59

Figure 5a: Children of Unmarried Mothers in the United States:
How They Do in School

Children living with:
Miunmarried mothers EI Both birth parents

60%
In lower half of class mE%

Repeated a grade r 33%

}

Parent conference
requested 1

S

1
8
R

Suspended or expelled rr 17%

1

Percent of children aged 7-17 years

Source: Zill, M. (1994). Family Change and Student Achievement: What We Have Learned, What It Means
{or Schools. In Booth & Duan (Eds, Links: How Do They Affect, ‘Outcomes?
Thlledste, NI: Lawrence Erlbaum,



123

All else equal, higher levels of public assistance were associated with lower preva-
lence of marriage for black men and black women; lower prevalence of husband-wife
families; lower percentage of marital births for black women; and lower percentages
of black children living in husband-wife families.

‘These results differed from those reported in some previous aggregate level stud-
ies, but they are quite simply robust, and were substantively, as well as statistically
significant.

In addition, as I had noted earlier in testimony, our staff has
compiled 22 studies that were published on the relationship be-
tween welfare benefits and illegitimacy rates, of which 16 have re-
ported at least one significant correlation.

You have a great deal of experience, on the street, as it were,
dealing with this issue. Based on these studies, is it not fair for
policy makers to think that perhaps there is some kind of relation-
ship between welfare and out-of-wedlock birth rates?

Sister McGraby. This was discussed about an hour ago in terms
of the studies that one of the presenters talked about. I took that
sentence from the data that we have from the Coalition on the Pre-
vention of Teenage Pregnancy.

1 I think there have been some studies that would support what
said.

Also, our experience would support that girls are not having ba-
bies to go on welfare. That they are having babies because they are
looking for love. We can say, “Looking for love in all the -wrong
places” maybe, but they are not saying, “I am going to have a baby
so I can go on welfare.”

It may be the outcome, subsequent to the birth of the child, but
we do not find the prebirth statistics being a correlation with being
on welfare.

In other words, somebody asked earlier—I think it was Mr.
Levin—was there a correlation between—or what percentage of ba-
bies born in this country were born to girls on welfare. Our experi-
ence is very low.

h Mr. ENGLISH. I think your practical perspective has some weight
ere.

Is it not fair to say that a lot of the studies do suggest some sort
of a correlation?

Sister MCGEADy. Maybe. I just have not seen them. I know that
everybody is studying it right now.

Mr. ENGLISH. I appreciate that, Sister.

Ms. Sheldon, would you like to comment on whether you think
there is adequate basis in scientific studies to suggest there might
be a correlation?

Ms. SHELDON. I have dealt with teen mothers. I have dealt with
women on welfare. I think it is important to point out that 13 per-
cent of out-of-wedlock births are to women 18 and under. That
means there are a significant number of women that are having
children, not just teens.

I believe that with welfare—that they get all sorts of assistance,
it comes in a lot of different ways, as you all know.

It continues the cycle. It makes it easier. Not every girl says, “I
am going to have a baby to live a great life on welfare.”

at I found is it is generational; it is cyclical. The people I have
worked with in the motels—and that is why I pointed out that
these two girls were cousins.


25

Jn contrast, while the birth rate among non-martied women in the U.S. has increased, the
birth rate among married women has gone in the opposite direction. Thus, not only has
marriage among women of child bearing age declined but the birth rate among the
shrinking pool of married women has also fallen.

RISING ILLEGITIMACY Is A MAJOR CAUSE OF WELFARE
DEPENDENCE AND POVERTY

‘The most obvious consequences ofthe rising tide of illegitimacy and declining
marriage are welfare dependence and child poverty. Charts 2 and 3 show data from the
‘National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY) which contains a national representative
‘sample of young mothers and their children.’ The charts divide children into four groups:

1, Out-ofwedlock-Never Married —Children bor out of wedlock whose mother has
‘never married after the birth of the child;
2, Out-of-wedlock-Subsequent Marriage— Children bom out of wedlock whose

ePPERER AS

Never anied —Sutuaquant Mariage ‘Deore Meroe act
‘Out of Wedlock In Wedlock

‘As chart 2 shows, children born out-of-wedlock whose mothers have not married
have received AFDC benefits for fifty percent ofthe time since birth. By contrast
childrea who were born in wedlock and whose parents have remained married have
received AFDC only 3 percent ofthe time since bith. Thus AFDC receipt is 1700 percent
more frequent among illegitimate children of never married mothers than among
legitimate children raised by intact married couples.

Ifa woman gives birth out-of-wedlock but subsequently marries the average
length of time spent of AFDC will be cut in half, falling from 50 percent (for children of
‘never married mothers) to 23 percent. Marriage even after an out-of-wedlock birth is thus

Th Nain Longin Survey of Yuh (LS) contin» analy meena wep en

‘ary chilen of NLSY moter Sad wn overage age of ough ie year a te Prod of iene
92),


154

higher welfare benefits provides empirical corroboration that welfare mothers are
indeed capable of making rational decisions to govern their own lives. Welfare
mothers are dependent, we believe, not because they are incompetent or morally
deficient but because they have made rational decisions in an irrational system.

Moral concer, informed by empirical evidence, demands admission that the
service approach to both family breakdown and welfare dependency has failed
Welfare reform that fails to curb the cash that subsidizes illegitimacy is, not a
vision of reducing dependency, but a vision of administering “benefits” to an ever-
expanding population that will always be mired in dependency. It is an
abandonment of the conviction that people on welfare are fully human and fully
capable of achieving self-sufficiency. And it is an insidious guarantee that welfare
spending will continue to craw! steadily upward while illegitimacy continues to
increase as well.

Ifthe amount of money we are spending on welfare were buying healthy families
and stable communities, we would raise no objection. Our concern is, not that we
are spending too much, but that we are killing off marriage and all the blessings
and safeguards marriage buys for women and children.

Admitting the failure of the service approach will require tough political choices,
Those choices will undoubtedly offend both the welfare industry and feminist.
ideology. But politicians should take heart from polling data that demonstrate
broad-based public support for modest but real steps to reduce illegitimacy.

According to a poll conducted by Voter/Consumer Research for Family Research
Council in mid-October 1995, three out of four Americans believe welfare
encourages illegitimacy. By a ratio of two to one, Americans fee! that reducing
illegitimacy is a more important -- and more realistic -- goal than “getting single
mothers with few job skills into jobs that will pay them enough to support
themselves and their children.” Voters favor a preventative, anti-illegitimacy
strategy, in other words, rather than a remedial workfare strategy, And by an
overwhelming margin of 84% to 13%, they favor the family cap provision as @
modest first step toward reversing the trend in illegitimacy.

Only by historical accident were unwed mothers -- of any age ~- ever included in
the AFDC program. Frances Perkins, President Roosevelt's Secretary of Labor
and chief architect of welfare policy, opposed extending federal entitlements to
unmarried mothers because she foresaw that subsidizing illegitimacy would
escalate family breakdown. And, tragically, she was right. While less than 3% of
the young beneficiaries of the program in the late 1930s were the children of
unwed mothers, today the tables have completely turned. In the year between
‘October 1991 and September 1992, only 1.6% of the children on AFDC qualified
because a parent was deceased

It would be ironic at best if the current majority in Congress were to find
themselves to the left of the most liberal member of the Roosevelt Administration
because they rejected her intuition, now confirmed by years of sad experience. It
is the potential to reverse that sad experience that must define "compassion" in the
present debate. As the one policy option that promises to effect change in the
current system, restrictions on benefits by definition constitute the compassionate
alternative

Gertrude Himmelfarb notes that the word "compassion" once described "a moral
sentiment, not a political principle, a sentiment evoked by misery or sorrow, not by
poverty as such."** As political salvationism sought to preempt traditional morals
in the last 30 years, it was only natural that moral sentiments should be confused
with political principles. Likewise, that misery and sorrow should be equated with


149

STATEMENT OF GARY L. BAUER
PRESIDENT, FAMILY RESEARCH COUNCIL

In the welfare debate last year, President Clinton himself stated that "the real
source of [the] problem is the inordinate number of out-of- wedlock births in this
country." He also conceded that "there's no question that {ending welfare for
unwed mothers] would work. The question is... ‘Is it morally right?"*?

While the President's proposed policies leave much to be desired, he has
formulated precisely the right question to frame the current debate over welfare
reform in general and illegitimacy in particular. There can be no more important
policy objective than the preservation - or more properly in this day and age, the
revitalization -- of our nation’s moral capital. As James Q. Wilson wrote in his oft-
cited article, “The Rediscovery of Character: Private Virtue and Public Policy”

‘The essential first step is to acknowledge that at root, in
almost every area of important public concern, we are
seeking to induce persons to act virtuously.... Not only is
such conduct desirable in its own right, it appears now to be
necessary if large improvements are to be made in those
matters we consider problems?

‘There exists a striking public consensus that the welfare state's practice of
subsidizing illegitimacy is not only a massive problem, but a moral problem at root

Even so unlikely a source as Bruce Reed, President Clinton's leading aide on
welfare reform, once acknowledged that the essential purpose of reform must be to
reverse the alarming rise in out-of-wedlock births.* If not driven exclusively by
AFDC “benefits,” the increase has at least been sustained and perpetuated by the
expansion of a system that pays recipients to bear illegitimate children. Current
trends indicate that by the year 2015 -- some studies project as early as 2000 -- one
of every two American babies will be born to a single mother, and illegitimacy will
surpass divorce as the main cause of fatherlessness,

Already, according to the Census Bureau, approximately one of every three babies
bor in the United States is born to a single mother. In the black inner city, more
than 80% of children are born without fathers. In many poor white communities,
the figure is nearing 50% -- and illegitimacy is increasing more rapidly among
whites than any other racial group. legitimacy ratios for the country’s white
population have now climbed higher than the illegitimacy ratios in the black
community that compelled Senator Moynihan to issue his famous warning about
the breakdown of the black family.

Even if a job program can succeed in putting more unmarried welfare mothers to
‘work (which is unlikely),’ we will still be left with roughly the same number of
fatherless children. While Great Britain has already succeeded in implementing
reforms that make work economically more attractive than welfare, the reforms of
the 1980s have only served to underscore in both Britain and America the fact that
little progress can be made without addressing the collapse of the family *

When the Moynihan Report appeared over thirty years ago, liberal intellectuals
‘excoriated the author for “defending middle class values.” “What may seem to be
a disease to the white middle class may be a healthy adaptation to the Negro lower
class,” Bayard Rustin intoned,” Today, however, overwhelming empirical evidence
demonstrates that there is nothing at all “healthy” about the decay of families and
that not all personal choices are equal in terms of their impact on children, families,
and communities, The evidence itself has propelled illegitimacy to the forefront of
the current national debate over welfare reform -- or at least, had propelled


COMMITTEE ON WAYS AND MEANS
BILL ARCHER, Texas, Chairman

PHILIP M. CRANE, Illinois SAM M. GIBBONS, Florida

BILL THOMAS, California CHARLES B. RANGEL, New York
E. CLAY SHAW, Jr., Florida FORTNEY PETE STARK, California
NANCY L. JOHNSON, Connecticut ANDY JACOBS, Jr., Indiana

JIM BUNNING, Kentucky HAROLD E. FORD, Tennessee
AMO HOUGHTON, New York ROBERT T. MATSUI, California
WALLY HERGER, California BARBARA B. KENNELLY, Connecticut
JIM McCRERY, Louisiana WILLIAM J. COYNE, Pennsylvania
MEL HANCOCK, Missouri SANDER M. LEVIN, Michigan
DAVE CAMP, Michigan BENJAMIN L. CARDIN, Maryland
JIM RAMSTAD, Minnesota JIM McDERMOTT, Washington
DICK ZIMMER, New Jersey GERALD D. KLECZKA, Wisconsin
JIM NUSSLE, Iowa JOHN LEWIS, Georgia

SAM JOHNSON, Texas LF. PAYNE, Virginia

JENNIFER DUNN, Washington RICHARD E. NEAL, Massachusetts
MAC COLLINS, Georgia MICHAEL R. MCNULTY, New York

ROB PORTMAN, Ohio
JIMMY HAYES, Louisiana
GREG LAUGHLIN, Texas
PHILIP S. ENGLISH, Pennsylvania
JOHN ENSIGN, Nevada
JON CHRISTENSEN, Nebraska
PHILLIP D. MOSELEY, Chief of Staff

JANICE Mays, Minority Chief Counsel

SUBCOMMITTEE ON HUMAN RESOURCES
E. CLAY SHAW, Jr, Florida, Chairman

DAVE CAMP, Michigan HAROLD E. FORD, Tennessee

JIM McCRERY, Louisiana BARBARA B. KENNELLY, Connecticut
MAC COLLINS, Georgia SANDER M. LEVIN, Michigan

PHILIP S. ENGLISH, Pennsylvania CHARLES B. RANGEL, New York
JIM NUSSLE, lowa FORTNEY PETE STARK, California

JENNIFER DUNN, Washington
JOHN ENSIGN, Nevada

an


119

Chairman Snaw. Thank you, Ms. Rowe.

Mr. Collins, you may inquire.

Mr. CoLuins. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Sister Mary Rose, I wish you would have read the last paragraph
of your statement. Well, next to the last. The last one was thank
you and God bless you.

The next to the last one was government must convey a sense
of hope, of concern, of caring about those neediest among us. This,
ultimately, is what this debate is really about. In the words of a
colleague at Catholic Charities U.S.A. “Real jobs, real paychecks,
that’s real welfare reform.”

This issue is so broad, that you cannot just say welfare reform
is going to take care of it.

That is the reason why, as we looked at the overall concept of
the Federal Government and its budget, and tried to bring it into
line, we placed provisions within that budget that would do some
of the things that are in your next to last paragraph.

The intent was to encourage the private sector to save, encourage
the private sector to invest, and encourage the private sector to cre-
ate jobs. It is the best answer to poverty. It is the best answer for
welfare.

We also must look at the environment that our children are
being brought up in, and I am not talking about within the home
itself or the structure of the home.

I am talking about what comes into that home from the outside.

You turn the television on. What do you see? You cannot watch
a decent program on the television in the evening without seeing
some type of foreplay, sex play, or insinuation of sex. You cannot
listen and watch a movie without hearing words that you would
not want your children saying.

You cannot leave your kids at home in the afternoon, after
school, because of the soaps and the idiots that you see on there,
and the lifestyle that they are trying to present to the American
youth that they live, enjoy and are happy doing. It is wrong.

It is not just the youth. Murphy Brown, an adult, single parent,
greatest thing since sliced bread. Is it right? Is that what we
should be portraying to our children, to other adults? No. It makes
it look like divorce is the thing to do. Swap around, shop around.
Go from bed to bed.

No, that is not what we need to be showing our kids. It is not
what we should be showing our adults. It is not just in the area
of poverty, it is not just in the area of welfare, it is not just in the
area of tax reform.

It is the overall society and what we have got to do to the values
and the morals, and developing a conscience of the people of this
country.

Thank you, Ma’am.

Sister McGrapy. I agree

Mr. COLLIns. I thought you would.

Chairman Suaw. Mr. Rangel.

Mr. RANGEL. Thank you.

I do not see too much testimony, but certainly no programs that
reach the conclusion that if a kid has an education and some hope


68

all of these problems, by the way, ranges into the multiplied
billions of dollars.

I am not pessimistic. I believe that the situation now is so bad,
and the old approaches so discredited, that men and women of wis-
dom will realize the necessity of new approaches and will do the
hard work required to bring an end to this problem that is literally
tearing apart the fabric of our society.

Thank you, Committee and Chairman Shaw.

[The prepared statement follows:]


152

Historical experience, related by Marvin Olasky and others, does indeed
demonstrate that the most effective social services have been offered by private
community groups, without any illusion of moral neutrality. In her seminal
historical study Poverty and Compassion, Gertrude Himmelfarb writes that:

{a}fter making the most arduous attempt to objectify the problem of,
poverty, to divorce poverty from any moral assumptions and conditions,
we are learning how inseparable the moral and materia! dimensions of that
problem are. And after trying to devise social policies that are scrupulously
neutral and value-free, we are finding these policies fraught with moral
implications that have grave material and social consequences."

George Liebmann says, more simply, in a recent issue of The American Enterprise,
“Rescuing an underclass is by definition a highly moralistic undertaking." While
controlling welfare spending is a happy byproduct of terminating benefits to teen
mothers, even more promising is the opportunity to begin reversing the message of
the counterculture that has so eroded the character of our people, in part by
assaulting the family.

Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan has used the phrase "defining deviancy down" to
describe Americans’ tendency to ignore excess levels of deviancy by normalizing
what used to be considered pathology. Only by “defining deviancy down” have we
been able to ignore until now all the signs of impending disaster that attend a
burgeoning illegitimacy rate. Barbara Whitehead's 1993 Atlantic article heralded a
real and significant change in the public mood, however, and the near-mythic
ascendancy of Charles Murray's "Coming White Underclass" piece the same year
seemed to confirm a general convergence of public opinion. In a recent Family
Research Council survey of 1,000 Americans, a substantial majority (81 percent)
of respondents indicated that "women having babies out of wedlock that they can't
support financially" is a serious problem. The mounting public consensus presents
a unique opportunity to implement more than symbolic change in the 104th
Congress and to make sanctions against illegitimacy the focus of that change

{In sending his welfare package to Congress more than 30 years ago, President
Kennedy articulated contemporary liberals’ fundamental misunderstanding of the
causal role welfare plays in boosting illegitimacy rates.

[Welfare programs, (he said], must contribute to the attack on... . family
breakdown fand] illegitimacy. .. . Unless such problems are dealt with
effectively, they fester, and grow, sapping the strength of society as a
whole and extending their consequences in troubled families from one
generation to the next.

Kennedy's insight about the consequences has proven historically accurate; but his
"service" approach to curbing illegitimacy worked no better than the current
President's will - a fact which an unnamed aide on the Clinton welfare task force
acknowledged last year

While the President advocates a massive and expensive public relations campaign
against teen pregnancy, the anonymous aide confided to Newsweek reporter Joe
Klein: "We looked at a hundred different programs around the country that were
trying to deal with this problem, and not one of them moved the needle, There just
weren't any results."" Likewise, a formal study of the Teenage Parent
Demonstration, sponsored by the Department of Health and Human Services in
response to "persistently high rates of teenage pregnancies and births,” found that,
*{t}he program had an unusual and disappointing pattern of impacts on pregnancy
and birth rates... despite... the substantial efforts of the programs to empower
[the] young mothers to take control of their fertility."”*


79

men in the fifties, after adjusting for inflation, they still have a far
better capacity to support families today.

Something came in and affected the black marital pattern, it was
the welfare system saying, you do not need to get married any
more, we have got a substitute for marriage, it is this combined
welfare benefits package. That not only affects the woman’s behav-
ior but, the young man’s as well. Now that the man is no longer
a breadwinner, he is going to fall into the crime problems that
Congressman Rangel talked about.

Mr. ENGLISH. Dr. Rector, in my remaining time, I note that your
testimony and Dr. Furstenberg’s are very hard to reconcile. I would
like to give each of you a brief opportunity to comment on this.

I would like to say that the most shocking finding you present
based on a national longitudinal study is that children born outside
of marriage who stayed in never-married families spent 50 percent
of their time on welfare, while children born to intact families and
who stayed in intact families spent only 3 percent of their time on
welfare.

I have seldom seen differences of this magnitude in the various
issues of witnesses appearing before this Committee and I would
like both of you to comment on whether this finding has implica-
tions for public policy and, if so, what they are?

Dr. Rector.

Dr. REcTor. I think that the implication is pretty obvious. Most
societies, in fact, almost all societies have recognized historically
that it takes the work of two adults to support children and it is
very difficult to support a child all by yourself, particularly if you
happen to be, as many of these women are, women with very low
educational attainment, very low cognitive skill levels. Therefore, it
does not surprise me at all that a woman that has a child out-of-
wedlock is going to spend 50 percent of her time on AFDC and 70
percent of her time receiving some broader array of welfare
services.

I think that to believe that we are going to get out of that de-
pendency trap without finding a way to increase the marriage rates
so that there are two adults contributing both financially and, more
importantly, psychologically to that child, is simply wrong. Mar-
riage is the key here.

Mr. ENGLISH. Dr. Furstenberg.

Dr. FURSTENBERG. I appreciate an opportunity to respond. I
think the confusion here is between a correlation and causality. We
are not conducting a random experiment where we randomly as-
sign some people to marriage and some people to single parent-
hood. What is happening is people are selecting marriage or single
parenthood depending on their circumstances. When we do these
studies we really have to try to take account of the selective dif-
ferences.

