from the Brookings Institution and conservative scholars from the American Enterprise Institute that I discussed in my last post focuses on three highly interrelated domains: family, work and education.  Addressing problems in any one of these domains, the report argues, will have beneficial effects in the others, and it proposes actions in all three domains for maximum effect.
            As I pointed out in the last post, though we finally have agreements between scholarly conservatives and progressives about some of the facts about poverty and its causes in the United States, the final document represents less conversion than compromise.  Progressives gave a little and got a little, but they seemed to have conceded the conservatives’ point that poverty is more about character than environment.  This couldn’t be clearer than in the report’s proposals with respect to families.
            The “Family” chapter begins with several propositions to which most people would probably agree.  Though adults may be stuck in their economic circumstances, the report argues that one of the best ways to address poverty is to make sure that poor children have the tools they need to escape poverty when they become adults.  Whether it’s the influence, education and guidance or simply that there is more time and money available, children raised in two-parent households have much better life prospects than children raised in one-parent households.  That children who come from two-parent households generally do better in life than children raised in on-parent households is an empirically verifiable fact.
            Since two-parent households are better for children than one-parent households, the report proposes four measures to increase the number of children living in two-parent households as well to improve parental efficacy. According to the report “we” need to
  •          Promote marriage as the most reliable route to family stability and resources;
  •          Promote delayed, responsible childbearing;
  •          Promote parenting skills and practices, especially among low-income parents; and
  •          Promote skill development, family involvement and employment among young men as well                  as women.

            The unstated assumptions behind these proposals harken back to Ronald Reagan’s stereotypical “Welfare Queens.”  Poor (black) people, the assumptions say, remain poor, in part, because they are having too much “irresponsible” sex outside of marriage, are indiscriminately bringing unwanted children into the world, have no idea how to care for these children once they arrive and instead use these children to increase their take of welfare benefits.
            For a report that insists that policy proposals be based on empirical evidence, all of this is surprising, particularly since Richard V. Reeves, a Brookings expert on families who was in the group, had previously issued a report that refutes much of this.
            According to the Reeves report:

Premarital sex has been the social norm for decades, and sexual activity rates among unmarried Americans do not vary along class lines. There is no 'sex gap' by income.

            Moreover, a 2012 study by psychologists at the University of California, Los Angeles found that poor people were just as likely to agree that “A happy, healthy marriage is one of the most important things in life” and that “People who have children together ought to be married,” as were people in higher income groups.  Compared to more affluent people, the study also found that poor people had more negative views about divorce, the same views about premarital sex, and the same kinds of relationship problems regarding parenting, communicating, sex, household chores and “each other’s parents.”
            According to the report, the only difference between poor and affluent people with respect to their thoughts about marriage had to do with economics.  Poor people rated “having the same values and beliefs, having good sex, supporting each other through difficult times, and being able to communicate effectively as less important to successful marriage than did higher income respondents.”  Instead, poor people rated “husband having a steady job and wife having a steady job,” as more important than did wealthier couples.
            If poor people value marriage as highly as more affluent people do, if they agree that people who have children together ought to be married as much as more affluent people do, and, if they are not having sex any more or less frequently than more affluent people do, then why are five times as many children born to unwed poor mothers than are born to unwed affluent mothers?
            According to both Reeves and to The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, the answer is simple: birth control.  For almost all of the unplanned births, women reported that they either didn’t know about contraceptives, didn’t believe they would work or couldn’t access them.
            To be fair, the AEI-Brookings report acknowledges that there is “solid evidence that programs that provide counseling, offer a range of birth control measures including long-acting forms, and provide the services free can substantially reduce pregnancy rates.” But it also notes that “these programs remain controversial.” Not all of the scholars could bring themselves to support a call for long-acting reversible contraceptives such as IUDs or subdermal contraceptive implants. Conservatives opposed these things because they can "be seen as a form of abortion" or because they are “nudging teen and low income women towards using a form of contraception over which they have much less direct control than condoms or the birth control pill.” Whatever that means.
            The authors of the report want to use the power of the state to exhort people to behave themselves in the bedroom.  They apparently think that public service announcement from “leaders” (Donald Trump, Newt Gingrich, Mark “Appalachian Trail” Sanford, Bill Clinton, Al Gore, John Edwards?) will influence young people responding to their sexual urges.  Then, they want to train these young people to be effective parents between the two or three jobs they are holding in order to put food on the table.  
            I have my doubts.
            I’ve got to think that progressives went along with this in return for language allowing for the possibility of more non-abstinence only sex education, easier access to contraception for everyone and an acknowledgment that “Improving family life in America requires that we more effectively help disconnected men and women gain their footing in the labor market.”  That language, though is linked to the idea that the help is to be provided so that “non-resident fathers financially contribute to and constructively participate in their families.”
            Following the conservative prescriptions for strengthening families threatens to waste a lot of time and money.  The evidence is clear that if we want to reduce the incidence of out-of-wedlock births, we have to face up to the fact that out-of-wedlock sex is not going to stop.  Given that, the best we can do is to teach people realistic ways of avoiding premature parenthood.  The evidence is also clear that if we want more marriages, we have to address the fact that poor people don’t want to take the chance on marriage while their economic prospects and those of their significant others appear bleak.

            But then again, why bother with evidence if ideology continues to tell us everything we need to know about the facts of life?

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