Here is another idea for fighting poverty that is a conservative solution.
Let's start with some basic facts. There are a few factors which work well to predict which children will live in poverty as adults. The three best are marital status of the mother, educational attainment of the mother, and educational attainment of the child. To be clear, children who grow up in homes with married parents are much less likely to end up in poverty as adults than those who are raised in single parent households. Children raised by mothers who have completed high school are also much less likely to end up in poverty than those raised by uneducated mothers. Children who drop out of school before high school graduation are much more likely to be poor as adults than those who complete high school. Interestingly enough, these factors are not a matter of genetics. Children of uneducated single mothers who are given up for adoption to married couples with high school diplomas do roughly as well as the natural children of similar couples.
Put all this together, and we can see that a good way to reduce poverty would be to reduce the prevalence of single parent homes while promoting completion of at least a high school education. Despite this fact, we have just completed decades in which the prevailing liberal culture in the media has promoted the acceptability of single mothers. In fact, social acceptance of unwed mothers has risen to the point where over two thirds of children born in certain communities are now born to single parents. On top of social acceptance, we also have government assistance that helps support children and mothers who find themselves in this situation. In essence, the government promotes and supports a life style likely to produce children who will grow up to poverty while our society and culture works to make that lifestyle completely acceptable.
How can this process be reversed? While it may seem like a hopeless task, there are some simple moves that could push in that direction.
First of all, we need a respected voice to explain this entire matter. We ought to have a president who, rather than promoting the liberal "anything goes" attitude, works to tell America that single parents produce children who are likely to be poor. We need a leader who will explain that for the good of all Americans, we need to avoid having single parents if possible.
Second, the support structure for single parents has to be modified. It would be wrong to end support for children born to single parents; we ought not make the children suffer for that status. The government can, however, stop supporting repetitive behavior of that sort. In other words, the support offered for the first child should be more than what is given if a second child is born out of wedlock. A third child for a single parent should get no additional support for the family. This should work to reduce the number of children stuck in this situation.
Third, we should also provide an incentive for parents to stay together. A tax credit for children living with married parents is one possible method. Others can be explored as well. The tax credit will be small compared to the cost of the child, but it might have some effect at the margin.
On top of these changes, we also need to promote education to make it more attractive to the children in school already. I am not talking about a public relations campaign. Nor is the proper method giving teachers a raise or even reducing class sizes. All of these have been tried and none have worked well. What is needed is a method for making school more interesting to kids. We need to make school into a place where the kids want to be (at least some of the time.) There are a great many ideas about how to accomplish that task; in fact, there are far too many for me to list them here. The point, however, is that these proposals exist. America needs to explore them and decide which ones make the most sense. We cannot continue to cling to the old ways which have been so clearly discredited. For example, there is the 1960's idea that preschool education (headstart) will give poor kids a leg up and will help them do better in school in the long run. After decades of experience with that preschool education, the federal government has found and reported that by third grade, kids who went to head start programs do no better than those who did not. In other words, after spending hundreds of billions of dollars on preschool, we have achieved nothing. Despite that data, president Obama is still pushing for universal preschool because he believes the ideology instead of the reality. America has to deal with real facts or we will be destined to fail.
Let's start with some basic facts. There are a few factors which work well to predict which children will live in poverty as adults. The three best are marital status of the mother, educational attainment of the mother, and educational attainment of the child. To be clear, children who grow up in homes with married parents are much less likely to end up in poverty as adults than those who are raised in single parent households. Children raised by mothers who have completed high school are also much less likely to end up in poverty than those raised by uneducated mothers. Children who drop out of school before high school graduation are much more likely to be poor as adults than those who complete high school. Interestingly enough, these factors are not a matter of genetics. Children of uneducated single mothers who are given up for adoption to married couples with high school diplomas do roughly as well as the natural children of similar couples.
Put all this together, and we can see that a good way to reduce poverty would be to reduce the prevalence of single parent homes while promoting completion of at least a high school education. Despite this fact, we have just completed decades in which the prevailing liberal culture in the media has promoted the acceptability of single mothers. In fact, social acceptance of unwed mothers has risen to the point where over two thirds of children born in certain communities are now born to single parents. On top of social acceptance, we also have government assistance that helps support children and mothers who find themselves in this situation. In essence, the government promotes and supports a life style likely to produce children who will grow up to poverty while our society and culture works to make that lifestyle completely acceptable.
How can this process be reversed? While it may seem like a hopeless task, there are some simple moves that could push in that direction.
First of all, we need a respected voice to explain this entire matter. We ought to have a president who, rather than promoting the liberal "anything goes" attitude, works to tell America that single parents produce children who are likely to be poor. We need a leader who will explain that for the good of all Americans, we need to avoid having single parents if possible.
Second, the support structure for single parents has to be modified. It would be wrong to end support for children born to single parents; we ought not make the children suffer for that status. The government can, however, stop supporting repetitive behavior of that sort. In other words, the support offered for the first child should be more than what is given if a second child is born out of wedlock. A third child for a single parent should get no additional support for the family. This should work to reduce the number of children stuck in this situation.
Third, we should also provide an incentive for parents to stay together. A tax credit for children living with married parents is one possible method. Others can be explored as well. The tax credit will be small compared to the cost of the child, but it might have some effect at the margin.
On top of these changes, we also need to promote education to make it more attractive to the children in school already. I am not talking about a public relations campaign. Nor is the proper method giving teachers a raise or even reducing class sizes. All of these have been tried and none have worked well. What is needed is a method for making school more interesting to kids. We need to make school into a place where the kids want to be (at least some of the time.) There are a great many ideas about how to accomplish that task; in fact, there are far too many for me to list them here. The point, however, is that these proposals exist. America needs to explore them and decide which ones make the most sense. We cannot continue to cling to the old ways which have been so clearly discredited. For example, there is the 1960's idea that preschool education (headstart) will give poor kids a leg up and will help them do better in school in the long run. After decades of experience with that preschool education, the federal government has found and reported that by third grade, kids who went to head start programs do no better than those who did not. In other words, after spending hundreds of billions of dollars on preschool, we have achieved nothing. Despite that data, president Obama is still pushing for universal preschool because he believes the ideology instead of the reality. America has to deal with real facts or we will be destined to fail.
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