When we do, we find that welfare, single parenthood does not
have the same kind of power that many believe because, marriages
do not survive when people are poor and unemployed. In my study
back in the sixties, the time that Mr. Rector was referring to—vir-
tually all of the teenage mothers married. What do you see 10 or
15 years later?


15

THE HONORABLE TIM HUTCHINSON
COMMITTEE ON WAYS AND MEANS
MARCH 12, 1996

THANK YOU MR. CHAIRMAN. I APPRECIATE THE OPPORTUNITY TO APPEAR
BEFORE YOUR COMMITTEE TODAY. I WOULD FIRST LIKE TO COMMEND YOU.FOR ALL
YOUR HARD WORK ON THR WELFARE ISSUE. THIS IS NOT AN EASY SUBJECT

THERE ARB NO RASY ANSWERS. ‘THE POLICIES THAT WE HAVE HAD IN PLACE FOR

MR. CHAIRMAN, I BELIEVE THAT THE SINGLE GREATEST CAUSE OF THE ILLS OF
OUR SOCIETY IS THE BREAKDOWN OF THE AMERICAN FAMILY. THERE IS NO BETTER
INSTITUTION TO PROVIDE FOR THE NEEDS OF OUR NATION'S CHILDREN. WHETHER IT
IS EDUCATION, HRALTH CARE, MORAL AND SPIRITUAL GUIDANCE, THE BUILDING OF
SELF-ESTEEM, OR JUST THE BASIC NECESSITIES OF LIFE, THE FAMILY CAN DO IT

‘THEREFORE, IT IS INCUMBENT UPON THOSE OF US IN GOVERNMENT TO DO ALL
we CAN TO ENACT LAWS AND POLICIES WHICH ENCOURAGE AND STRENGTHEN

FAMILIES OF OUR NATION, UNFORTUNATELY, WE HAVE DEVELOPED A WELFARE SYSTEM
WHICH DORS JUST THR OPPOSITE.

PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT WARNED WHEN WE STARTED DOWN THIS PATH SIXTY YEARS
N00 THAT WE WOULD "INDUCE A SPIRITUAL AND MORAL DISINTEGRATION
FUNDAMENTALLY OBSTRUCTIVE TO THE NATIONAL FIBER."

WB HAVE REPLACED MOTHERS AND PATHERS, AND FOR THAT MATTER REPLACED
ENTIRE COMMUNITIES, AND PUT IN THEIR STRAD AN ALL ENCOMPASSING "WELFARE
STATE." WE HAVE DONE THIS IN THE NAME OF COMPASSION -- BUT WHAT WE HAVE
ULTIMATELY DONE IS ENCOURAGE THE BREAKDOWN OF OUR FAMILIES AND
COMMUNITIES

WHAT RLSB CAN YOU CALL IT WHEN WE TELL A YOUNG WOMAN THAT IF YOU GET
AND DON’T MARRY THR YATHER, AND DOW T GBT A JOB, WE WILL. GIVE
ING, FOOD STAMPS, HEALTH CARE, IN SOME CASES CHILDCARE, AND A CASH
ALLOWANCE -- AND OH YEAH, BY THE WAY, IF YOU HAVE ANOTHER CHILD, WE'LL
GIVE YOU A RAISE.

WHAT ELSE CAN YOU CALL IT WHEN WE TRLL A YOUNG FATHER THAT HE 1S
ULTIMATELY NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR THE CHILDREN HE HELPS BRING INTO THIS WORLD
BECAUSE THE GOVERNMENT WILL DO IT INSTEAD OF HIM. IT IS LITTLE WONDER
THAT WELFARE RECIPIENTS REASONABLY CONCLUDE THAT WORK AND MARRIAGE ARE
IRRATIONAL.

WHAT ELSE CAN YOU CALL IT WHEN GOVERNMENT STANDS IN THE WAY OF
FAMILIES AND COMMUNITIES HELPING YOUNG, UNWED MOTHERS. I HAVE HAD PEOPLE
IN MY OFFICE WHO TOLD ME OF A MOTHER WHO WANTED HER MINOR, UNWED DAUGHTER
‘TO REMAIN IN HER HOME ONCR THAT CHILD GAVE BIRTH TO HER OWN BABY. IN

FACT, THIS ‘TO TAKE CARE OF HER GRANDCHILD AND LET HER
PINISH HIGH SCHOOL. BUT THE DAUGHTER TO OUT -- AND
WHY NOT -- WAS GOING TO SET HER UP IN HER OWN HOME. AND SO

‘GOVERNMENT
‘THIS GRANDMOTHER WAS TOLD BY SOCIAL SERVICES THAT IF HER DAUGHTER WANTED
TO MOVE OUT, IT WAS HER RIGHT.

THRRE IS SOMBTHING INHERENTLY WRONG WITH THIS TYPE OF SYSTEM.

ALITTLE MORE THAN THIRTY YEARS AGO 2% OF ALL BIRTHS OCCURRED OUT OF

WEDLOCK. TODAY ARPROXIMATELY 32% OF ALL BIRTHS OCCUR OUT OF WEDLOCK.

NOW, THERE ARE MANY REASONS FOR THIS INCREASE, BUT I AM CONCERNED THAT OUR
CONTR:

CHILDREN BORN OUT OF WEDLOCK ARE SEVEN TIMES MORE LIKELY TO BE POOR
THAN ARE THOSE BORN TO COUPLES WHO STAY MARRIED. GIRLS RAISED IN SINGLE-
PARENT HOMES ON WELFARE ARE FIVE TIMES MORE LIKELY TO GIVE BIRTH OUT OF
WEDLOCK WHEN COMPARED TO GIRLS FROM INTACT NON-WELPARE FAMILIES. AND A
BOY FROM A SINGLE-PARENT HOME IN THE INNER CITY IS TWICE AS LIKELY TO
ENGAGE IN CRIME WHEN COMPARED TO A SIMILAR BOY WHO IS POOR, BUT LIVING
WITH A FATHER AND A MOTHER.

A CHILD WHO GROWS UP ABSENT A FATHER IS MORE LIKELY TO LIVE A
‘TROUBLED LIFE. HE‘S MORE LIKELY TO END UP IN PRISON, TO USE DRUGS, TO

on
WELFARE. ILLBGITIMACY IS AT THE CORE OF MOST SOCIAL PATHOLOGIES -- CRIME,
DRUGS, ILLITERACY AND POVERTY. TO CLAIM TO ADDRESS WELFARE REFORM AND NOT
MAKE ILLEGITIMACY THE PRIMARY FOCUS IS TO REPEAT THE FAILED REFORMS OF THE
PAST.


128

In most discussions and programs to date, teen pregnancy is the
major focus. Let us deal with the consequences of the emotional
trauma. I personally witnessed this about 3 years ago when speak-
ing to a parent’s group in Maryland. At the end of my presentation,
a young, 30-something, very tall, athletic man came up and he

said, “if I had heard you say what you said tonight 18 years ago

I never would have done it. The reason I did it was peer pressure,
and I have hated what I did to that girl ever since and I have
hated myself ever since.”

What that told me was that for 18 years he had this emotional
trauma pent up in him. The emotional factor is what really gets
the attention of the young males. The emotional factor can be
summed up in our slogan which is becoming a real talking tool in
schools, Condoms Don’t Protect the Heart.

This type of physical relationship among adolescents seldom
lasts, and it is often ended by the girl who has found an older guy.
The girls are usually more mature at this age. We know that today
many teen pregnancies are fathered by 20-year-olds, however the
rejected young male’s hurt is internalized. We ought to really study
this situation—they adopt a macho impression—and we ought to
study and analize—does early emotional hurt have a relationship
to verbal abuse, sexual harassment and domestic violence?

The answer to this question is beautifully expressed by the let-
ters attached from two of our eighth grade students from the city
of Chicago public schools. They are representative of the thousands
of positive comments we get, and 90 percent are positive comments.
One summed it up, best in our 10 year’s experience, “I didn’t know
I didn’t have to do it.” The emphasis on the emotional factor is
stressed in order to show why policy and funding should be redi-
rected to address prevention of the real problem; Adolescent sexual
involvement prior to marriage, rather than only addressing con-
tinuing programs that address just one of the factors.

Dr. McIlhaney went through all the enormous number of STDs
today. Referring to teen pregnancy is missing the point completely.
It is too limiting and misleading in that it gives a female-only per-
ception of the problem and exclude the emotional as well as the
disease factors which really affect both males and females.

We should redefine the topic and school courses to be adolescent
health, emotional as well as physical. This attracts not only the at-
tention of both male and female, but it provides a much wider ap-
proach to their thinking and understanding of self control.

Self-control develops self-esteem. This approach is cost effective.
We have a tremendous amount, a treasure of data but by the time
the researchers research the research it will be 10 or 15 years
down the line. I can just speak from our very current experiences,
and tell you that in answer to the question “Can sexual urges be
controlled?” The kids know instinctively it can. Only 4 to 5 percent
of them answer that sexual urges are “never” controllable. That
tells us they know it is something that can be controlled, what they
want to know is, why should I control it and how do I control it?

I hope the rest of my testimony can be entered for the full record,
but in summary, I would like to really urge that every effort be
made in policy as well as funding to redirect our governmental pro-
grams at every level into the proven, 100 percent safe abstinence-


134

Thanks for Abstinence Education

Chicago, IL
216196

Sex. Sex is a precious gift that everyone will
one day most likely experience. It isnt something to
rush into, The first time should be special and worth
waiting for. If you have sex before you're married, it
is something useless, Ifthe person you give yourself
torunsouton you, they haveapartofyouthat youcan,
never get back. ;

Abstinence is something I vow to have until
my wife comes along. I will save myself for her and
only her. Hopefully she'll do the same for me,
Whoever she is.

Today's pressures can really bug you, They
"Everyone is doing it." Well that's what they
think. I am different. I'm someone who chooses to
just wait, [fone day Ihave a girlfriend, and she wants
to have sex with me, she'll respect me when I say no.
Love isn't just based on sex. Love is a relationship
between two people that should be kept alive until the
day of marriage. If someone loves me just for sex,
they have something comming. I am the type of
person that will stand firm behind what I believe.
“Just wait.” Those are the two words that lots of
people forget to say.

Tm a present. I'm wrapped up and I have
something special inside of me. If letsomeone open
ittoo soon, when marriage comes along, there will be
nothing for my wife to say she got to open. My
virginity is something for my wife, my partner for
life. My motto: "Just Wait."

Letter from an 8th grade boy in Chicago Pub. S.

Thursday, 5/11/95

Today Mrs. Olson, a nurse, came to talk to us
about sexual abstinence. She talked about STD's and
pregnancy.

But she also talked about something I never really
thought of:
hurt, and your feelings when you have sex.

She also talked about love and sex. I never
realized how different they can be. Sex is just sex. It
can be done without love. Love is when someone
cares about you, and talks to you.

ve known all along the after you have sex
with your boyfriend you can't go back to just holding
hands with him. Ms. Olson taught us about absti-
nence and she demonstrated with the tape that two
abstinent people who got married can probably last
longer than two people who have had a lot of sexual
partners.

Not too long ago I was actually thinking of
becoming sexually active with this one guy.

But just after listening to Mrs. Olson for one
hour,1 want to save myself for my husband.

It's not pregnancy or STD's that are stopping
me from doing “it”. Well, it's part of the reason, but
most ofthe reason is that don't wantto end up getting
hurt by my boyfriend. And when I do "it" with my
husband I want "it" to be special.

Letter from an 8th grade girl in Chicago Pub, S.


74

their children were growing up, also reported going in and out of
the labor force.

The transmission of welfare across generations is a difficult proc-
ess to study because welfare and poverty are linked together. We
know that people who grow up poor are more likely to remain poor,
regardless of their involvement on welfare. One of the most recent
studies that I have seen on this suggests that largely—almost en-
tirely—it is not welfare but poverty that is linked across the
generations.

In my own studies I found virtually no evidence that there is a
welfare mentality among the children. Most are committed to work-
ing. Most attempt to work. Most go to work and most cannot find
stable and remunerative employment.

Will cutting the welfare rolls result in declining levels of
nonmarital childbearing? I do not think so. I do not expect much
impact, if any at all. Welfare is not a significant deterrent to mar-
riage or an incentive to have children. Will work training and sup-
port increase the propensity of women to marry? I do not see why
it should, unless we address the lack of training and available jobs
for men. Men without stable and remunerative employment are not
deemed eligible partners, especially by women who are self-
supporting.

hanges in nonmarital childbearing largely have occurred not be-
cause more women are electing to have children out of wedlock but
because marriage is becoming a more elusive goal for many young
people. That, I can substantiate if I am asked to do so.

Public policies are largely about how to make single parenthood
less attractive, not marriage more attainable. Unless and until we
craft policies and programs that make it possible for young people
to marry, we are unlikely to see a direction in the change of
nonmarital childbearing.

I will just end with a couple of points. Here are some sugges-
tions. Improve access to job training, higher education and most of
all, job availability for low-income men, as well as women. Increase
the availability of social benefits: child care, food stamps, edu-
cational support for couples so that it is truly cheaper for two to
live together than for one, or two can live as cheaply as one.

Raise, not lower, as has been proposed in some legislation, the
earned income tax credit. Provide a favorable status for parents
who live together. Provide social support for young couples who fre-
quently could use education counseling and community services.
Most of these programs are being cut back by cost-conscious gov-
ernment and philanthropic agencies.

Unless we back up our rhetoric about the importance of marriage
with real resources, we are unlikely to have success in bringing
about a decrease in out-of-wedlock childbearing.

[The prepared statement and attachment follow:]


32

3. A-recent study of black Americans finds that higher welfare benefits lead to lower rates
cof marriage and higher numbers of children living in single parent homes. in general,
an increase in roughly $100 in the average monthly AFDC benefit per recipient child
‘was found to lead toa drop of over 15 perent in births within wedlock among black
‘women aged 20 to 24, Fosse, Mark A. and Kiecot,K. Jil, "Mae Availability and
Family Structure Among African Americans in U.S. Metropolitan Areas", Joumal of
‘Marriage and Family, Vol. 55, May 1993, pp. 288-302.

‘Research by Dr. C.R. Winegarden ofthe University of Toledo found that half ofthe
increases in black illegitimacy in receat decades could be attributed to the effects of
‘welfare. Winegarden, CR, “AFDC and Wlegitimacy Ratios: A Vector-Autoregressive
Model”, Applied Econamics 20 (1988), pp. 1589-1601.

5. Research by Shelley Lundberg and Robert D, Plotnick ofthe University of Washington
‘tows htm ines of roughly S200 pr month in wef Bees pr ily cases
coup legate ith ran ate increas by 150 pee. Lunde,
Shel nl Posi, Raben Ds “Adolescent Premarital Child Bearing: Do

6. Research by Dr. Martha Ozawa of Washington University in St. Louis has found that an
increase in AFDC benefit levels of $100 per child per month leads to roughly & 30
percent increase in out-of-wedlock births to women age 19 and under. Ozawa, Martha
1N., "Welfare Policies and Megitimate Birth Rates Among Adolescents: Analysis of
‘State-by-State Data", Social Work Research and Abstracts, 14 (1985), pp. 5-11

7. Another recent study finds a 20 percent increase in welfare benefit levels across all
‘States would increase the probability of teen out-of wedlock births by as much as 16
‘percent. (However, the authors state that these findings should be treated cautiously
‘esac they were ot proven tobe satay siguifeat) An, Chong-Bum, and
‘Haveman, Robert, and Wolfe, Barbara, “Teen Out-of-Wedlock Births and Welfare
Receipt: the Role of Childhood Events and Economic Circumstance”, The Review of
‘Economics nd Statistics, May 1993.

‘A recent study by Charles Murray finds positive effect of welfare on illegitimacy.
Murrey, Charles, "Welfare and the Family: The U.S. Experience", Joumal of Labor
‘Economics, Vol. 11, pt. 2, 1993, pp. 224-262.

9. Another study by Robert Plotnick finds a positive effect of welfare on illegitimacy.
Plotnick, Robert D., "Welfare and Out-of-Wedlock Childbearing: Evidence from the
19803", Joumal of Marriage and the Family (August 1990), pp. 735-46.

10. A sudy by Pal Scale Eds higher welts benefits signify rece marinas
‘ates. Schultz, Paul T., "Marital Sous and Fertility inthe United States", The Joumal
‘of Human Resources, Spring 1994, pp. 637-659.

1. A study by Scott South and Kim Lioyd finds a positive relationship between welfare
and the perventage of births which are out-of-wedlock. South, Scott J., and Lloyd Kim
M., "Marriage Markets and Non-marital Fertility in the United States” Demography,
‘May 1992, pp. 247-264,

12, A recent study by Philip Robins and Paul Froaton finds thst higher welfare benefits
Jad to more births among never-moarried women. Robins, Pillip K end Fronton, Paul,

13. A recent Rand Corporation study finds higher welfare benefits increase illegitimate
births. Jackson, Catherine A. and Klerman, Jacob Alex, "Welfsre, Abortion and
‘Teenage Fertility", RAND research paper, August 1994.


103

to use drugs and 50 percent less likely to engage in criminal activi-
ties than those without religious values.

One of the most powerful of all factors in Preventing out-of-wed-
lock births is the regular practice of religious beliefs.

Let me just say that the children who are pictured each night on
our evening news, children lying shot on some Washington street,
are our children. They are American kids.

Each of us, as individual citizens, need to take personal respon-
sibility for recapturing some part of our country which has been
negligently entrusted to government by day and criminals by night.

‘or too long, this great body has tried to hide from any discus-
sions of morality, and as a result, Congress must face a Federal
subsidy system gone awry, and ramifications of public policy that
rewards illegitimacy.

{The prepared statement follows:]


39

Its useful to examine each ofthese cardinal liberal tenets individually. The first is that
raising incomes is crucial to the well-being and success of children. The common liberal
‘corollary to this premise is that poverty “causes” such problems as erime, school failure,
Jow cognitive ability, illegitimacy, low work ethic and skills, and drug use. Hence, reduc-
ing poverty through greater welfare spending will reduce most social problems. History
refutes this belief. In 1950, nearly a third of the U.S. population was poor (twice the cur-
rent rate) In the 1920s, roughly half ofthe population was poor by today's standard. If

theory that “poverty” causes social problems were true, we should have had far more
social problems in those earlier periods then we do today. But crime and most other so-
‘ial problems have increased rather thar fallen since these earlier periods.

History and common sense both show that values and abilities within families, not fam-
ily income, lead to children’s success. Families with higher incomes tend to have sound.
‘values concerning self-control deferred gratification, work, education, and marriage
‘which they pass on to their children. It is those values, rather than the family income, that
are key to the children’s attainment. Attempting to raise the family income artificially
through welfare is very unlikely to do much to benefit the child, but it is likely to destroy
the very values which are key tothe child's success.

“The second flawed liberal premise is that it is very easy to raise family income through
welfare. This also is untrue. Because welfare reduces work effort and promotes illegiti-
‘acy and poverty-prone single-parent families, it actually may cause an overall decrease
in family incomes. Welfare is extremely efficient at replacing self-sufficiency with de-
‘pendence, but relatively ineffective in raising incomes and eliminating poverty.

This is bore out by experimental evidence. During the late 1960s and easly 1970s, s0-
ial sciemtists atthe Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO) conducted a series of con-
‘rolled experiments to examine the effect of welfare benefits on work effort. The longest
running and mast comprehensive of these experiments was conducted between 1971 and
1978 in Seattle and Denver, and: ‘known as the Seattle/Denver Income Mainte-
nance Experiment, o "SIME/DIME.

Advocates of expanding welfare had hoped that SIME/DIME and similar
conducted in other cities would prove that generous welfare benefits did not affect “work
effort” adversely. Instead, the SIME/DIME experiment found that each $1.00 of extra
‘welfarp given to low-income persons reduced labor and earnings by an average of
$0.80." The significant anti-work effects of welfare benefits were shown in all social
‘groups, including married women, single mothers, nd husbands. The results of the
SIME/DIME study are directly applicable to existing welfare programs: Nearly all have
‘strong anti-work effects like those studied in the SIME/DIME experiment.

3 SRY international, Final Report ofthe Seatle-Denver Income Maintenance Experiment, Vol. J, Design and Result

‘

(Washington, D.C. SRI May 1983).
Gregory B, Christiansen and Wah E, Williams, "Welfare Family Cohesiveness and Out of Wedlock Binhs."in
Joseph Peden and Fred Glahe, The American Family and she Sate (San Francisco: Pacific lnstinte for Public
Policy Research, 1986), p. 398.


64

Figure B. Percent of U.S. births to unmarried mothers,
by race and ethnicity of mother, 1993

She ee) 0%
Puerto Rican [ii aaeaaiaeteaiamelegaa) 59%
American Indian [gas se 56%
Hawaiian iF FT 48%
Central American [eae] 45%
Mexican ee] 37%
Us. TOTAL ee 31%
Cuban Eee] 21%
White non-Hispanic agameeeeey 20%
Filipino Eaameey) 18%
Japanese ea 10%
Chinese Ba 1%

Souree: Ventura, S.. et a. (1995). Advance Report of Final Natality Statistics, 1993. Monthly Vital
Statisues Report, Vol. 4, No. 3 Supplement. Hyattaville, MD: Natioual Center for Health Statistica


148

Chairman SHAw. I want to thank this panel and the other panels
for sticking with us today. It is now almost 5 o’clock, and I think
it has been a very interesting day. I think all of us have learned
something, and I hope that the final panel, by listening to the
former panels, also learned something.

Thank you so much for being with us and giving us your time.

[Whereupon, at 4:55 p.m., the hearing was adjourned]

{Submissions for the record follow:]


35

«@K Backgrounder

“Heritage “Foundation,

No. ‘The Hortage Foundation» 214 Massachusetts Avenue, NE. + Washington, D.C. 20002-4900 + (202) 546-4400» Telex440205

The Cultural Policy Studies Project

December, 1995

WHY CONGRESS MUST
REFORM WELFARE

INTRODUCTION

‘Tire pubticis often told thatthe current welfare system doesnot promote long-term
dependence. This is unre.

X The 4.7 million families curently receiving Aid to Families with Dependent
‘Children (AFDC) have already spent, on average, six-and-a-half years on wel-
fare.

X When past and estimated future receipt of AFDC are combined, the estimated av-
‘erage length of stay on AFDC, among those families currently receiving bene-
fits, isan astonishing 13 years.

X Among the 4.7 million families currently receiving AFDC, over 90 percent will,
‘spend over two years on the AFDC caseload. More than three quarters will
spend over five years on AFDC.

‘The current liberal system is based on the assumption that higher welfare benefits and
pended wee gb ar good fx ciren,Asconting 1 thi theory, “povery”is
‘harmful for and welfare, by ly reducing poverty, will

lifetime well-being and attainment. Ths is untrue. Higher welfare vayment donot scie
children; they increase dependence and illegitimacy, which have a devastatingly negative
effect on children’s development. It is welfare dependence, rather than poverty, which
hha the most negative effet on children,

% Recent research by Congressional Budget Office Director June O'Neill shows
that increasing the length of time a child spends on welfare may reduce the
child's IQ by as much as 20 percent.

Fag an ea Cg PENH ICG aT TRG FANON OTD
to ma er mca ne assoge of any bal before Cong


67

can pass the herpes to her child. If the child gets infected, 60 per-
cent of them will die.

We, of course, cannot forget HIV. If you realize the impact it has
on our young people, 25 percent of newly diagnosed HIV positive
people in this country are below the age of 22. Part of this is be-
cause when a person has another STD, such as herpes, bacterial
vaginosis, the human papillomavirus, they are much more likely to
become HIV infected.

This epidemic of teen pregnancy and of STD is being driven by
two common problems among teens—the early age of initiation of
sexual intercourse, and the number of sexual partners they have.
Both of these have a profound influence on teens.

The Center for Disease Control, for instance, showed that if a
teenager initiates sex before the age of 18 they have a 45-percent
chance of having four or more sexual partners when they are inter-
viewed later on. If they start sex after they are 19, they have a 1-
percent chance of having had four or more sexual partners when
they are interviewed later.

A very significant question in this discussion is why do teens
have sex? It is not usually happening to two beautiful young people
who maturely decide, after they fall in love, to have sexual inter-
course. It is most often because they are victims. They are victims
of loneliness, of peer pressure, of alcohol, of drugs. Remember, one-
fourth of teen girls have been sexually abused and a common result
of this is that they become sexually promiscuous.

The abuse, itself, is one of the destructive aspects of the sexually
charged milieu that our teens are living in today. Remember also
that recent studies, more than one, have shown that most teen-
agers, in high school and lower, have had sex with people older
than high school age. The younger they are the more likely the
men that they had sex with are to be outside of high school age
or even in their twenties.

Our failure to break this cycle of teenage sexual activity will only
allow further victimization of these young people. Clients of the
present welfare system represent a large group of people whose
lifestyle includes activity that increases risk of out-of-wedlock preg-
nancy and sexually transmitted disease.

These activities not only hurt the individual but they also hurt
society. You have heard some examples of that, another example is
that 82 percent of incarcerated individuals, by one study, are high
school dropouts, most of whom are from low-wealth communities.

Therefore, as much as we might like to separate all of these
things there is no way of separating this potpourri of welfare, med-
ical, and societal problems.

For those in the welfare system, I think we need to provide a
safety net for the extreme problems but we do not want to make
it so comfortable that it induces people into the single parent fam-
ily life that has helped produce two communities in our society.

First, the community of two people who love each other, live to-
gether for life, have children, and offer those children greater op-
portunities. The second community is of single parents, often forced
to live in poverty with diminished hopes for their children and with
all the diseases we have been talking about. The financial costs of


104

STATEMENT OF ANDREA SHELDON
DIRECTOR OF GOVERNMENT AFFAIRS
TRADITIONAL VALUES COALITION

Mr. Chairman, and Members of the Committee, thank you for the opportunity to testify
before you today on the issue of illegitimacy. My name is Andrea Sheldon and Lam the
Director of Government Affairs for the Traditional Values Coalition. Traditional Values
Coalition represents over 31,000 multi-racial churches made up of various denominations and
socioeconomic backgrounds Traditional Values Coalition believes that America's strength is
inher churches.

‘My interest in the subject of illegitimacy is not merely political but is deeply personal. Ihave
spent years working with the people facing the very problems we are here toay fo discuss. 1
have taken in and personally cared for homeless children, thrown birthday parties and baby
showers for mothers on welfare and assisted in job placement and training. All of this was
done through a ministry, which I coordinated for six years, at my church, Church of the
Apostles in Fairfax, Virginia. This ministry reaches out to homeless families, and in particular
children, in an attempt to break the cycle of spiritual and economic poverty which play
them. I have seen first hand the generational destruction of welfare and in particular Ww
illegitimacy sets the course for a troubled life.

Today there is a myth surrounding the welfare debate, that there is a safety net worth saving.
For all practical purposes there is no safety net. After 30 years and over $5.4 trillion, our
country has more children in poverty, more illegitimacy, more teen pregnancies and more
urban blight now than any time in our history.

‘The collapse of the family is the most important issue facing American society because itis
the root cause of a multitude of other social and economic problems. It is important to
recognize the time lag inherent in many problems associated with illegitimacy, and the effect
on American society. The soaring crime rate among urban youths today in large measure is
occurring among males who were born out-of-wedlock during the late 1970's. With nearly
one out of three children being born out-of- wedlock today, itis obvious that successful welfare
reform must reduce the epidemic rate of out-of-wedlock births. The federal government must
stop encouraging welfare dependency through subsidizing illegitimacy. In order to have a
healthy society, marriage between one man and one woman must be recognized and
encouraged.

Unfortunately, in the last few months welfare reform has been sidetracked and now focuses
‘on child care instead of the real issue — illegitimacy. Unless Congress once again brings the
focus back to policies that reduce out-of-wedlock births and encourage marriage you will not
have fundamentally changed welfare and consequently Congress will have failed to pass
genuine welfare reform.

In overhauling the failed welfare system, policy makers must continue to be guided by the
following three key welfare reform themes:

i) reduce illegitimacy

2) real work requi

3) promote moral renewal

I would like to focus on two of these today —illegitimacy and the promotion of moral
renewal. Halting the escalation of illegitimacy must be the paramount goal of welfare reform
and simultaneously, policy makers must promote the formation of stable two families.
‘Any genuine welfare reform must reduce the illegitimate birth rate through a family cap.

Additionally, and equally important, the government must assist in the process of moral
rebuilding by allowing private social organizations, such as churches and other community
institutions, to play a far greater role in educating and shaping the moral code of young

le. There sno question that parents, and in particular Jw income parents must be given
far greater choice in how their children are educated, including the right for their tax dollars to
follow their children to the school of their choice.

In her historical study Poverty and Compassion, Gertrude Himmelfarb writes:

‘After making the most arduous attempt to objectify the problem
of poverty, to divorce poverty from any moral assumptions and
conditions, we are learning how inseparable the moral and
material dimensions of that problem are, And after trying to
devise social policies that are scrupulously neutral and value;
free, we are finding these policies fraught with moral
implications that have grave material and social consequences.


126

Sister McGrapy. Choose not to get pregnant in the first place?
Well, I will tell you if I had the answer to that I guess I could run
for President, but——

Mr. ENSIGN. OK. I think this is just one of the factors, but one
of the things I am talking about, we are talking about a much
broader moral problem in this country. Welfare, I think, is just one
of the factors, and I mentioned that earlier.

Sister McGEapy. Oh, yes, you are right.

Mr. ENSIGN. I think that certainly we have to get back to people
taking responsibility for themselves and we have to get back to
teaching basic moral values in this country, and teaching that it is
absolutely the best thing that you can do for yourself and your
spouse and your children to wait until marriage to have sex. That
is a societal problem that we have to get back to but I am just say-
ing that perhaps welfare is one of the small pieces of the whole
problem.

Sister McGrany. It is a significant piece of our culture now, but
in order to turn the teenage pregnancy issue around we have to
have impact on our culture. Our teenage culture is very accepting
of sexual activity by the age of 15, 16 or 17. To turn the teenage
culture around, I think, is the real challenge for this Nation.

Mr. ENSIGN. Well, Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and President
Clinton is going to do something about the television shows in Hol-
lywood, along with Bob Dole, so we are not going to have to worry
about those people having that severe impact any more.

Thanks.

Chairman SHAW. Mr. Rangel, you wish to inquire for another
moment?

Mr. RANGEL. I would ask the Sister one question because I have
noticed a lot of stigmas being removed and changes in cultures
since I was a kid. I do not drink hard liquor or gamble, but do you
believe there has been a change in the culture of the United States
where communities, and large communities can just drink and
gamble, have girls running around half-clothed, and that this is
being accepted?

Not only legally, in some States, but that morally it is
acceptable?

Sister McGrapv. I think we are in the midst, in this country, of
an enormous values shift, and that the toleration of things that we
have traditionally considered immoral, wrong, or just bad for the
country and bad for kids, I think a lot of it has gone down the
tubes, and this country really needs to put the skids on and ask
ourselves, where are we going in terms of values?

There has been a lot of talk in the Congress and every place else
in this country about values, but nobody is stopping to say, how do
we begin to inculcate values in our kids again?

Mr. RANGEL. I would like to join in that struggle because I think
too many people just drink away their wages and gamble unneces-
sarily and we can maybe turn some of those things around, back
to the values we used to have.

Sister McGEADy. The increase in prostitution in this country, if
we really could present the statistics here, it would blow
everybody’s mind.


45

CONCLUSION

‘The welfare reform legislation which will be approved by the House/Senate confer-
cence proposes a reform of the current welfare system based on three central themes:

W Reducing the growth of illegitimacy:

Reducing dependence by requiring welfare recipients to work; and
Limiting the explosive growth of welfare spending.

‘Among the many elements of reform in the legislation, seven are crucial

© The bill will end the automatic entitlement nature of AFDC spending. Under the leg
islation, states which increase thei Welfare caseloads will no longer be rewarded by
‘an automatic increase in federal funding. This change imposes a fundamental fiscal
discipline at the state level whichis essential to real reform.

© The bil establishes family cap. Under the bl, mothers already enoled in AFDC
will not receive an automatic increase in federal welfare benefits if they give birth to
an additional child while on welfare. (However, states will be permitted to enact leg-
islaion to "opt out” ofthis requirement)

® The bill provides a funding mechanism to reward states which reduce out-of-wedlock
births without increasing abortions.

© The bill provides $75 million per year in funding for a new block grant for absti-
rence education.

© For the first time in the history of AFDC, the bill establishes serious work require-
ments for welfare recipients. Under the bill, upto 40 percent of the AFDC caseload
‘will be required to work or become self-sufficient by the year 2002,

© In contrast to all previous “work requirements in the AFDC program, the work re-
quirements in the proposed legislation are real. Recipients who do not obtain private~
sector jobs will be required to perform community service in exchange for benefits
according to a “pay after performance” rule. Recipients will not receive benefits until
the required work has been performed satisfactorily. Ifthe recipient fails to perform
the required hours of work, benefits will be reduced pro-rata.

© The bill property recognizes thatthe goal of “workfare” is to reduce welfare depend
‘ence and welfare caseloads, not to maximize the number of welfare recipients in
“make work” public service jobs. It recognizes thatthe best road to self-sufficiency is
to reduce the number of persons who become dependent and get “hooked” on wel-
fare in the first place. In contrast to President Clinton's plan, which rewards states for

‘expanding "the approach in Ce for the first time focuses on
rewarding states that reduce the number of individuals who get “hooked” on welfare
in the first place.

Overall, the proposed legislation represents a significant and badly needed first step in
‘overhauling a bloated and destructive welfare system. The proposed reforms will be of
‘great benefit to society, the taxpayers, and, most important, welfare recipients themselves.

‘Senior Policy Analyst



87

I do not mean you, personally. I meant most of the people who
do this type of research.

Mr. RECTOR. I think the——

Mr. RANGEL. Liberal or conservative, really.

b Mr. RECTOR [continuing]. Reality here is—let me back up a little
it.

I think probably the most compelling teaching I ever got, in
learning my research and statistical methods, and we have studies
here, the majority of which do show effects, but there are others
that do not, and so forth.

My graduate professor told me that if a theory and common
sense tells you one thing, and your regression analysis tells you
something else, almost certainly the theory and common sense is
correct.

In this case, what we have is economic theory, psychological the-
ory, and common sense, all tell us that in life you get what you pay
for.

We have been paying to subsidize single parenthood.

Mr. RANGEL. Dr. Rector——

Mr. REcToR. In this case, also, the empirical evidence backs that

up.

Mr. RANGEL. I am not talking about your testimony, Dr. Rector.
I am saying in all of the areas that I discussed with you, you
agreed with me that before you hear the testimony, you and I, and
Members of this Committee, whether it is a liberal group or your

oup, we can pretty much know how they are going to conclude.

‘ou agreed.

I am not saying that you change your opinion based on Heritage.

Mr. Rector. I think what would. surprise you is, if you got all
of the scholars in this field in a room, where we did not have the
television cameras running, you would find far less disagreement
than we find here before the cameras today.

Mr. RANGEL. God forbid we take away the cameras; but let me
ask you this.

Did you get your doctorate in this type of stuff?
Mr. Rrcror I do not have a doctorate. I have a master’s degree.

Mr. RANGEL. You have a master’s. OK. Listen, do you find any
connection at all between the children that are born without their

rents getting married and the education of the mother and the
father? In other words, do you find that dumb people normally
have these kids? I mean, untrained.

Mr. REcToR. Women who are lower trained women, that have
lower cognitive abilities, are more likely—

Mr. RANGEL. Now these dumb people that have——

Mr. REcTOR. Well, those are your words, Congressman. Do
not——

Mr. RANGEL. I do not have any problem with my words. These
uneducated, untrained people, do you find that normally they do
not intend to get any further training? In other words, they have
given up on becoming employable, generally speaking?

Mr. REcTor. I think that they have, in general, bought into a vi-
sion of the future which does not aspire very highly, does not in-
clude marriage, and——

Mr. RANGEL. Those are my kind of words.


8

Our first witness this morning will be Charles Rangel, a Member
of this Committee, from the State of New York.
Mr. Rangel.

STATEMENT OF HON. CHARLES B. RANGEL, A REPRESENTA-
TIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF NEW YORK

Mr. RANGEL. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for allowing the Mem-
bers an opportunity to share their views. I do not come as an ex-

ert in this area, but being a politician I recognize that this issue
Bas become a political issue rather than merely a social issue and
I would like to share my views on that.

What I would like to say first is that I do not know anyone I
have met in the Congress who has more of a sincere desire than
you do to improve the quality of life for all Americans. You and I
know that at election time people prescribe remedies for these
types of things in order to get broad-based support from their con-
stituents and people who do not work and receive public funds are
not liked by most people who do work hard every day. The working
people expect other people to do the same.

I know that this is America, one that would not condemn immi-
grants whether they are legal or illegal. I also know that some peo-
ple emotionally feel that it is better to beat up on the weak than
on others who are more powerful. I know that affirmative action
has not displaced any white males from any jobs. It sounds unfair
to some people and they feel the need to get involved politically.

Quite frankly, as we try to reach some agreement on the budget,
I get the impression that we are pretty close to agreement and the
President wants to make certain that he provides the “leadership”
to change welfare as we know it. Of course, the Republicans are
very anxious to embarrass him if he does not fulfill his campaign
commitment.

All of this stuff about reform, however, politically to me is not
really about reform. It means that some people truly believe that
the Federal Government shouldn’t be involved in health or Social
Security, that it could be better handled by the private sector.

These problems that we are talking about, even though you and
I know that they are national in nature, in an effort to downsize
government, many people in the Congress are prepared to say, let’s
get out of that and turn it over to the Governors. Trust them. They
are good people, and whatever they do not do, then decrease the
taxes for the rich and the corporations. Americans are good-
thinking people, they will fill in the gap with charity of Boys Town
or adoption centers, but get the government out of it, because we
do not do a good jo!

I do not argue. If we are getting out of it, can’t we have some
guarantees that somebody is going to do it better? We are going to

ave to accept the fact that 1 or 2 million kids may not get any
guarantees and the States just may not be able to deal with the
problem, and nor will the cities, or charitable organizations.

I am really shocked that none of our national spiritual leaders,
Jews and Christians, both Catholic and Protestant, would not say,
hurt somebody, but not these kids, they are just born, they do not
know. Do not cut off food, nutrition, and health to these kids be-
cause their mothers were dumb, stupid, and indifferent.


CAUSES OF POVERTY,
WITH A FOCUS ON OUT-OF-WEDLOCK BIRTHS

TUESDAY, MARCH 12, 1996

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,
COMMITTEE ON Ways AND MEans,
SUBCOMMITTEE ON HUMAN RESOURCES,
Washington, DC.
The Subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 1:07 p.m., in room
B-318, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. E. Clay Shaw, Jr.
(Chairman of the Subcommittee) presiding.
{The advisory announcing the hearing follows:]

(


150

illegitimacy to the forefront before President Clinton and the Governors signaled
their retreat.

Retreat is inexcusable; for the fact remains that intact families bestow upon
individuals and communities advantages that simply come no other way. We
cannot repeat too often, in a climate rife with attempts to seize the moral high
ground, that no moral judgment even need be adduced. The empirical evidence
amassed by social scientists in the last ten years (and chronicled by Barbara Dafoe
Whitehead in her April 1993 Atlantic article, "Dan Quayle Was Right") has
confirmed in exquisite detail what those who have lived in broken families already
know. A single woman with children is not a viable economic unit for the vast
majority, but children need biological fathers for much more than the extra dollars
they add to the family budget. As social scientist Charles Murray has written,
single parenthood is "damaging to children in so many ways that to list them
individually would be to trivialize them."*

Children born to single mothers are more likely to experience abuse or neglect;
and they have higher infant mortality rates and lower birth weights regardless of
the age or race of the mother. The proportion of low birth-weight babies, for
example, increases by 50% if the mother is not married. Dr. Nicholas Eberstadt,
author of “Why Babies Die in D.C.” (The Public Interest, Spring 1994), observes
that “so substantial are the differentials associated with illegitimacy that an
‘American baby born to a teen-age mother is less likely to register low birth-weight
ifthe mother is married and black than if she is unmarried but white.”® In the early
1980s, black and white babies alike were less likely to survive the first year of life
born to an unmarried college graduate than to a married high school dropout.'?

For those children born out-of- wedlock who do survive, long-term life prospects
are equally discouraging. According to data from the National Fatherhood
Initiative, only 4.4% of children who live with both parents are expelled or
suspended from school. By contrast, 15.5% of fatherless children will be
dismissed or suspended, Among children living with a never-married mother,
29.7% repeat a grade in school as opposed to 11.6% of children overall, Anda
1988 University of Illinois study of adults born outside of marriage found that the
longer the time spent in a single-parent family, the less education the child
ultimately attained -- regardless of the parent's income level

Children born out-of- wedlock also have greater problems with behavioral
development. The National Survey of Children found that children from single-
parent families are two to three times more likely to have emotional problems —~
three times as likely to find themselves in psychotherapy. Lack of self-control is a
common failing

Not surprisingly, Charles Murray has concluded that “illegitimacy is the single
‘most important social problem of our time...because it drives everything else.""
According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, more than 70 percent of all juveniles
in state reform institutions come from fatherless homes. Raymond A, Knight and
Robert'A. Prentky have reported in the journal Criminal Justice Behavior that
60% of all violent rapists who were repeat offenders came from single-parent
households. And a Michigan State University study reported in 1987 in
Behavioral Sciences and the Law found that 75% of the adolescent murderers
surveyed had come from homes where the parents were divorced or never married

The relationship between crime and one-parent families is so powerful, in fact,
that controlling for family structure erases the relationship between crime and
race and between crime and low income.

Compounding the cycle of despair, illegitimacy feeds itself too. Young white
‘women who grow up without a father in the home are more than twice as likely to


42

‘A further refinement of the Corcoran and Gordon study adjusted for differences in
years spent by a family in poverty. The study showed that, in general, if two families had
the same level of non-welfure income and spent the same amount of time “in poverty,
‘the more welfare income received by the family, the worse the consequences for a boy
raised in the family. For example, if two boys were raised in families with identical non-
‘welfare incomes and spent the same time “in poverty.” the more welfare received by one
of the families, the lower the eamings of the boy raised in that family when he becomes
an adult.

(Other studies have confirmed the negative effects of welfare on the development of
children. For example, young women who are raised in families dependent on welfare
are two to three times more likely to drop out and fail to graduate from high schoo! than
are young women of similar race and socioeconomic background not raised on wel-
fare,'" Similasly, single mothers who were raised as children in families receiving wel-
fare remain on AFDC longer as adult parents than do single mothers who were not raised
in welfare families, even when all other socal and economic variables are held con-
stant

Boys raised in single-parent households receiving public housing aid are more than
five times more likely o engage in criminal activity than are boys Who are not raised in
such conditions. Young girs raised in single-parent homes in public housing are roughly
five times more likely to bear children out of wedlock themselves than are gils who are
not raised in such conditions."” In short, welfare usually operates as a form of social
toxin. The more of this toxin received by a child's family, the less successful willbe the
child as an adult.

In attacking the welfare reform legislation passed by the House and Senate, the Clinton
Administration has embraced the central erroneous tenets of liberal welfarism. The Ad-
‘inistration’s report on welfare makes clear its belief that rapid automatic increases in
welfare spending are essential to the wel-being of children and that any attempts to slow
the growth of future welfare spending will significantly harm children. TM*

‘The Administration report is founded unequivocally on the failed hypothesis that com-
bating “poverty” through more generous welfare spending is crucial to children’s future.
‘This thinking is simply wrong. An expanded and more expensive welfare system will not
benefit children. Instead, expansion of welfare leads to greater dependence and illegiti-
‘macy which, in turn, have devastatingly negative consequences on children. Those truly

ned with the welfare of ‘must seek a radical of the welfare
system aimed, not (as the Clinton Administration does) at increasing welfare spending
and enrollment, but at reducing dependence and illegitimacy. That is the core of Con-
agress’s plan,

R. Forse and M. Tienda, “Race and Ethnic Variation in the Schooling Consequences of Female Adolescent Sexual
“Activity” Socal Seience Quarterly, March 1992.

‘Mang S. Kimeny. "Rational Choice, Culture of Poverty and the Inergenerational Transmission of Welfare
Dependency.” Southern Economic Journal, Apel 1991

Office of Management and Budget, "Potential Poveny and Distributional eects of Welfare Reform Bills and
‘Balanced Budget Plans." Novernber 9, 1995,


73

Chairman Suaw. Thank you, doctor, and our next witness is Dr.
Furstenberg.
Doctor.

STATEMENT OF FRANK FURSTENBERG, PH.D., PROFESSOR
OF SOCIOLOGY, UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA, PHILADEL-
PHIA, PENNSYLVANIA

Dr. FURSTENBERG. I appreciate the opportunity to testify before
this Committee on the question of why levels of nonmarital child-
bearing are changing and which policies will be most effective in
countering this trend. My own work in sociology and demograph;
has been devoted to understanding these trends and to understand-
ing changes in family formation that have occurred in the past
several decades.

In this regard, I have conducted a study of teenage mothers that
has run on for 30 years, studying them, their children, and now
their children’s children. I will comment on that later.

As I understand it, the pending legislation on welfare reform and
these hearings center on the role that public assistance has played
in eroding marriage and encouraging nonmarital childbearing. The
assumption is that moving women and their children off welfare
and into the labor market will do much to reduce nonmarital child-
bearing and help break the cycle of poverty.

I, and many scholars, have deep reservations about this pre-
sumption and here is why. We have heard already today that the
decline of marriages has occurred in all western nations. Related,
I and many others believe, to changing economic roles and gender
relations. No link has been established between these trends and
public welfare policies or the generosity of family support systems
cross-nationally.

Changes in the level of public assistance in the United States are
not correlated with rates of nonmarital childbearing over time. The
illegitimacy ratio, nonmarital births to marital births, has been
steadily rising. However, the illegitimacy rate, births per thousand
unmarried women, has risen only among Whites and not among
African-Americans during the past several decades. Indeed, among
blacks, the rate has declined rather substantially since 1970.

We have to distinguish between the illegitimacy ratio and rate
because it has profound consequences for how we interpret the
changes that are going on. I will come back to that.

State level trends in illegitimacy are weakly or uncorrelated with
the generosity assistance. At the metropolitan level, a cross-
sectional correlation exists between welfare benefits and marriage
and childbearing but the direction of that causalty is not clear at
all. In fact, it rather seems that poor people are less inclined to get
married, therefore, more likely to go on welfare rather than the
reverse.

My own detailed investigations on the consequences of illegit-
imacy produced some startling findings. I followed a large, fairly
sizable group of teenage mothers over 30 years. Almost all the
mothers spent some time on welfare. However, fewer than 10 per-
cent were chronically on welfare.

Most worked most of the time, while their children were growing
up. Even many of the ones who were on welfare every year, while


82

Do any of you know the percentage of children born out of wed-
lock in this country that are born to women on welfare?

Mr. Rector, you do not know that?

Mr. Rector. No, I do not, and it is compounded—I mean, that
is a difficult—you also have to be aware that the woman can enter
welfare while she is pregnant. I do not know the answer to that
question. .

Mr. LEVIN. Would it be a majority or a minority?

Mr. Rector. I do not know the answer to that.

If you are saying that only those women that are on welfare at
the time the child is born, is welfare having that effect, I do not
think that is right. I think what you need to look at——

Mr. LEVIN. No, no. OK. I would think we would want to look at
that, would we not?

Mr. REcTor. That is a good question.

Mr. LEVIN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Chairman SHAW. All right. Thank you, Mr. Levin.

I would guess that that would be an interesting figure, that this
Committee would like to look at; but one of the things that you
would have to measure in doing that is how the birth of these chil-
dren has put many women on welfare. A woman having a child
may not be on welfare, but would go on welfare as a result of that

irth.

Mr. Levin. No, you would have to look—I do not mean nec-
essarily that they were on welfare at the moment of birth. You
would take some kind of a time sequence.

Dr. FURSTENBERG. Chairman Shaw, I may have a figure on that.

Mr. Levin. Dr. Zill, I think, has——

Chairman SHAW. Go ahead.

Dr. ZILL. I think it is important. to know that if you look across
ethnic groups, the groups that have very high rates of unmarried
childbearing—African-Americans, American Indians, Puerto
Ricans—are groups that tend to be socioeconomically not very suc-
cessful. On the other hand, even within communities, the groups
that are more socioeconomically successful have quite low rates of
unmarried childbearing. Cubans, for example. Chinese. Japanese.
There is a relationship there. To some extent, unmarried childbear-
ing is a loser strategy.

Young people who have children outside of marriage, they are
not a random sample. They are the kids who are not doing well in
school, and you have got to deal with those problems, not just with
welfare. The way the economy is changing makes it even more un-
likely that they will have a meaningful role in our society.

If you go to my company right now, to hire a temp you need to
know Excel, you need to know Word Perfect, you need to have flexi-
bility—high cognitive skills and a great deal of adaptability. There
just is not a place in many of our companies for people who do not
have those skills. So often, those young people look to parenthood
as a source of reinforcement that they have some role in our soci-
ety. That is a much more complex issue you need to deal with than
simply welfare.

r. LEVIN. I very much agree with you, and I hope Mr. Rector
will listen to what you say.


CAUSES OF POVERTY, WITH A FOCUS ON OUT-
OF-WEDLOCK BIRTHS

HEARING

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON HUMAN RESOURCES

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON WAYS AND MEANS
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED FOURTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION

MARCH 5, 1996

Serial 104-52

Printed for the use of the Committee on Ways and Means

ae

U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
25-608 CC WASHINGTON : 1996

For sale by the U.S. Government Printing Office
‘Superintendent of Documents, Congressional Sales Office, Washington, DC 20402
ISBN 0-16-053680-4


108

Mr. COLLINS. Thank you, Ms. Sheldon.
Sister Mary Rose.

STATEMENT OF SISTER MARY ROSE MCGEADY, PRESIDENT,
COVENANT HOUSE, NEW YORK, NEW YORK

Sister McGeapy. Mr. Chairman and Members of the Committee,
in calling for this hearing to address the crisis of out-of-wedlock
births and the impact of these births upon the good of American
society as a whole, you are performing a significant service to all
those people for whom the values of family life are matters of criti-
cal social and moral concern.

I am grateful for the opportunity to offer the recommendations
of Covenant House regarding how we may best encourage our
young people to put off having children until they can do so as re-
sponsible and nurturing parents in stable relationships.

I am the president of Covenant House, the largest privately fund-
ed shelter for runaway and homeless kids in this country. I am also
a Daughter of Charity, the largest order of Catholic women in our
church, and I have spent most of my lifetime serving the poor, and
especially children and young teenage mothers.

I live in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn, a very poor
and troubled neighborhood, and our Covenant Houses serve thou-
sands of poor teenagers.

I would like to begin my brief remarks this afternoon by chal-
Jenging what appears to me to be a “given” in this discussion thus
fa

ir.

The point I wish to make is that while the welfare reform debate
has focused national attention on illegitimate births in the United
States, in fact, two-thirds of these single women having “illegit-
imate” children are not below the poverty line, not high school
dropouts, not teenagers, and not on welfare.

My point quite simply is that our experience is that there is no
correlation between dependence on public assistance by single
mothers and the out-of-wedlock birth rate in this country.

This is all the more true, we find, of single teenage mothers.

Reductions in public assistance may of course impact the rate at
which the innocent children of these mothers fall below the poverty
line, or the rate at which pregnant women opt for abortions.

Any change in the current welfare program that discourages
these young women, once they are pregnant, from having their ba-
bies, is, in my view, morally unacceptable. These are outcomes
which this Committee must carefully consider.

Despite the fact, therefore, that large cuts in public assistance
will not cause a decrease in out-of-wedlock births, it remains true
that too many poor young women are caught in a cultural trap, in
poor communities in which single-parent families are the norm.

For instance, recently, a 15-year-old caller to our crisis hotline
asked how she could get pregnant, because all the “coolest” girls in
her high school were having babies.

Those who have not lived in these poor communities simply must
try to understand that when you are poor and have no options, no
hope, little moral guidance, there is little reason to delay sexual
gratification, particularly when you are desperately looking for
someone to love and someone to love you.


181

My emphasis on the emotional factor is to ask that policy and funding be redirected to address prevention
of the real problem, adolescent sexual involvement prior to marriage, rather than only continuing programs
that address just one of the fallout results, pregnancy.

Besides the emotional trauma suffered by our young girls and boys, we are faced with an extraordinary
increase in Sexually Transmitted Diseases. Last week, the Associated Press proclaimed that "teenagers are
contracting the AID virus at an average of more than one an hour." Then there's a new disease, Chlamydia,
causing sterility in early adulthood. There are cancerous conditions resulting from HPV, and “antibiotic
resistant STD's" seriously affecting the health of the teen population. Consider this cost to our future
generations and the cost in dollars for health care.

Referringto teen pregnancy is missing the point. Itis far too limiting and misleadingin thatitgivesa "female
only" perception of the problem and excludes the emotional and disease factors.

‘We should redefine the topic and schoo! courses as Adolescent Health - Emotional/Physical. This
attracts not only the attention of both male and female students but provides the wider approach to their
thinking and understanding of self-control in all areas of their life.

Self control develops self esteem.

Abstinence Education works! In ten years’of extensive evaluation, we have collected a treasure of data.
Attached is a summary showing how even the "at risk” students respond to our abstinence-centered message.
One of the questions we ask is: "Can sexual urges be controlled?" Only 4 to 5% answer: "Never." This very
low negative response was tallied early in 1986 and has remained constant.

‘What this tells us is: Adolescents know instinctively that sexual emotions are something that can be
controlled. What they want to know is "WHY should I control them and HOW do I control them?"

This is where a true Abstinence-centered program can result in building a commitment to adopt abstinence
as THE healthiest lifestyle.

However, another highly visible program, Postponing Sexual Involvment (PSI), was one of the first to be
evaluated in the ‘80's, when it was a straight abstinence program. That evaluation of the '80's showed very
positive results. However, that program, today, has become a combination approach, and it does not appear
tobe effective. The State of California just terminated their ENABL (Education Now and Babies Later),
which I understand was based on PSI

For several years Project Reality has conducted a study in three levels of abstinence education in Illinois,
funded by Illinois Department of Public Aid and supported by Governor Jim Edgar. A summary of our
current year’s operation is attached. Iwould liketo draw your attention to a few specificitems to demonstrate
the degree of interest.

Inatwo part classroom presentation by a team of seven teachers, our Chicago Division started with eleven
schools requesting services in'89. Last year they were invited into 88 City of Chicago Public Schools,
‘completing 925 presentations. This year they are already up to 90 schools and it is only March.

‘Our middle school program, consisting of an 8 unit curriculum with a strong medical emphasis, had 9,000
students participating in the Hlinois Pilot Project last year.

‘The high school program, consisting of a 15 unit composite approach of abstinence towards drugs, alcohol
and sexual activity, has 1700 students in the Illinois Pilot Program.

In summary, we strongly recommend that Congress redirects policies and funding to address the best
preventative medicine possible: Abstinence-Centered Education.

This approach is not just a theoretical idea, but a proven approach that is realistic. Itis the one real solution
to rebuilding the respect for each individual, including their sexuality, and directing our young people to
complete adulthood.


159

* child care centers would become more competitive in
developing higher quality programs

* it would help to eliminate the underground child care
that doesn’t even come close high quality child care,
therefore, giving EVERY CHILD the opportunity to strive
for the best they can be!!

* child care centers would be able to develop SLIDING SCALE
FEES that would allow them to provide HIGH QUALITY CHILD
SARE FOR ALL CHILDREN of ALL ECONOMIC LEVELSLU

T have recently started a child care business, TESSIE’S CHILD
CARE, INC. which is: based on obtaining PRIVATE GRANTS PROM

to offset the Sliding Scale Fees for the low income
famili Tmade it a for-, because I want to be
{nvconerol of the operation of the business, not to get rich. MY
objectives are:

+ to provide affordable, high quality child care for ALL
SBILDREN

* to help low income families have an opportunity to
increase their abilities to improve their quality of
life

* to promote all people working together in a positive
effort to improve the quality of life in America.

+ to enhance the education of children by being an
education based program that promotes learning for
children by using many different learning strategies and
hands-on projects

* to promote parenting training to help those parents
interested in improving their parenting skills

+ to improve training for all staff members so as to
broaden their scope and understanding of children and
activities to aid in their teaching of the children and
work with the parents

* to improve the community by inviting volunteers to visit
the classrooms to teach, tell and read stories, to share
their work skills, and'to show the children how we all
work together to help each other

* to provide a professional and parent "Borrowing Center"
so that materials, books, toys, and equipment can be made
available to aid in teaching ‘the children and increase
adult understanding of children

+ to provide child care at the highest level possible for
‘ALL CHILDREN

Over the last two decades we have seen other countries meet
and surpass our education standards. Our children haven't lost
their inherent abilities to learn, they have been concentrating on
learning things that promote the bad news in the media. Our
children have become street wise and couch potatoes. What kind of
a future is there for our children? How will they live and govern
themselves and their children?

With high quality child care available only for those who can
afford it we as a Nation are making a serious mistake. All
children need and deserve to have good care and learn to RESPECT
themselves and others as well as property. They don’t learn that
while they are home alone, crowded in a poor environment, or
running the streets.




109

A welfare check is simply not a decisive factor in determining a
teenager’s decision in this matter. So, what to do?

Covenant House believes that it has a program that is an alter-
native to these mistaken community norms. Our experience in
dealing with young single women demonstrates that teens who de-
velop self-esteem and clearly defined goals for the future are far
less likely to seek immediate sexual gratification, or become a par-
ent to make up for the lack of family, or if they are already a single
parent, run the risk of a second pregnancy.

Currently, 120 young people, women between the ages of 18 and
21, including single mothers, reside in our New York City long-
term residential program, what we call Rights of Passage.

While living here, each girl creates an individual plan designed
to result in self-sufficiency. They maintain employment. We work
hard with 600 companies in New York City that offer jobs to our
Covenant House kids. It is a key element in our program, the co-
operation between business and industry and Covenant House.

The girls attend classes. They pay minimal rent based on their
income. They do not accept AFDC assistance, and they rely on our
in-house vocational training programs, employment workshops, and
the encouragement and support of our staff members to accomplish
their goals.

Statistics indicate that only 5 percent of our young women be-
come pregnant again while in our program. We preach and teach
abstinence in an atmosphere of support, love, pastoral care, and
values promotion. Having a future, we find, makes a difference.

The key elements of our program are genuinely marketable job
skills for which we train kids, and for whom we give the support
of mentors and a loving environment to help them reach their
goals, and we work with the boys to develop in them a sense of re-
sponsibility in terms of sexual activity.

I realize my time is up. I only want to say two other quick
things: there appears to be the belief that the proposed welfare
budget cuts, when they take effect, will be made up for in the pri-
vate sector; that the private sector will be able to step in and take
up the slack, despite the fact that every one of the main-line reli-
gious agencies, deeply committed to the care of the poor, have de-
nied their ability to do so.

Second, I believe government, church, business, and the commu-
nity must all work together to make a difference in this teenage
Pregnancy issue.

Thank you.

[The prepared statement follows:]


30

intact marriage. Children born outside of marriage themselves are three times more
likely to be on welfare when they grow up.” Daughters of single mothers are twice #5
likely to bg single mothers themselves, if they are black, and only slightly less so if they
are white.” And boys living in a single-parent family are twice as Likely to father a child
‘out of wedlock as are boys from a home.* Tae TALENT study, noted
calier, had elready found that children bora to teenage parents are more likely to become
‘teen parents themselves.”*

Tiegitimaacy is « major factor in America’s crime wave. Lack of married parents,
rather than race or poverty isthe principal factor in the crime rate. It has been known for
‘some time that high rates of welfare dependency correlate with high crime rates among
‘young men in a neighborhood.”* But more important, a major 1988 study of 11,000
individuals found that “the percentage of single-parent households with children between
the ages of 12 and 20 is significantly associated with rates of violent crime and burglary."
‘The same study makes clear that the widespread popular assumption that there is an
association between race and crime is false. Legitimacy is the key factor. The absence
cof marriage, and the failure to form and maintain intact families, explains the incidence of
high crime in a neighborhood among whites as well as blacks. This study also concluded
that poverty does not explain the incidence of crime.” This is a dramatic reversal of
‘conventional wisdom.

University of Hlinois sociologist Robert J. Sampson shows that violent crime
among blacks, especially juveniles, is strongly driven by the collapse of the family.
‘Sampson states,” black family disruption has the largest effects on black juvenile robbery
and homicide." He finds similar effects among whites.

Research on underclass behavior by, Dr. June O'Neill, the curent director of the
Congressional Budget Office, confirms the linkage between crime and single-parent
families. Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, O'Neill found that
‘young black men raised in single-parent families were twice as likely to engage in
criminal activities when compared to black men raised in two-parent families, even after
boldg costa wie ans of rie uh fly income ban residence,
neighborhood on, Growing pina sale pret family
in neighborhood wa masy eer Single pre fier’ ‘on welfare triples
probaly to young back men wil xgngeincriminl avy’

‘A major sociological review from the University of Wisconsin concludes that
‘eens from single-parent families are much more likely to become delinquent than are
‘eens from intact families. Family disruption drives up delinquency rates because of the
‘way it "hampers the formation of sttachments to parents and the transmission of anti-
delinquent definitions from parent to child.” Adolescents from broken homes often

Bennett and Devid Bloc, “Te inftaace of Non-marial Childbeerng onthe Formation
‘Maral Uns apr ent NICHD coms on “Oates of Ext Chile ay 1952.

Kristin Moore, “Ataioment mong Youth fom Families That Received Welfare” Paper
DHHS/ASPE tnd NICHD, Grant HD21537-03.

® ‘SaraS. MeLanaben, “Family Structre and Dependency: Early Trankions to Female Household

Degagranhy, Vel. 5, No. 1 (1988), pp. 1-16.

TM ‘William Marsigho, “Adobeeeat Faber in the Unied Sues: Their nial Living Arrangements,
Mariel end Educational Outcomes,” Exniy Panning Ponpesziea Vol. 19 (1987), pp.

1240-251, reporting a stay of 5,500 young me.

Card,

25.
‘Antar B. Eber gal, "Joticia! volvement and Conduct Problems of Fathers of Infants Born to
‘Adolescent Mother,” Bediatrics, Vol. 79, No. 21987) pp. 230-234.

* ‘Douglas Smith and G Roger lrjours, “Socal Seactre end Criminal Victimization," Jounal of
‘Reseach in Crime and Delinquency. February 1988, pp. 27-52.
TM Robert. "Urban Black "Toe Eide of Male and Fanuily Disruption,”
Vol. $3 (1987) pp. 348382.
* M, Ane Hill and Jae ONeill ‘ i
‘oC Dstroninaua, New York City, Cty University of Now York, Barack Cologs March 1990.



89

I think the testimony that we have even heard here today has
pointed out the difficulty of accomplishing safety for our young peo-
ple. It is my opinion that safety is the major problem in our society
today.

I think that if we do not accomplish some type of solution to this,
that we are going to have a whole generation or two generations
of people that are sterile, dying, or diseased.

We already, I am sorry to say, have much of that.

I think that first, we have to realize that the problem is as bad
as I have laid it out. By the way, these are not just my opinions.

Our organization has a national board of people who are true ex-
perts in these issues that I’ve talked about. They agree with me,
that these things are this bad.

I first think that we have to realize that these issues are really
destroying a generation of young people, probably two or three
generations.

Second, we then have to commit to looking at the issue honestly.
I just had a fleeting moment to say that the policies of the past
have failed, and if we will take an honest look at the issue of, for
instance, education, but not just education—the policies that Amer-
ican medicine has taken it, and the policies of other groups—we
will see that those approaches, to this point, have literally been
miserable failures.

I do not say that arbitrarily. I say that based on publications
published in the medical and educational literature of the past 10
to 15 years, that even by people that wish the present system were
working, affirm the fact that it has been a failure.

Sure, we will see articles that suggest that some sex education
programs will increase the use of condoms from 10 to 20 percent,
or from 30 to 50 percent. Might decrease the number of kids being
abstinent from 50 percent to 60—I mean, increase the number of
abstinent kids from 50 to 60 percent.

What we need, though, are programs that will literally make a
dramatic change, and there are some out there that show real
promise. Decreasing the instance of sexual activity by a factor of
at least five. In other words, kids are one-fifth as likely to have sex-
ual intercourse, or have babies, or to get disease.

I think it is an issue that you must take up here, you, who are
policy makers, to encourage abstinence for young people until they
get into one sexual relationship for life. If you want to call it mar-
riage, fine. I do. I think most societies do. It is not a religious
connotation.

Second, medical organizations need to be honest with themselves
about the medical data.

Third, educational organizations need to do the same thing. Then
of course we get into media, church, social organizations, and so
forth, too.

It is a community wide thing. I think the first thing is that we
just have to recognize that we have a huge problem.

One thing that you all have not been talking about, Representa-
tive Rangel, is when you talk about sexual activity and so forth,
is the fact that—is why kids are having sex. Kids are not having
sex because it is something that feels good to them.


84

Dr. FURSTENBERG. I said two things. I said that they are having
sex, and they are using birth control improperly, that is, inconsist-
ently.

You have to ask, why do they not use birth control more fre-
quently? Or, why do they not abort when they —

Mr. ENSIGN. As compared to people who are—

Dr. FURSTENBERG. Once pregnancy occurs, there are a whole—
you have to navigate a complex path to get, to have a child out of
wedlock.

You have got to have sex, you have got to not use birth control,
and you have got to not get an abortion, and you have got to not
get fnarried. Each of those decision points have different reasons
to them.

Mr. ENSIGN. OK. Let us take a different tack. First of all, on
your related work—and I thought that was kind of interesting.

During the Depression, was illegitimacy increased to a great de-
gree, like it is, especially in the last 30 years?

Dr. FURSTENBERG. The rise in illegitimacy has been fairly steady
throughout this century, but it started at a very low level. During
the Depression, did illegitimacy increase? We did not have very
good statistics before that. I cannot answer precisely. Certainly
marriage decreased during the Depression. It went way down.

Mr. ENSIGN. You would think that people were still having sex
back then, so illegitimacy should have gone dramatically up.

Dr. FURSTENBERG. People were not having sex in anywhere near
the frequency that they have today. Especially young people. It was
relatively uncommon for a 15-, 16-, or 17-year-old to have sex.

Mr. ENSIGN. OK. Let us get to other root causes other than just
poverty, other than just lack of jobs,_——

Dr. FURSTENBERG. I never said poverty was the only ——

Mr. ENSIGN [continuing]. Other than just birth control.

Dr. FURSTENBERG. Yeah.

Dr. ENSIGN. Maybe a lack of morality in this country could be
some of the reasons for that.

Dr. FURSTENBERG. No, I never said that poverty was the only
cause of nonmarital childbearing.

Mr. ENSIGN. No, I know that——

pr FURSTENBERG. It is very clear, when we look across, nation-
ally—

Mr. ENSIGN. Excuse me, doctor. When I asked you for the rea-
sons that they were getting pregnant, you did not mention morality
as a problem. .

You did not mention that we were having a lot more sex today
because of morality problems.

Dr. FURSTENBERG. You did not ask me.

Mr. ENSIGN. I asked you what the reasons were.

Dr. FURSTENBERG. If you had asked me, I would have—

Mr. ENSIGN. I asked you an open-ended question of what—I do
not mean to make this confrontational, but I asked you an open-
ended question of what the reasons were, and you did not offer that
as one of your reasons.

Dr. ZILL. Congressman Ensign.

Mr. ENSIGN. Yes; go ahead.


12

leadership on this issue and for your very articulate and outstand-
ing opening statement which you, I think, very well articulated
what we face in this whole area.

It is obviously not an easy subject. You have spent years on it
and I have spent the last 2 or 3 years learning about this and
studying it. There are no easy answers. It is complex and I would
not pretend otherwise.

Clearly, the policies that we have had in place for 30 years have
failed and failed miserably and we must find alternative solutions.
I admire my friend, Charlie Rangel, and I appreciate so much of
what he said, but I would suggest that the hopelessness that he de-
scribed is one of the outcomes of a welfare system that has contrib-
uted to that hopelessness.

That hope is necessary if we are going to see people rise out of
their circumstances and situations, but we have got a welfare sys-
tem that acts to extinguish that hope and the issues are not pri-
marily budget-driven.

The issues are not who is going to get the credit, it is not pri-
marily political. It is whether or not we are going to do more of
what we have done in the past, of whether we are going to make
some fundamental transformations in a system that is clearly not
working to the benefit of those involved in it and to the taxpayers
of America who are paying for it.

I believe the single greatest cause of the ills of our society is the
breakdown of the American family. It may take a village, but it
sure takes a father and there maybe many examples of those who
survived without that father or that intact home, but it sure helps
if he is there. There is no better institution in America or in the
world to provide for the needs or our Nation’s children.

Whether it is education, health care, moral and spiritual guid-
ance, the building of self-esteem, or just the basic necessities of life,
the family can do it better than the village, the family can do it
better than any other entity in our society.

It is incumbent upon those of us in government to do all that we
can to enact laws and policies which encourage and strengthen the
families of our Nation. It is tragic that we have developed a welfare
system which does just the opposite.

President Roosevelt warned us when we started down this path
60 years ago, that we would, “Induce a spiritual and moral disinte-
gration fundamentally destructive to the national fiber.” That is
what has happened.

We have replaced mothers and fathers and, for that matter, we
have replaced the village and put in their stead an all-encompass-
ing welfare state. We have done this in the name of compassion,
and I do not doubt the motivation that it has been one of compas-
sion. What we have ultimately done is to encourage the breakdown
of those families that are so important.

What else can we call it when we tell a young woman that if you
get pregnant and you do not marry the father, or get a job we will
give you housing, food stamps, health care, and in some cases, child
care and a cash allowance, and then we tell her that if she will
have additional children we will give her more cash money.

What else can you call it when we tell a young father that he,
ultimately, is not responsible for the children that he helps bring


54

1988, Zill, Nord, and Loomis (1995) found that tenth-grade students from mother-only families were
significantly more likely than students from two-parent families to drop out, become teen parents, report
having been arrested, and to have smoked and used illicit drugs by the time of their senior years. When.
these associations were subjected to multivariate analysis, factors that are closely related to single-
parenthood, such as low parent education level and low family socioeconomic status, proved to play
significant roles in the genesis of these risk behaviors. However, even after these related factors were
controlled, significant links between family welfare receipt and high school dropout, teen parenthood,
delinquency, and illicit drug use were found,

Finally, Sara McLanahan and Gary Sandefur, analyzing data from several national longitudinal
surveys found single-parenthood to be associated with increased risks of high school dropout, college non-
completion, premature parenthood, and idleness in males in young adulthood. These effects remained
significant when socioeconomic factors were controlled.

Preventing High-Risk Family Formation in the Future

| would like to conclude by suggesting three things that public and private agencies could be doing -
to help lower the incidence of unmarried parenthood in the furure. Such efforts should not be aimed only at
‘unmarried childbearing per se, but at preventing the formation of multi-risk families. These are families
that involve not only single parenthood, but low parent education levels, low incomes, parental immaturity,
and negative parental behaviors such as drug or alcohol abuse. ‘The research findings indicate that young
people who grow up in these kinds of families are the ones who are most vulnerable to academic failure,
classroom misconduct, and later poverty, dependency, and deviant behavior.

‘The first thing that agencies could do to help improve family stability in the furure is to improve job
training, apprenticeship, and early employment opportunities for those teenagers and young adults who are
not college bound, the so-called “forgotten half” of students. ‘The reason for emphasizing these programs is
that research has clearly shown that limited employment opportunities, unstable employment, and low wages
are important causes of nonmarriage and family disruption. The lack of career opportunites is also an
important reason why young people become parents when they are financially not ready to support their
children. Finding ways to provide young people who are not doing well in conventional academic studies
with positive career alternatives should be given a high priority by public and private agencies.

AA second step that may affect family life in the future is a public information campaign that teaches
that all family forms are not equally viable. The facts that researchers have learned about how children do
in different kinds of families should form the basis for what young people are taught about family life,
parenting, and child development. Without exaggerating the risks, or "putting down" individuals who come
from these families, we should be honest about the known drawbacks of single-parent families. As efforts
to end smoking have shown, knowledge of risks can make a difference in people's behavior. But the
imowledge has to be communicated in order to have any effect.

AA third, related step is to insure that all adults but especially teachers and counselors communicate
clearly and consistently to teenagers and young adults that it is unwise to have children when you are
emotionally and financially unprepared to care for them. Unmarried teenage parenthood before high school
graduation is not a cost-free experiment with alternative lifestyle, it is a major cause of child poverty,
‘welfare dependency, and school failure. We should emphasize that young people are doing themselves and
their offspring no favors by engaging in unprepared parenthood. Simply providing young people with
condoms or other contraceptive technologies without a strong, consistent message about the reasons for
making use of them is much les likely to be effective.

Implementing these recommendations will not be easy and the steps themselves will not work
miracles. They will not, for instance, create jobs where none exist. But combined with efforts by other
public and private institutions, such efforts may make a tangible difference in the lives of many young
people, and hence have a beneficial effect on family life in the future.


96

age dependency, restore a sense of personal responsibility, and en-
courage stable two-parent families.

Programs that were once judged by the height of their aspira-
tions now must be reconsidered by the depths of their failures and
the magnitude of their casualties.

I do not think anyone here is prepared to defend the current wel-
fare system as is. Over $5 trillion has been spent over the past 30
years, and as a result America has a larger poverty element that
is more violent, more poorly educated, and includes many more sin-
gle-parent households than ever before.

This is a national travesty, and it is time to try something
different.

What has been swept to the sidelines in the current welfare re-
form debate, until this hearing, that is, are specific policies de-
signed to save marriages and remove the economic incentives and
rewards for single parenthood.

The central problem with welfare, in our view, is the fact that
it subsidizes and therefore promotes self-destructive behavior.

Right now, the welfare system promotes nonwork, illegitimacy
and divorce. It undermines the work ethic and family structure,
and results in more and more people dependent on government aid.

Out-of-wedlock births are a strong predictor of poverty. Unwed
mothers are not only more likely to rely on government aid to sup-
port their children, but are also more likely to spend years depend-
ent upon welfare.

Because illegitimacy feeds both poverty and itself, there is no
way we can reverse the dual trends of welfare dependency and
family breakdown until we address illegitimacy.

Welfare cash and assistance provides a perverse economic sup-
port system for illegitimacy. A young girl on welfare can get a cash
grant, food stamps, medical care, day care, a transportation allow-
ance, and in many cases, a rent allowance.

To many, welfare is more attractive than entry level jobs. It sub-
sidizes unwed motherhood and makes husbands quite dispensable.

Some will argue that while fighting illegitimacy may be a laud-
able goal, the Federal Government should not impose requirements
on the States, and, if left alone, Governors will come up with their
own innovative solutions.

To that I would say that the Governors proposed eliminating the
one and only provision from the Welfare Reform Conference Report,
which would have required a family cap, and instead offered no
other alternative, suggesting to me that they are reluctant to effec-
tively deal with this crisis.

At a minimum, Christian Coalition would advocate the following
policy changes to combat illegitimacy.

Restore the requirement to prohibit States from using Federal
funds to give additional cash benefits to welfare recipients who
have additional children; but allow for vouchers for the care and
feeding and material needs of the child.

Restore the requirement to prohibit States from using Federal
funds to give additional cash benefits to unmarried teenage moth-
ers, who have children out of wedlock; but again, allow for vouchers
for the care and feeding and material needs of the child.


xe)

STATEMENT OF FRANK FURSTENBERG, PH.D.
PROFESSOR OF SOCIOLOGY
UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA

Inboduet

1 appreclate the opportunity to testify before this commitice on the question of why
levels of non-marital childbearing are changing and which public policies will be most
effective In countering this trend.

My own work in soctology and demography has been devoted to snudying these trends
and to ling the changes in family formation that have oocurred over the pest several
decades. I have 4 thirty year longitudinal study of teenage mothers and their
offepring in Baltimore as well ax working on some of the national dara vets that allow us to
explore the consequences of poverty, welfare, and single parenthood.

As I understand it, the pending legislation on welfare reform-- and these hearings—
center on the role that public assistance bas played in eroding marriage and encouraging
non-marital childbearing. The assumption is that:

Moving women (and their offspring off welfare) and into the labor market will do
touch to reduce non-marital childbearing and help break the cycle of poverty.

I and many other scholars bave some deep reservations about this presumption. Hero's
why.

1, The decline of marriage has occurred in all Western nations, related, most scholars believe,
to changing economic roles and gender relations. No link has been established between these
trends and public welfare policies or the generosity of family support systems, France,
Britain, Switzerland, and the Netherlands have all experienced a decrease in marriage and an
increase in non-marital childbearing comparable to what has occurred in this country.

In this country non-marital childbearing has increased more sharply and steadily for whites
and has occurred among women of all ages and educational status, Rising levels of
illegitimacy have not been limited to the welfare population,

2. Changes in the level of public assistance in the U.S. is not correlated with rates of noa-
marital childbearing over time. The legitimacy ratio (non-marital to marital births) has
steadily risen over the past several decades. Iowever, the illegitimacy rate (births per 1,000
unmarried women) has risen only among whites and not among African Americans over the
past three decades, Indeed, among blacks the rate significantly declined ftom the 1970 rate,

43. State level trends in illegitimacy are weakly or uncorrelated with the generosity of welfare
ussistince. Most wholury, following Robert Moffit’s review uf the evidence, du nut believe

that welfare policy has Influence childbearing trends.

4, There 1s a modest to moderate association in welfare patterns from one generation to the
next, The most recent review of the evidence is in accord with the provalling view that
poverty begets poverty, but there is relatively little transmission of welfare dependency
independent of poverty.

5. At the metropolitan level, a cross sectional correlation exists between welfare benefits and
tuarrigye und childbeuring patterns, bul nv une has established whether e causal relationship
exists or in which direction the causality runs-- from welfare to non-marital childbearing or
the reverse.


36

1X Welfare receipt asa child has a negative effect on the earings and employment
‘capacity of young men. The more welfare income received by a boy's family dur-
ing his childhood, the lower will be the boy's earings as an adult, even when
‘compared to boys in families with identical non-welfare income.
1X Receipt of welfare and living in a single-parent family during childhood are
strongly associated with criminal activity among young men and having illegiti-
‘mate children among young women.
Overall, welfare operates asa form of social toxin. The more of this toxin received by
child's family, the less successful willbe the child as an adult.
‘The House and Senate will son pass welfare reform legislation based on three key
principles:
© Reducing the growth of illegitimacy;
© Reducing dependence by requiring welfare recipients to work; and
© Limiting the explosive growth of welfare spending.

‘The public strongly supports the key provisions of the congressional reforms. According
to recent polls:

‘+ By amargin of 84 percent to 13 percent, Americans support a “family cap.” Eighty-
four percent “oppose increasing a welfare mother’s monthly welfare check if she has
another child out-of-wedlock.”

‘+ The out of four Americans believe welfare encourages illegitimacy. By a ratio of
two to one, Americans feel that reducing illegitimacy is a more important goal in wel-
fase reform than attempting merely to make single mothers self-sufficient.

Stil, nine out of ten Americans fee! that welfare recipients should have “to work for

their benefits.” However, they feel overwhelmingly that work requirements should be
imposed on welfare mothers with older children before they are imposed on mothers

with pre-school children.

+

‘THE PATTERN OF DEPENDENCE:
LENGTH OF TIME ON WELFARE

‘The public is often told that the current welfare system does not promote long-term de-
pendence. According to this picture, AFDC generally provides temporary aid, and very
few recipients receive welfare for extended periods. This picture is inaccurate.



48

mother and four times higher than the risk of unemployment faced
by parents in a typical married couple family. These characteristics
are risk factors for poverty in themselves.

In other words, we have to think about those other factors as
well and focus more on the multirisk family rather than just focus-
ing strictly on unmarried parenthood, per se.

As you will see in the charts provided, children with never-mar-
ried mothers are less likely to have a good quality home environ-
ment, they are more likely to live with an adult smoker in the
household, to rarely or never use seatbelts when riding in a car,
to have a late or irregular bedtime, to not have a regular provider
of sick care, and not to have had a dental visit in the last 2 years.

Their health is less likely to be rated as excellent with no activity
limitation. They are twice as likely to be in fair or poor health, and
to have a limiting condition. They are apt to spend one more day
in bed, due to illness, when compared to children in two-parent
families and they have had twice as many hospital visits in the
course of a year because of emergency conditions or because of
inappropriate use of emergency rooms as health clinics.

en they reach school age, they are likely to be behind other
children in terms of being able to do such things as recognize let-
ters and count to 20. They are more likely to show hyperactive be-
havior. I am not going to read the numbers, they are An illustrated
in the charts.

In school, they are more likely to be described as being in the
lower half of the class when they are between 7 and 17 years old,
twice the likelihood of repeating a grade. More than twice as likely
to have had a parent conference -because of behavior problems.
Three times more likely to have been suspended or expelled from
school at some point in their careers.

These differences are diminished, but remain significant when
you consider for factors like parent education, family income, and
other family compositional factors.

As Mr. Rector mentioned, the children in never-married mother
families also had a higher incidence of emotional and behavioral
problems. Perhaps most troubling, is that there also is an increase
of risk in adolescence and young adulthood.

Let me talk briefly about what can be done to lower the incidence
of unmarried parenthood in the future. The first thing that agen-
cies, public and private could do—

Chairman Suaw. Dr. Zill, could you summarize. Our light is not
working here for some reason that I am not aware of but——

Dr. ZILL. The first thing is to improve job training, apprentice-
ship, and early employment opportunities for those teenagers and
young adults who are not college bound, the so-called forgotten half
of students. Hedrick Smith, the journalist, said there are two
tracks in American society, the track to college and the track to no-
where. Those young people who are on the track to nowhere are
much more likely to have children outside of marriage.

Giving them a better track is one way to prevent out-of-marriage
childbearing.

A second step is a public information campaign that teaches that
all family forms are not equally viable. The kinds of facts that I
have just presented should be made available to young people.


117

3. Social norms around marriage and childbearing have evolved
over the past 20 years that may affect how we INTERPRET these
statistics

- Delayed marriage: Census Bureau data show that the median
age of first marriage continues to rise. In 1993, the median age
was 26.5 years for men and 24.5 years for women. Delayed
marriage may increase the chance of out-of-wedlock childbearing

- Married Women are having fewer children: A recent New York
Times article notes that the fact that married women are having
Fewer children inflates the "share" of out-of-wedlock births.
This trend needs to be carefully considered when interpreting
statistics related to childbearing.

~ Timing and definition of marriage: The same New York Times
article points out that four out of every 10 mothers whose first
birth occurs out of wedlock marcy within five years. In
addition, some unmarried mothers are only single in the legal
sense: 1 in 4 has a live-in relationship with a man, often,
though not always, the child's father. This factor may encourage
marriage later on.

REDUCING OUT-OF-WEDLOCK BIRTHS REQUIRES MULTI-DIMENSIONAL
STRATEGIES

As the research indicates, there are many factors to consider in
developing sound policies and strategies for reducing
out-of-wedlock births. Simple solutions do not solve complex
problems. Moving forward too quickly on a large scale with
untested strategies is not likely to resolve this issue. And
some of the "solutions" currently under consideration could
produce adverse effects on the well-being of low-income families
and children. Bankrupting the future of any segment of our
nation’s children will have severe consequences for all
Americans.

The National Urban League recommends the following strategies
that we believe will help curb this problem for individuals
living in low-income communities. But, in order to create long
term change in the area of out-of-wedlock births, particularly
for low-income families, we strongly urge that we proceed
carefully and incorporate evaluation and research to learn and
understand more about the factors affecting behavior for both
men and women.

Recommendations:

1) Developing strategies that address the increasing span of
time between puberty and marriage (if it occurs). What should be
happening during this time span that could prevent
out-of-wedlock births or reduce its occurrence?

This time period represents the vital stage of transition from
school to adult employment/career. It is a time span for which
this nation has been sorely lacking in public policies related
to youth development. Initial ground has been broken under the
School-to-Work legislation. Ongoing work in identifying common
ground between youth development and school-to-work efforts
reveals that both school-to-work and youth development
perspectives emphasize preparing young people for adulthood, not

simply deterring or controlling young people from engaging in
problem behaviors.

The National Urban League recommends expanding, not retrenching,
our investment in school-to-work initiatives underway throughout
the country. We also recommend public-private investments in
providing adult mentors, after-school activities and child care.
Positive messages about postponing sexual activity must be
coupled with access to health care for adolescents, including
access to family planning services.

2) Educational levels play a key role in reducing the chances of
out-of~wedlock births. Clearly, strategies must be targeted to
Preventing students from dropping out of high-school, as well as
strategies for addressing the needs of high school dropouts
before they join the out-of-wedlock statistics. Increasing the
opportunities for higher education is another clear path to
reducing births out of wedlock.


53

© counted to 20 or higher, 56 percent versus 64 percent (and only 43 percent of those with 3 or more
risk factors);

‘© pretended to read stories from a story book, 67 percent versus 75 percent (and 53 percent of those
from muliple-risk families); and,

‘© written their own first names, 62 percent versus 73 percent (and 53 percent of those with 3 or more
risk factors).

‘School Readiness: Hyperactive Behavior

‘When they are about to start kindergarten, children born to unmarried mothers are more likely to
show a pattern of inattentive and overly active behavior that may create problems when they reach the
classroom setting and has been found to be a predictor of later achievement difficulties. The 1993 National
Household Education Survey found that among 4-year-olds who had not yet attended kindergarten, and
‘compared to those born to married mothers, those born to unmarried mothers were more likely to be
described as:

¢ being very restless and fidgeting a lot, 37 percent versus 26 percent (and 41 percent of those with 3

or mote risk factors);

‘having very short attention spans, 30 percent versus 21 percent (and 37 percent of those from
rmultiple-tisk families);

© often having temper tantrums, 31 percent versus 20 percent (and 32 percent of those with 3 or more
risk factors);

. tripping or falling easily, 19 percent versus 11 percent (and 21 percent of those from multiple-risk
families).

How They Do In School

‘When they reach elementary school and high school, children living with never-married mothers are
significantly more likely than children from mother-father families to experience academic achievement
Aifficulties and to exhibit disruptive behavior that results in disciplinary actions by the school. (Figure 5a).
In the 1988 National Health Interview Survey on Child Health, among school-aged children aged 7-17, and
compared to those from living with both birth parents, those living with never-married mothers were:

‘© more likely to be described as being in the lower half of the class, 60 percent versus 38 percent;

‘* more than twice as likely to have repeated a grade, 33 percent versus 13 percent;

‘© more than twice as likely to have had the school request a conference with the parent in the last year
because of conduct problems the child was exhibiting at school, 30 percent versus 13 percent;

‘© three times more likely to have been suspended or expelled from school at some point, 17 percent
versus 5 percent.

Differences Remain After Adjusting for Socioeconomic Disparities Between Groups

As mentioned earlier, children living with never-married mothers are likely to have additional risk
factors, such as low parent education levels, poverty, and minority language status. Some of the differences
Thave been describing in children’s health, school readiness, achievement, and behavior, are partly
attributable to these factors, rather than to unmarried parenthood as such. With the data on school
performance and disciplinary problems from the National Health Interview Survey I have just described, 1
‘carried out regression analyses that adjusted the differences between children from never-married and two-
parent families for the effects of differences in parent education, race and Hispanic origin, family size, age
or sex of the child, and other related factors. These adjustments reduced the size of the differences, but did
not eliminate them. In particular, differences with respect to conduct problems and student suspension
remained significant and substantial. The raw and adjusted differences are shown in Figure Sb.

Prevalence of Psychological Disorders

Data from the 1988 National Health Interview Survey on Child Health show that one child in four
‘who lives with a never-married mother is reported to have had a developmental delay, learning disability, or
an emotional or behavioral problem of significant duration. By contrast, 15 percent of children in mother-
father families have had such a problem (Figure 6). Children of never-married mothers are more than twice
as likely to have an emotional or behavioral problem (20 percent versus 8 percent), and one-third more
likely to exhibit learning disabilities (8 percent versus 6 percent).

Problems in Adolescence and Young Adulthood

‘Analyzing longitudinal data from the National Survey of Children, Moore and Stief (1991) found
that youngsters with unmarried mothers who were on welfare had lower educational achievement and
‘occupational attainment levels and higher problem behavior levels as young adults than those who had not
‘grown up in such families. Whether unmarried parenthood or some correlated set of factors accounted for
these associations was not established. Analyzing data from the National Educational Longitudinal Study of


138

Chairman Suaw. Dr. Howard.

STATEMENT OF MARION HOWARD, PH.D., DIRECTOR, ADOLES-
CENT REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH CENTER; CLINICAL DIREC-
TOR, TEEN SERVICES PROGRAM, GRADY HEALTH SYSTEMS;
AND PROFESSOR OF GYNECOLOGY AND OBSTETRICS,
EMORY UNIVERSITY, ATLANTA, GEORGIA

Dr. Howarb. As far as my understanding of the statistics are
about 85 percent of births to teens are unintended. Basically some-
thing else was happening to kids, 85 percent of them did not want
it to, we would really take a good look at that and see why it is

going on.

I think the wonderful thing about working with young people is
that there is so much room for growth and change, that we can do
a better job of helping them. I think the two things we need to get
across to young people is that all people do two things about life.
They either abstain or they protect themselves from unwanted con-
sequences.

If you are hap ily married, if you do not want 12 children, you

rotect yoursel: From consequences of your behavior. If your hus-
Band goes off to Bosnia or your wife does or there is an illness in
the family, you abstain from having sex during that time period,
hopefully, if you are married.
roughout life people do two things, they either abstain or they
protect themselves from things they do not want to happen. What
young people, I think, need are role models of people who basically
do that. Children learn more by what we do than by just what we
tell them to do. The media exploits sex. Daily kids hear about fa-
mous adults, business leaders, sports figures, religious leaders,
even politicians who have not managed their sexual behavior very
well, even princes and princesses now do it, too.

I think this bombardment of the media about all the mismanage-
ment about so-and-so remained faithful to his wife for 20 years and
they had a great sex life distorts what young people understand
about what real life is about.

I certainly think that for many of the young women we work
with that they are in circumstances that are beyond their control.
They cannot control what housing project they live in or how bad
the crime is. They cannot control their brother’s drug habits. You
can point out to them reproduction is something you can control,
you can take charge of your life, and this is something that is yours
alone.

Certainly young people need to know, nobody operates intel-
ligently in a vacuum. If you do not know HPV or HIV is out there
why would you change your behavior? If you do not know how you
get pregnant, and 98 percent of teenage girls when surveyed said
they did, and 2 percent said they did not know, and only 50 percent
gave the wrong answer, so there is a lot of misinformation out

ere.

There is a joke about the two preschoolers who were talking and
one said, my dad found a condom on the patio last night. The other
one says, what is a patio? The reason I tell that joke is because we
assume kids know a lot but they do not really know very much.
They have as much misinformation as they do information.


49

Without exaggerating the risks or putting down individuals who
come from these families, we should be honest about the known
drawbacks of single-parent families. As efforts to end smoking have
shown, knowledge of risks can make a difference in people’s behav-
ior. The knowledge has to be communicated in order to have any
effect.

A third step is to communicate clearly and consistently to teen-
agers and young adults that it is unwise to have children when you
are emotionally and financially unprepared to care for them.
Unmarried teenage parenthood before high school graduation is not
a cost-free experiment with alternative lifestyles, it is a major
cause of child poverty, welfare dependency, and school failure.

We should emphasize that young people are doing themselves
and their offspring no favors by engaging in unprepared parent-

‘ood.

Chairman SHaw. Dr. Zill, we will have to put the conclusion of
your report in the record.

Thank you very much.

Dr. ZILL. Thank you.

[The prepared statement and attachments follow:]


78

Chairman SHAW. Thank you, doctor.

Mr. English may inquire.

Mr. ENGLISH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Dr. Rector, our staff so far has found 22 empirical studies that
report correlations between some measure of welfare and some
measure of birth outside of marriage. I was intrigued, 16 of these
studies or roughly 75 percent report at least one significant finding
that higher welfare benefits are correlated with higher rates of
birth outside of marriage. Your testimony contains a variety of use-
ful summaries of several of these studies. I wonder if you could,
please, summarize your review of these studies for the Committee?

Mr. REcTOR. Yes. That’s a very interesting point. I have listed
18 different studies, all of which show a very strong positive rela-
tionship between the generosity of the welfare system and the rate
of out-of-wedlock births. I think also on this, it is very interesting
to look at the trend.

If you went back 12 or 13 years ago, I think the sort of common-
sense view that Dr. Furstenberg offered, most of the studies did not
show that there was a strong relationship. Year by year by year
as more and more studies come in, the overwhelming majority of
them do show very strong effects. I would also say that if it were
true that there was no effect, just by the very nature of this, you
would expect then to see some studies that show some effect, some
studies that show that welfare reduces illegitimacy—which is theo-
retically possible—and then a whole lot of studies in the center.

There has never been any study that shows that welfare reduces
illegitimacy. They are all either in the narrow spectrum of those
showing no effect or those that show very strong effects. I find the
most compelling study that we have available is the one
by Dr. June O’Neill, the current Director of the Congressional
Budget Office, Dr. O’Neill found that holding a wide range of other
variables constant, including family income, that a 50-percent in-
crease in the AFDC and food stamp monthly benefit package pro-
duced a 43-percent increase in the percentage of out-of-wedlock
births within a State.

The comment was made by Congresswoman Kennelly and by
Dr. Furstenberg that over time welfare benefits have declined
while the illegitimacy ratio was going up. It is simply not true that
over time welfare benefits have declined. You can only reach that
conclusion by throwing most of them out of the count.

If you look at the full range of welfare benefits—AFDC, food
stamps, Medicaid, the increase in the percentage of households re-
ceiving public housing, WIC, and so forth—it is not at all true that
the benefits have gone down.

I do not wish to say that the welfare system is the only cause
for the increase in out-of-wedlock births. I do think that as
Congressman Rangel pointed out, joblessness, lack of opportunity
in the inner city is also an important factor.

I would comment that the increase in black out-of-wedlock births,
Congressman, occurred most rapidly, precisely between 1965 and
1975, a period of dramatic and rapid expansion in the job opportu-
nities available to black men. Even if you went into the inner city
today and compared potential wage rates of young men, which are
not good there, but compared them to what they were for black


88

Mr. RECTOR. Yes.

Mr. RANGEL. OK. Do you find that most of the people that the
mother and father associate with, that generally speaking, mar-
riage is not a big priority in terms of where they want to end up
in life?

Mr. REcTOR. Precisely. I think that is exactly it. The question is
how did that come about.

Mr. RANGEL. I understand. Do you find that these people who
really do not aspire to improve themselves, educationally, and mar-
riage is not a priority, that having a child, whether or not that
child is going to do better than them, that generally speaking, they
do not even think about the welfare of that child?

In other words, they would want the child to love, or to have next
to it, or make up for what they believe they never had. To say they
wanted a baby to become a doctor, or a lawyer, you do not find that
type of thinking, because it has been my experience, not as a pro-
fessional—if they do not have it for themselves, it is hard to believe
that just having a baby, that they can have this hope and dream
for their child.

Dr. ZILL. That is not true. Actually, surveys show that the major-
ity of parents, whether poor or wealthy, want and expect their kids
to be able to graduate college. Educational aspirations are very
high in our society, and they are universal. They are spread
throughout. There is some variation——

Mr. RANGEL. That is totally unbelievable.

Dr. ZILL. Well, it is unbelievable, but it is true.

Mr. RANGEL. I am not knocking it. I am just saying in a commu-
nity where unemployment is so high, that even with improved
training, people do not have hope for a job, to believe that a child,
16 or 17 years old, that really can hardly communicate in the
English language, would be sophisticated enough to know how im-
portant education is.

If they were wishing it for their child, how could they deny the
thought that they would, if they got an education they could do

etter?

Mr. REcTOR. I think that the answer to that is that——

Mr. COLLins [presiding]. Tell him his time is up.

Mr. RANGEL. The previous Chairman conducted this in a much
more courteous way, and I do not think I have any further
questions.

Mr. COLLINS. No further questions.

Do you have any questions, Ms. Dunn?

Ms. DUNN. I do. I do have a question.

I am still reeling from the testimony of Dr. Mcllhaney. It really
hit me right between the eyes. I have never heard anything so pow-
erful. It makes me want to go back and get my kids from wherever
they are, and keep them locked up till they are 30 years old.

Dr. MCILHANEY. Sorry.

Ms. DUNN. I guess what I wanted you to continue saying when
your time ran out—is what do you have in mind that are potential
public policy changes that we could make, that would change this
whole attitude and begin solving this terrible problem?

Dr. MCILHANEY. Thank you. That is a very good question.


43

PUBLIC SUPPORTS CONGRESSIONAL WELFARE REFORM

By overwhelming margins, the public supports the principal elements ofthe welfare re-
form passed by the U.S. House of Representatives, according toa poll conducted by
Voter/Consumer Research, a Bethesda-based poling firm, forthe Family Research Coun-
cil in mid-October 1995."

For example, by a margin of 84 percent to 13 percent Americans support the family
‘cap. Nearly nine out of ten Americans “oppose increasing a welfare mother’s monthly
‘welfare check if she has another child out of wedlock.”

Jn contrast to proposals by President Clinton, the welfare reforms agreed to in the
House/Senate conference will contain modest but real steps to reduce illegitimacy. Three
‘out of four of those polled agreed that the current welfare system makes it easier for
women to choose to have children out of wedlock. By a ratio of two to one, Americans
fee! that reducing illegitimacy is a more important goal in welfare reform than attempting
merely to make single mothers self-sufficient.

However, the public stil believes overwhelmingly that welfare recipients should be re-
quired to work. Ninety percent of those polied stated that “recipients of government wel-
fare programs should have to work for their benefits.”

Since it would be difficult to require all welfare recipients to work immediately, the re-
form bills passed in the House and Senate urge states to impose work requirements on
the most employable recipients first. Specifically te bills urge states 10 focus work re-
quirements on fathers in two-parent families and single mothers without pre-school chil-
dren before requiring work of single mothers with pre-school children. (Roughly half of
AFDC families have no children under age five in the household.) The public agrees
overwhelmingly with these work priorities. Eighty-cight percent of the public feels that
‘work should be required of fathers and mothers of school-age children before itis re-
quired of mothers caring for pre-school children.

15 Family Research Cooneil poll conducted by VoteConsumer research, mid-October 1995,The pol surveyed 1,000
tandomly seleted American adults about ther views on welfare and social issues and has a margin of eror of plas

3 percent


129

centered programs. We know they work in Chicago. We were in 88
schools last year in the city of Chicago. This year we have already
serviced 90, and it is only March. We started 5 years ago with only

The demand is tremendous, and the response of the kids is ex-
tremely gratifying.
[The prepared statement and attachments follow:]


113

Chairman SHAW. Thank you, Sister. I might say that you and the
Covenant House are making a difference, and I congratulate you
for that, and thank you for your testimony.

Ms. Rowe.

STATEMENT OF AUDREY ROWE, EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT,
NATIONAL URBAN LEAGUE, NEW YORK, NEW YORK

Ms. Rows. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Members of the Commit-
tee. I appreciate this opportunity to present testimony on this very
critical policy debate. I bring to my testimony almost 30 years of
experience working on social welfare programs and policies, 12
years of which I have served as commissioner of social services in
the District of Columbia, and in Connecticut.

As a parent who has successfully raised three children, one of
whom is a recent graduate from the Kennedy School at Harvard
University, and another who takes off tomorrow for Paris, France,
to pursue some career goals.

want to share my limited time to present some facts and data
on strategies that we at the National Urban League believe this
Committee should consider as you pursue your deliberations.

First of all, let’s talk about the statistics.

The statistics show that this is a complicated and
multidimensional issue. We know it’s not just a poverty issue. Cen-
sus data show that of the unmarried women who gave birth, be-
tween July 1993 and June 1994, 57.5 percent came from house-
holds with incomes above $10,000.

We know it’s not just a teenage issue. Teenagers account for less
than all one-third of out-of-wedlock births.

We know it’s not a race issue. The National Center for Health
Statistics and the Census Bureau show that of all unmarried
women who gave birth in 1993, 39.5 were white, 36 percent were
black, 21.1 percent were Hispanic, and 3.5 percent were Indian or
Asian. It’s not just a women’s issue.

The Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies estimates
that $33 billion of child support goes uncollected each year. It’s not
necessarily a choice issue.

The Alan Guttmacher Institute reports that the younger a sexu-
ally experienced teenager is, the more likely she is to have had
involuntary sex.

This profile of out-of-wedlock births implies that a range of fac-
tors affect behavior, many of which stem from changes in social
and economic structures, not just individual choices.

For example, the lack of educational opportunities. Lack of job
and income opportunities.

In a 1994 report on unwed fathers, published by Public Private
Ventures, the economic condition for young men has been rapidly
deteriorating over the last 20 years.

Between 1973 and 1991, the average earnings of males fell by
nearly 31 percent, and by more than 40 percent for males without
a high school diploma.

Statistics published by our own Urban League, in 1993, consist-
ently found a relationship between male joblessness, low wages,
and marital dissolution or nonmarriage.


122

Ms. SHELDON. Let me ask a question. If we took a vote today of
all the members on this panel, and we excluded those that send
their own children to private school, or those that attended private
school, would we have a quorum here to vote on educational choice.

Mr. RANGEL. I notice there is a Christian spirit to your testi-
mony, and I want you to know I recognize it, and appreciate it.

I have to go visit with you in Bed-Stuy because, Sister, you nuns
always seem to know how to do it right, and I assume you do not
just take Catholic kids or those that went to parochial school. I
assume because——

Sister MCGEADY. We have very few Catholic kids.

Mr. RANGEL. Yes. I really understand how that works. Even with
the vouchers they somehow manage to get your care.

Sister McGrapy. I would like to say a few words about the ba-
bies. The fastest growing group of homeless kids that Covenant
House is seeing are teenagers with babies. These babies are very
important to us, but they are also very important to these young
mothers.

We do very well with these teenage mothers with babies, because
they are so motivated to keep their babies.

We try to teach them how to be good mothers, how to discipline
their children the right way, how to talk to their kids, how to play
with their kids, because learning to be a mother is not something
that is easy with these kids who have had very little mothering
themselves.

Mr. RANGEL. One of the most exciting things I saw was these
young mothers being taught how to teach their kids, and the ex-
citement that they had in being involved in that process, and to see
how both of them come out so much better than when they went
in, when you do not just look at the kid in school, but you look at
the mother who is a child herself, and to see the excitement they
get when they feel that they are learning something.

Ms. Rowe, please—I want to work with the Urban League, and
Dr. Price, in seeing whether we can attach your programs to the
so-called empowerment and enterprise zone, because there is a lot
of good work there, and if we can pick up the work that is being
done by religious institutions as well as the Urban League, it
strengthens the resources that are available for all of us.

I want to thank the Chairman for bringing this meeting inere to-
gether. I feel a lot more Christian now than when I came in.

Chairman SHaw. Thank you, Charlie.

Mr. English may inquire.

Mr. ENGLISH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I am glad that the
testimony is headed in this direction. For a while it seemed to be
moving on to tenebrous waters.

Sister Mary Rose, I wanted to follow up on your testimony, which
I thought was excellent, and I, too, want to say the work I under-
stand you are doing at the Covenant House is extraordinary.

In your testimony you state there is absolutely no correlation be-
tween dependence on public assistance by single mothers and the
out-of-wedlock birth rate in this country.

This is all the more true with teen single mothers.

I would like to read to you the conclusion of a 1993 study that
was referenced in Dr. Furstenberg’s testimony.


127

Mr. RANGEL. You find normally a correlation between drinking,
gambling, and prostitution.

Thank you so much. ;

Chairman SHAW. Charlie, you say you are more Christian than
you were when you came in here. I congratulate you for that state-
ment, and I want to thank this very fine panel of witnesses for
being with us this afternoon.

I would like to invite the final group of witnesses to the table,
and their discussion will focus on reducing out-of-wedlock births.
That will be Kathleen M. Sullivan, the director of Project Reality
from Golf, Illinois, and I have~got to know where Golf, Illinois is;
Marion Howard, Ph.D., clinical director of the Teen Services Pro-
gram at Grady Memorial Hospital and professor of gynecology and
obstetrics at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia; Sarah Brown,
director, National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancies, right
here, in Washington, DC.

Ms. Sullivan, we will start with your testimony, if you would,.
please.

STATEMENT OF KATHLEEN M. SULLIVAN, DIRECTOR,
PROJECT REALITY, GOLF, ILLINOIS

Ms. SULLIVAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

In our experience of working in and studying the area of adoles-
cent health, both emotional and physical, for the past 10 years, we
have observed notable changes. First, the problems associated with
adolescence becoming sexually involved have been compounded and
have become a major public health cost and concern in areas other
than pregnancy. The examples are, rampant sexually transmitted
diseases, as we heard from Dr. McIlhaney, and severe emotional
trauma caused by rejection, depression, stress, and loneliness
resulting from broken physical unions.

There is hope on the scene. Abstinence-centered education, the
only true solution, which was thought impossible 10 years ago, has
been exceptionally well received by tens of thousands of students
who have had the opportunity to participate in this innovative,
reasoned, sensible approach.

Today, abstinence education is a national debate and organiza-
tions, such as Project Reality and others like Teen Aid of Spokane,
Washington, which have developed true abstinence-centered mate-
rials can show statistically that it works very well. The national de-
bate needs to be expanded, and we commend you for taking the
leadership role in giving us this opportunity by holding these
hearings.

For 25 years, public policy programs and funding have been con-
centrated under the category or heading of “teen pregnancy.”
Maybe it is time we reconsider the very concept of that category.
When we speak about teen pregnancy the perception is that it is
a female problem and in reality we know that is not accurate.

Pregnancy is not the problem. Becoming involved in sexual activ-
ity is the problem. Pregnancy is only one factor or result of the
problem of sexual activity. Promiscuity’s three paramount con-
sequences are emotional trauma, STDs, and pregnancy, and each
must be seriously and adequately addressed.


151

bear children out-of-wedlock and to do so during their teenage years when they
are most likely to form long-term attachments to AFDC."? Research by the
Heritage Foundation, based on the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, found
that young girls raised in single-parent homes in public housing are roughly five
times more likely to bear children out-of-wedlock themselves than girls raised in
two-parent homes."?

If those on the welfare rolls have suffered most conspicuously, itis also true that
the welfare system has corrupted the ideals and narrowed the vision of many who
live well beyond the bounds of the inner city -- even as itis now threatening our
most cherished civic institutions. One obvious casualty is the weakening of our
conviction that the so-called "bourgeois virtues” are available to all, regardless of
race or class. Early American social workers, like Mary Ellen Richmond,
understood the importance of middle class norm-setting. "The way to reintegrate
the deviant into society, she argued, is to educate and indeed direct them toward
the shared values of the mainstream culture,""*

The role of the traditional two-parent family is essential in sustaining the
institutions of a free society precisely because it is the vehicle by which values are
transmitted from generation to generation. If the family fails to impart virtues that
temper and restrain behavior, broad legal freedoms must give way. So, too,
human dignity and equality, as the Founders understood them, Virtue, historian
Gertrude Himmelfarb has said, is the only true basis of equality and the only
requisite for citizenship.'* As Charles Murray made clear in his now famous op-ed
“The Coming White Underclass,” either we act now to reduce illegitimacy and to
reinfuse our public policy with a commitment to higher and nobler things -- or we
run the risk of sabotaging the entire experiment in democratic self-government.

Or, as Michael Novak put it

[The project of self-government depends on the capacity of citizens to
‘govern their own passions, urges, habits, and expectations. If they cannot
govern their own lives individually, how can they be successful in self-
government as a republic? The project of self-government is moral - or
not at all.'*

The Founding Fathers and many succeeding generations understood that only a
virtuous people can be free. Do we?

Given the consequences for the individual child, the surrounding community, and
the national polity, bringing a baby into this world without a sense of sacred
responsibility cannot long be regarded as a morally neutral act. In a report issued
in December 1994, the Progressive Policy Institute, policy arm of the Democratic
Leadership Council, joined others in acknowledging that "it is wrong -- not simply
foolish or impractical -- for women and men to make babies they cannot support
emotionally and financially.""” Donna Shalala made the same concession a year
earlier, however reluctantly, when she said in an interview, “I don't like to put this
in moral terms, but I do believe that having children out-of-wedlock is wrong.""*

Congress should now recognize that it is also wrong to sanction such activity by
subsidizing it, Republican strategist Bill Kristol has said that “neither our politics
nor our sociology can ultimately be neutral as to the content of the laws of Nature
and Nature's God,"”® chief among which is the fact that we were made to live in
families, Charles Murray asks rhetorically: if "a social policy that induces people
to believe that they are not responsible for their lives is one that inhibits the pursuit
of happiness and is to that extent immoralf,] {cJan then a policy that fails to

stigmatize be a moral one?”


155

material poverty; for the redefinition of compassion required a highly artificial view
of man as no more than a material being.

If compassion is once again properly understood, perhaps then it will become more
‘obvious that the object of our concern must be "misery" and "sorrow," not
‘economic poverty, and that the "misery" most evident today is the spiritual and
‘moral deprivation visited upon dependents of the welfare system. It is time that
‘we stop suppressing the moral responsibilities that make life precious for a resident
of the inner city just the same as for a middle-class suburbanite. It is time, in short,
to secure equal access to the central satisfactions of family, virtue, and freedom

In the end, our society will adopt answers by default only because there is no
alternative strategy. There are two competing alternatives currently at play to
define the future of the welfare state. Either we will reat welfare dependents as
wards of a custodial state, and we will spend lavishly to keep them comfortable
while we ask them simply to leave us alone. Or we can begin relimiting
‘government and restoring social functions to neighborhoods, communities, and
churches

The family cap is a symbolic first attempt to begin reversing the big-government
policies that have proven so obviously destructive to children and families - and
an important opportunity to begin dissolving the wall that separates welfare
families from middle-class society

We can’t afford to wait any longer to act. Senator Moynihan, who led the charge
against illegitimacy thirty years ago, has already fallen victim to despair. While
candid about the human cost of the current system, he argues for the status quo
simply because he believes there is no longer any alternative. Young males in the
inner city “can be horrid to themselves, horrid to one another, horrid to the rest of
us,” he says. Dismantle the current system, and they will be unleashed on the rest
ofus

It seems appropriate to us to subject Moynihan’s “containment policy” to the test
President Clinton formulated in the early days of the welfare debate -- “Is this
morally correct?” We would have to answer “no.” Surely the underclass is no
Jess human and no farther beyond reclamation than the rest of us flawed
individuals,

Moynihan also bases his opposition to reform on projections about the number of
children who will be thrown into the streets. Social scientist Charles Murray
responds that, “like all policy projections, this analysis reflects a set of
assumptions” -- namely, that limiting welfare will do nothing to change behavior.

But Father Robert Sirico has noted an interesting demographic trend that suggests
otherwise. Food stamp rolls have fallen dramatically -- without any change in
underlying economic data. And the bulk of the drop occurred since January 1995,
when Congress convened to announce new limits on entitlements. During the
previous four years, the rolls had steadily swelled, sometimes expanding by 40,000
recipients per week. Sitico concludes that food stamp recipients factored in
‘expectations of what the new Congress would do and acted accordingly. “Poor
people are a lot smarter than social scientists give them credit for being. Like
everyone else, they plan ahead, with a view toward a certain amount of future
financial stability, which sometimes leads them to the want ads and to churches and
community organizations,” he says.

Political opponents cannot merely claim that Republican reforms will cause
suffering and expect to maintain their credibility. In addition to thinking creatively
about the ways policy affects human behavior, we also have to come to terms with


CONTENTS

Advisory of March 12, 1996, announcing the hearing ....

WITNESSES

Brown, Sarah, National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy
Christian Coalition, Heidi Stirrup ..
Clayton, Hon. Eva M., a Representative in Congress from the State of North

farolina 17

Covenant House, Sister Mary Rose McGeady

Furstenberg, Frank, University of Pensylvania, Philadelphia

Heritage Foundation, Robert

Howard, Marion, Emory University, Atlanta, GA

Hutchinson, Hon. Tim, a Representative in Congress from the State of Arkan-

sas 11
McGeady, Sister Mary Rose, Covenant House 108
Medical Institute for Sexual Health, Joe S. Melihaney, Jr., M. 66
National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy, Sarah Brown 140
National Urban League, Audrey Rowe 113
Project Reality, Kathleen M. Sullivan 127
Rangel, Hon. Charles B., a Representative in Congress from the State of

‘New York . 8
Rector, Robert, 21
Rowe, Audrey, National Urban League 113
Sheldon, Andrea, Traditional Values Coal 101

Stirrup, Heidi, Christian Coalition . 95
Sullivan, Kathleen M., Project Reali 127
Talent, Hon. James M., a Represent

Missouri 19
Traditional Values 101
Westat, Ine. Nicholas Zi 46

SUBMISSIONS FOR THE RECORD

Family Research Council, Gary L. Bauer, statement
Tessie’'s Child Care Inc., Baldwinsville, NY, Theresa

ay


145

adult legally, physically and emotionally, after they have already
been sexually active.

Is there any evidence that you know of that this would be a good
course, well attended?

Ms. BROWN. Well, let’s talk about it a little bit. I think that a
number of the witnesses here today who have talked about absti-
nence are performing an enormous public service by focusing peo-
ple’s attention on this. I think a witness a couple of panels ago
pointed out that we did not use to talk about it as much, and now
it is a topic that is more on people’s minds and in their hearts
when they think particularly about teenagers.

Here is the concern about abstinence. I am very utilitarian on
this point. When you look at programs that have been evaluated,
using very careful experimental designs, there is a very limited
representation in that pool of abstinence programs. I am not saying
that they do not work, I am saying we do not know whether or not
they work.

We have very few, and actually they are rather interesting. If
someone produced for a scientific body six or seven randomized
trials that showed that a good, strong abstinence program particu-
larly for young teens had measurable results in behavior over an
extended period of time, I think most adults in this country, and
many teenagers would be very interested. Our problem is that the
evaluation dollars have not been directed to abstinence. They have
been directed to a variety of other approaches, and generally with
pretty discouraging results.

I think the general approach that at least the evaluation commu-
nity takes is that abstinence is an extremely important option,
really at all ages, but we need to learn far more than we do now
about its proper place, how to teach it, how to combine it with
other messages, sometimes about contraception for people who are
already sexually active. It is a very important question, and I think
it is largely something we need an evaluation on.

Again, you have to use good experimental designs with
randomization and control groups to control for self-selection bias.

Mr. Stark. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Chairman SHAW. Have the abstinence programs been evaluated?

Ms. SULLIVAN. Mr. Chairman, there has been very little money
put into abstinence at all. That is the first point we need to pay
attention to. In the State of Illinois, for instance, there is currently
$21 million that goes into teen pregnancy, of which my organiza-
tion gets less than 1 percent, and we handled 23,000 students in
Illinois in the pilot programs last year. The State of Illinois, right
now, is the only one, to my knowledge, that is funding abstinence

rograms. Just a small portion of that actually goes to the research
Bot we are in the middle of a longitudinal study.

Unfortunately, we were part of a longitudinal study that was
started in 1990, and we were just about to do the followup when
the new administration took over and we were cut off. There has
been very little. On the other hand, we do have extensively large
numbers of prepost tests and it is very encouraging.

The bottom line to the whole thing is the demand. When we
started 10 years ago, abstinence was not even talked about, the


106

lives. Funding should be used for abstinence only education with a focus on those groups
which are most likely to bear children out-of-wedlock.

‘Much of the rhetoric on welfare reform focuses on government solutions to move individuals
off the welfare roles without honestly acknowledging the self-destructive behavior that led
them to dependence initially.

Historically, it has been through social and faith-based institutions, not the value-free
government institutions, that have best dealt with poverty and despair. In dealing with the
growing problems in our society today of family disintegration, substance abuse, crime and
despair in low-income communities, there is no question that itis once again the faith-based
organizations, churches and synagogues that will be the most effective because only they can
take into account the spiritual as well as the physical needs of individuals.

The practice of religion has beneficial effects on behavior and social relations including
illegitimacy. One of the most powerful ofall factors in preventing out-of-wedlock births is the
rear practice ofeligious belie.

Research by Dr. Richard Freeman of Harvard University shows that inner-city children with
religious values are 47% less kel to drop out of schol 54% les ikely to use drugs and 50%
less likely to engage in criminal activities than those without religious values. Additionally,
* Young women who regularly attend church are roughly half as likely to have a child out-
of wedlock as are those who do notattend church atall” ¥

Religious belief and practice have also been shown to greatly reduce pre-marital sexual
activity among adolescent girls.

+ Children aged 10 to 18 who do not attend church are 30 to 50 percent more likely to
exhibit anti-social and dysfunctional behavior than are those who regularly attend
church.

* Studies show that young people who attend church have a positive affect on the behavior
of other youngsters in their immediate neighborhood.

‘Over the years the goverment has become increasingly hostile, rather than accomodating, to
faith-based organizations. inspite of the significant role they play in society.
government's attempts to thwart the activity of these organizations must be addressed and
stopped.

One of the best ways for society to lower the illegitimacy rate is to ensure religious school
choice, at the very least for those young people at risk. As we all know, education is about
shaping the hearts and minds of children, and inculcating morals and values to these children
what better vehicle than faith-based education .

ZTraitional Values Coalition believes thatthe Renewal Community Project co-sponsored by
Congressmen JC. Watts (R-OK) and Jim Talent (R-MO) will be a giant step towards
addressing illegitimacy by empow. ts and individuals to move from government
dependence to independence, This wil be done in a number of ways including through
religious school choice. *

children, religious schools will offer them ‘opportunity to a quality education which is
their best chanoe at reversing the cycle that has so entrapped their parents and grandparents.
Mr. Chairman, if we conducted a vote today in this committee on education issues and only
allowed those whose children are in public schools or those who were educated in public
schools to vote on this matter would we be able to get a quorum?

For too long this great body has tried to hide from any discussions of morality, and as a result
‘you must face a subsidy system gone awry and the ramifications of public policy that
rewards illegitimacy.


66
Chairman SHAW. Dr. Mcllhaney.

STATEMENT OF JOE S. McILHANEY, JR., M.D., PRESIDENT,
MEDICAL INSTITUTE FOR SEXUAL HEALTH, AUSTIN, TEXAS

Dr. McILHANEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and other distin-
guished Members of the Committee. I am a gynecologist who has
practiced medicine for 28 years. I have had a rewarding practice
of in-vitro fertilization and surgery, but I left that practice recently
to commit the rest of my medical career to helping prevent the two
problems I think are the most profound medical problems of our
day, out-of-wedlock pregnancy and sexually transmitted disease,
working in and through a new organization called the Medical
Institute for Sexual Health.

You have heard the statistics on teen pregnancy, and I would
like to lead you to realize how seriously these same teenagers are
being damaged by a terrifying epidemic of sexually transmitted
disease, we will call STD.

This epidemic is not just HIV, human immunodeficiency virus. It
includes at least 20 other dangerous sexually transmitted diseases
that are ravaging the youth of our society because their bodies are
far more susceptible to becoming infected than the bodies of adults.

For example, a 15 year old is 10 times more likely to become in-
fected with PID, pelvic inflammatory disease, than a 24 year old
involved in the same sexual encounter. One example is an 18 year
old I took care of who had sex when she was 18, developed PID,
had such severe pelvic pain because of it, that: when she was 25
she demanded a hysterectomy. She had never been married, never
had children. Now, of course, never will.

Chlamydia, which probably caused this woman’s problems is
found in 20 to 40 percent of sexually active teens who have sex out-
side of marriage, the highest prevalence rate of any group in our
society. There is good evidence, for instance, that condoms do not
give adequate protection from the infertility and tubal pregnancies
that can be caused by this organism.

The most common sexually transmitted disease in the United
States is HPV, human papillomavirus. It causes venereal warts. It
causes almost all the truly abnormal precancerous Pap smears
women have. It causes most of the genital cancer that women have,
killing about 4,600 women from cervical cancer in the United
States each year.

The HPV was found to infect 46 percent of coeds coming through
the student health center at UC/Berkeley who were being sexually
active. An example of this problem is a girl that I saw who was
24 years old. I saw her because of a growth on her vulva. It was
precancer. I asked her about her sexual activity and she had had
sex with five different guys, using condoms with every one of them.
This growth, this precancer was caused by HPV. She had never
been told, for instance, that condoms do not protect a person
against HPV and essentially all authorities in the country agree
with that.

Herpes infects about one-third of sexually active unmarried peo-
ple. This prevalence is partly because it can be spread even when
a sex partner does not have a sore and when a woman gets it she


52

‘The financial inadequacies of mother-only families are not attributable solely to the absence of one
pparent from the household and the factors just enumerated. Never married mothers are not just lacking
Ihusbands, they also tend to be younger, to have lower literacy levels, lower education levels, less work
experience, and often, other problems such as histories of depression, delinquency, or drug abuse. As
shown in Table 1, a typical elementary-school aged child living with a never-married mother has a black or
Hispanic mother who is 29 years of age and has completed less than one year of college. The family lives
in a rented apartment in the central city of a major metropolitan area. There is no grandmother or other
adult present in the household. The mother is likely to be working or looking for work, but her likelihood
of not finding work or being laid off is twice that of a divorced mother and four times higher than the risk
of unemployment faced by parents in a typical married-couple family. ‘These characteristics are risk factors
for poverty in themselves.

As also shown in Table 1, compared to never-married mothers, divorced mothers tend to be older,
have more education, are more likely to be living in the suburbs, and are twice as likely to be working full-
time. As was just mentioned, divorced mothers are three times more likely to be receiving child support
from the absent father. It is not surprising, then, that the median cash income of children in divorced-
‘mother families is twice as high as that of children living with never-married mothers (about $18,000 per
‘year versus $9,350 in 1994), and that their poverty rate, though still high, is substantially lower than that
{for children with never-married mothers (38 percent versus 64 percent poor in 1993).

‘Quality of Their Home Environments

Children who grow up with never-married mothers are less likely than children in mother-father
families to have home environments that are free from obvious hazards, that are reasonably orderly and
predictable, and in which parents make sure that children obtain preventive health care. Several indicators
of the quality of children’s home environment were available in the 1988 National Health Interview Survey
‘on Child Health (Figure 1). They show that, compared to children in mother-father families, children living
with never-married mothers were:

more likely to have an adult smoker in the household, 52 percent versus 39 percent;

more likely to rarely or never use seat belts when riding in a car, 41 percent versus 26 percent;
twice as likely to have a late or irregular bedtime, 30 percent versus 16 percent;

twice as likely not to have a regular provider of sick care, 33 percent versus 15 percent; and,
‘more likely not to have had a dental visit in the last two years, 25 percent versus 18 percent.

State of Their Health

‘Though most children living with never-married mothers are in reasonably good health, their health
status is notably inferior to that of children living with both mother and father, and their frequency of illness
is significantly greater. (Figure 2). The 1988 National Health Interview Survey on Child Health found
that, compared to children in mother-father families, those living with never-married mothers were:

© less likely to be rated in excellent health with no health-related activity limitation, 41 percent versus
55 5
* twice as likely to be in fair or poor health or to have a limiting condition, 11 percent versus 6

percent;

‘¢ © aptto have spent one more day in bed during the past year because of illness or injury, 4.8 days
versus 3.9 days;

had twice as many hospital visits because of illnesses or injuries that required emergency attention,
or because the mother was ‘using the hospital emergency room as twice as an
outpatient clinic, 8.2 visits versus 4.5 visits per 100 children per year.

‘School Readiness: Accomplishments of Preschoolers

Because their home environments often provide less intellectual stimulation and emotional support
than those of children in two-parent families, when itis time to start kindergarten, children born to
‘unmarried mothers have significantly fewer signs of emerging literacy and numeracy than children born to
married mothers. The differences are even more striking if, in addition to not being born in marriage, the
child has additional risk factors such as living in a single-parent household, having a mother who has not
finished high school, living below the poverty line, or having a mother who does not have English as her
primary language. Several indicators of emerging literacy and numeracy in four-year-old children who had
not yet attended kindergarten were obtained from parent reports in the National Household Education
Survey of 1993. They show that, compared to children born to married mothers, those born to unmarried
mothers were less likely to have:

* identified the primary cotors by name, 74 percent versus 87 percent (and only 59 percent of those
with 3 or more risk factors);

© recognized most or all letters of the alphabet, 52 percent versus 59 percent (and only 40 percent of
those with 3 or more risk factors);


101

Chairman SuHaw. Thank you very much.
Ms. Sheldon.

STATEMENT OF ANDREA SHELDON, DIRECTOR, GOVERNMENT
AFFAIRS, TRADITIONAL VALUES COALITION, WASHINGTON,
DC

Ms. SHELDON. I would like to request that the full text of my
statement be entered in the record.

Chairman SHaw. It will be for you, and for the other witnesses.
Thank you.

Ms. SHELDON. Mr. Chairman, and Members of the Committee,
thank you for the opportunity to testify before you today on the
issue of illegitimacy.

My name is Andrea Sheldon and I am the director of government
affairs for the Traditional Values Coalition.

We represent over 31,000 multiracial churches made up of var-
ious denominations and socioeconomic backgrounds. We believe
that America’s strength is in its churches.

My interest in the subject of illegitimacy is not merely political
but is deeply personal. I have spent years working with people fac-
ing the very problems we are here today to discuss.

I have taken in and personally cared for homeless children,
thrown birthday parties and baby showers for mothers on welfare,
and assisted in job placement and training.

All of this was done through < ministry at my church, Church
of the Apostles, in Fairfax, Virginia.

I have seen firsthand, the generational destruction of welfare,
and in particular, how illegitimacy sets the course for a troubled
life.

Today, there is a myth surrounding the welfare debate, that
there is a safety net worth saving. For all practical purposes, there
is no safety net. After 30 years and over $4.5 trillion, our country
has more children in poverty, more illegitimacy, more teen preg-
nancies, and more urban blight now than any time in our history.

The collapse of the family is the most important issue facing
American society because it is the root cause of a multitude of
other social and economic problems.

It is important to recognize the time lag inherent in many prob-
lems associated with illegitimacy, and the effect on American
society.

The soaring crime rate among urban youth today, in large meas-
ure is occurring among young males who were born out of wedlock,
during the late seventies.

With nearly one out of three children being born out of wedlock
today, the Federal Government must stop encouraging welfare de-
pendency through subsidizing illegitimacy.

Today, I would like to focus on two key welfare reform themes—
illegitimacy and the promotion of moral renewal.

alting the escalation of illegitimacy must be the paramount
goal of welfare reform, and simultaneously, policymakers must pro-
mote the formation of stable two-parent families. Any genuine wel-
fare reform must reduce the illegitimate birth rate through a
family cap.


26

‘quite effective in reducing dependence. Conversely if the parents of a legitimate child
divorce, the length of time on AFDC will rise from 3 percent (for intact married couples)
to 11 percent for divorced families.

Chart 2 also shows the portion of time witich children in the four different
categories received any of the following means-tested welfare benefits: AFDC, Food
Stamps, Medicaid, SSI, and WIC. On average, children in the “out-of wedlock-never
married” group received some form of welfare benefit for 71 percent of the months since
birth. By contrast, legitimate children whose parents remained married have received
some welfare for 11 percent of the time. Welfare receipt is seven times greater among,
the never-married group.

Chart 3
American Children:
Time in Poverty
won
51%
ton
-~
“ 20% 2
=
sos I%
”
NeverMaried Subsequent Mariage ivoraed Mariage tact
Out of Wedlock In Wedlock

Poverty Chart three shows the amount of time since birth that a child has lived in
poverty for the four different categories of children. Children bom out-of-wedlock to
never married women are poor fifty percent of the time. By contrast children bom within
‘a marriage which remains intact are poor 7 percent of the time. Thus the absence of
‘marriage increases the frequency of child poverty 700 percent. However, marriage after
an illegitimate birth is again relatively effective, cutting the child poverty rate in half.

‘WHO HAS CHILDREN OUT OF WEDLOCK?

A.common myth is that illegitimacy is primarily a problem of young teenage
women. However, in 1993, only 13 percent of all out-of-wedlock births occurred to girls
under age 18. Instead, as the chart shows, illegitimate births are most prevalent among
young adult women in their late teens and early 20's. Seventeen percent of out-of-
‘wedlock births occur to girls aged 18 and 19. Over half of all illegitimate births occur to
‘women aged 18 to 24 with the absolute peak of out-of-wedlock child bearing coming at
ages 19 and 20. Iegitimacy is predominantly a problem of young women, but not of

for illegitimacy in the welfare debete are, at best, confused. At worst, they
are deliberate efforts to quietly side-track and muffle the broader debate about the crisis
of illegitimacy in hopes the issue will fade from public view.

legitimacy and Religion Another key factor in determining whether a woman
will have a child out-of-wedlock is religious belief and practice. Chart 3 shows the
percentage of NLSY women who have had a child out-of-wedlock based on the level of


22

When the war on poverty began, roughly 7 percent of American
children were born out of wedlock. Today, that number has risen
to 33 percent and continues to go up at a steady and relentless
pace among both blacks and whites.

For my oral testimony today I would like to provide some visual
charts that describe some recent research we have done on the con-
sequences of out-of-wedlock births in terms of welfare dependency
and poverty in the United States.

What we have here are children born in the United States di-
vided into four categories. Those who were born out of wedlock
whose mothers never marry. The second column, out-of-wedlock
mothers who subsequently marry. The third column born in wed-
lock to mothers divorced after birth. Finally, on the right-hand side
of the chart, born in wedlock to parents who remain intact in mar-
riage.

If you look at children born out of wedlock where the mother
never marries, they have spent 50 percent of their months since
they have been born—and these children are, on average, about 9
years old on AFDC. If you compare them with a situation where
the child is born in wedlock and the marriage has remained intact,
the number is 3 percent.

Therefore, by contrast, out-of-wedlock births are AFDC depend-
ent 1,700 percent more frequently. The red columns on the chart
show a broader definition of welfare dependence. This includes re-
ceipt of AFDC, food stamps, Medicaid, WIC, and SSI. Looking at
that broader definition we find children born out of wedlock whose
mother never marries have spent 71 percent of their lives receiving
some form of welfare benefit. In contrast, the family that has re-
mained intact, within marriage, has spent 12 percent of the time
receiving some form of welfare benefit.

The two other categories fall some place in between. I would em-
phasize that if, even once you have had an out-of-wedlock birth, the

est way to reduce welfare dependence is to get the mother to
marry subsequent to that birth. If you look at that column, we see
that marriage reduces welfare dependence either way it is meas-
ured, it cuts it in half, just by having her marry. It is a much more
effective strategy than simply stressing getting her employed.

Now, if we could go to the next chart we look at the percentage
of time in which these children, in these four categories, have spent
in poverty. We find that a child born out of wedlock whose mother
has never subsequently married, has spent half the years, since the
child’s birth, in poverty. In contrast, if we go over to the other side,
children born in wedlock, where the parents have remained in an
intact marriage, the poverty rate is 7 percent.

The out-of-wedlock birth increases the incidence of poverty by
700 percent. Again, the other two categories, out of wedlock fol-
lowed by subsequent birth, and in wedlock followed by divorce fall
in the middle. Marriage, even if it is after the out-of-wedlock birth,
has a very dramatic effect in terms of reducing the incidence of
poverty.

I would particularly make reference to that vis-a-vis, the
Governor’s plan, that recently came out that has an almost exclu-
sive focus on encouraging States to promote employment among
single mothers, and penalizes those States that would put an em-


105

Robert Rector of the Heritage Foundation has reinforced the necessary role of morality
further by talking about two separate concepts of poverty: "material poverty" and

“behavioral poverty.”

Material poverty is having a family income below the official poverty threshold, and thereby
Jacking financial resources to meet certain needs.

Behavioral refers tothe breakdown of values and conduct which lead othe formation
x families, stable personalities F-sufficency. Behavioral poverty is manifested
by aneroded work ethic and dependency, lack of educational aspiration and achievement,
inability or unwillingness to control one’s children, increased single parenthood and
illegitimacy, criminal activity, and drug and alcohol abuse. There is no question that welfare
spending intended to alleviate material poverty has actually led to a dramatic increase in
behavioral poverty.

Ihave seen this in my own work with homeless families who are on welfare. Let me share
with you a personal experience.

One day while visiting one of the homeless motels I had a conversation with two women who
were cousins, each around 20 years old. They asked me if Thad any children and I said no,
that Iwas not married. They both responded almost in unison and without much thought,
“Oh, that doesn't matter." What was a very natural response for these two young women
made a profound impact on me. These young woman had been raised “in the system” and
kenew every benefitit had to offer, Tragicelly, these young women were caught in a
generational cycle and mentality of behavioral poverty.

Many advocate that welfare is compassionate, when in fact it has really created government
dependence with grave generational consequences. What is compassionate about living in a
government housing project with your mother, who lived there with her mother. What is
compassionate about dropping out of school at age 14 because you have become pregnant,
just as your mother became pregnant with you and dropped out of school, and just as her
mother before her.

‘The negative consequences of an out-of- wedlock birth on a child, the mother, the family and
society are well documented. Children born into families receiving welfare assistance are three
times more likely to be on welfare when they reach adulthood than children not born into
families receiving welfare.

Recent data from the National Longitudinal Survey on Youth show that young girls raised in
single parent homes on welfare are three times more likely to become urwed mothers
themselves, as girls raised in two-parent non-welfare familie. Tragically, Uncle Sam s the
only dad Tino to S70 of ch

Dependent Children (AFDC).

However, those who abide by three simple rules will not be chronically poor in the United
States. These three rules for preventing or escaping from poverty are:

* finish high school;
+ °  geta job, any job and stick with it;
* donot have children outside of marriage.
Ithas been pointed out time and again that no other family in our society, except for those
on government assistance, receives an automatic increase in their paychecks for having

additional children. Americans are kind and generous people, however, it is clear that
taxpayers want to see an end to their hard earned dollars being used to subsidize illegitimacy.

‘hose single mothers are on Aid to Families with

The government must cap the growth of welfare and other spending. Traditional Values
Coalition supports the “family <ap” provision to cap benefis to mothers having additonal
children whi ‘The government must stop encouraging out-of-wedlock births and
subsidizing imesponsible choices.

Another means of addressing the increasing rate of illegitimacy is through abstinence
education. We must help all youth, and in particular those at risk, to lead healthy, whole



34

2. The national family cap with the state opt out provision should be retained in any
fi ene

3. The conference welfare bill creates an illegitimacy reduction bonus mechanism which
‘rewards states which reduce their illegitimacy ratio without increasing abortions.
However, te ea fo earning «reve under thi fun ae very singe and a8
‘consequence, few if any states will actually obtain incentive payments under
provision. Bones wich arent impossible oars wi have Ite eet on
state efforts, The criteria of “success” in reducing illegitimacy should be softened so
states have a better chance of earning the reward;

‘The welfare reform proposed by the National Governor's Association contained a
huge $6 billion “performance incentive fund” is really a job placement bonus fund.
‘The NGA plan rewards only states that increase employment among welfare mothers;
it is explicitly anti-marsiage. In reality, welfare dependence can be reduced by the six
following means: reducing illegitimacy; reducing divorce; increasing marriage among
‘women Who have had children out of wedlock and who have not yet enrolled in
‘welfare; encouraging single mothers to take jobs before they ever enter AFDC;

5. During the early 1970's, food commodity distribution programs were replaced by the
nationwide Food Stamp program, The introduction of Food Stamps coincided with
‘an explosive rise in illegitimacy and AFDC dependence, States should be given the

6. ‘The amount of funding in the new abstinence program in the conference bill should
be increased;

7. States should submit be required to submit a plan of bow they are going to reduce
illegitimacy.

8. Congress should create a new set aside of $300 million per year within AFDC for
states to devise and operate their own programs to reduce illegitimacy without
increasing abortion (with an firm evaluation requirement)

Finally in the long term struggle to save marriage in our society, steps outside of
‘welfare reform must be taken. Congress should recognize thatthe church isthe
‘number one institution in our society for combating illegitimacy and poverty.
Government policy must allow churches to play afar stronger role in rebuilding our

2

‘process of renewal will soon be introduced by Congressmen J.C. Wats and James
Talent.


115

Testimony By

Audrey Rowe

Executive Vice President
National Urban League

Before

House Subcommittee on Human Resources
Committee on Ways and Means
U.S. House of Representatives

Hearing on
Causes of Poverty,

Focusing on
Out~o:

-Wedlock Births

March 12, 1996

Ne. Chairman and members of this Subcommittee, as Executive Vice
President of the National Urban League, I appreciate the
opportunity to offer our perspective on the issue of poverty and
one of its related factors, out-of-wedlock births. Moving
individuals, families, and children from poverty to economic
self-sufficiency is one of three priority areas on the National
Urban League’s agenda, the other two being youth development and
tacial inclusion.

Founded in 1910, the National Urban League is a non-profit,
non-partisan, national social service and civil rights
organization with affiliates in 113 cities and the District of
Columbia. For more than 86 years, both the National Urban League
and its network of affiliates have worked to overcome poverty,

racial discrimination, and the lack of jobs that pay a liveable
wage.

The issue we are discussing today, the relationship betw
out-of-wedlock births and poverty, is a complex one that must
not be approached from any one-dimensional perspective. We must
be very clear about delineating the problem so that our proposed
policies aimed at alleviating the problem are based on a clear
examination of the data. Otherwise, policies and subsequent
strategies based only on perceptions versus reality often lead
to destructive stereotypes and ineffective programs.

OUT-OF-WEDLOCK BIRTHS: DISAGGREGATING THE DATA

Statistics show that this is a complicated and multidimensional
issue. In examining the data on out-of-wedlock births, it is
important that we carefully differentiate the various
populations impacted by this life event. We know that:

1. This is not just a poverty issue.

- Census data show that of the unmarried women who gave birth
between July 1993 and June 1994, 57.5% came from households with
incomes above $10,000. Indeed, of these households, 2.9% had
incomes $75,000 and up.

2. This is not just a teenage issue.

- While most births to teenagers occur outside marriage,
teens account for less than one-third of all out-of-wedlock
births, down from 50% in 1970;

- For more than a decade, out-of-wedlock childbearing has
risen fastest among women age 20 and older, who now account for
7 of every 10 out-of-wedlock birth:

- National Center for Health Statistics show that women age
20 to 29 accounted for the highest number of out-of-wedlock
births in 1993; and,

- Studies show that almost two-thirds of teenage mothers age
15 to 19 have adult partners over age 20.


On Nov. 9, 1995 aman by the name
of Mr. Tyler made a visit to Daniel
‘Webster. Mr. Tyler works with the
organization called the South-West
Parents Commitee.He goes to any
Elementary, and High Schools in the
Chicago area that invites 4:sas well as
civic and community organizations,

‘The reason why Mr.Tyler works
with organizations because he thinks our
young people are getting a raw deal
towards the information about sexual
behaviors. Beyond that he knows that
these young people are the heritage and
the fisture of America, and they deserve
every chance we give them toward a

happy, healthy, and productive life.

Mr. Tyler was discussing the issue
of Abstinence. Abstinence means not
doing. The reason why he talked to us
about Abstinence is because there are a
lot of sexual diseases, and one of those
diseases, that we are all aware of is
ALD.S. Mr.Tyler said that young girls
think using Birth Control Pills is
practicing safe sex. Yet Birth Control
Pills do not protect girls from any
sexually transmitted diseases.Other kinds
of mechanical protection are also not free
from danger and harm, Mr.Tyler said that
the answer to the problem is manogomy
(Waiting until married and have sex with
that person).

About two weeks later Mr.Tyler
made another visit at Daniel Webster.
‘This time he showed us a tane. The name

136

of the tape was called No SecondChance.
Ibelieve when they made the title they
were referring to no second chance for
avoiding ALD.S.

‘Af the beginning of the tape there
was a lady talking with the class about
ALD.S. They talked about five ways you

can catch this disease. They are through:
LV Needles,sex,blood tranfision, Mother
te child in child birth,and kissing Then
they showed an example of an entire
family who had contracted ALD.S. The
Father gave to his wife.then they had a
baby who was born with the disease.

Tasked students how they felt about

Abstinence after they watched the tape.
One student said that her thoughts had
changed and that wanted to wait until
she's married to have sex! ‘



58

Figure 4: School Readiness of Children of Unmarried

Mothers in the United States:

Hyperactive Behavior at Age 4

Children born to:

Wvnmarried mothers EB3 or more risk factors [) Married mothers

Very restless,

fidgets a lot 2%

1%
1%

weer es 37%
attention span 1

temper tantrums

19%
Trips or 21%

falls easily We

31%
32%

Percent of 4-year-old children not yet in kindergarten

‘Source. Zill. N. Collins, M., West, 1. & Hausken, E.G. (1995).
ft Preschoolers um the Uni Department
‘Stauatcs (NCES 95.280),

‘Approaching Kindergaren: A Look

of Education, National Ceater for Edveation


112

CONCLUSION

Mr. Chairman, as I review the various Welfare Reform proposals before the
Congress aimed at reducing the number of out-of-wedlock births, I am truly dismayed.
This, for two reasons: first, because the very elements of our teen mother program which
appear to account for its success, have, it appears, been systematically cut from these
proposals: meaningful job training, job creation, quality day care, a Jong enough term
commitment to the individual in need of assistance to give some genuine promise of
success.

Second, there appears to be the belief in many quarters here in Washington that
as these proposed welfare time limits and other budget cuts take effect, the private
sector will step in and take up the slack, despite the fact that every one of the mainline
r ” tted re

do so.

Unless these punitive recommendations are reconsidered, far from encouraging
these young people to responsible and productive adulthood, we will simply see more
‘examples of the kind of frustration, and despair, and broken lives our band-aid Welfare
‘System has produced in the past.

Mr. Chairman, I want to repeat what I said before the Senate Finance Committee
last year: I believe it is the role of goverament, as it is the role of every decent person, to
help poor families and to protect and nurture children in difficult circumstances -
children who are at great risk! I believe it is the role of government, every bit as much
as it is the role of the church, and businesses, and communities and neighbors, to offer
hope to all our citizens. And let me tell you, the poorest and the neediest need an extra
hand.

Government must convey a sense of hope, of concern, of caring about these
neediest among us. This, ultimately is what this debate is really about. In the words of a
colleague at Catholic Charities U.S.A.: ‘Real jobs, real paychecks, that's real welfare
reform."

‘Thank you and God bless you.


x)

6, My own detailed investigation of the consequences of illegitimacy produces some startling
findings. I have followed several hundred wen mothers and their children over a period of
nearly thirty years. Almost all of the mothers spent some time on welfare; however, fewer
than 10 percent were chronically on welfare, Most worked all or most of the time their
children were growing up. Of the small number who were on welfare every yout, oloso to
half were in the labor force as well.

‘The transmission of welfare across generations is a difficult process to study because
welfare and poverty are associated. We know that people who grow up poor are likely to
romain poor regardless of their involvement on welfare, Consequeatly, we must ascertain
whether welfare-- as distinct from poverty-- is transmitted. The best evidence, including date
from my study, suggests that it is, but much less than is commonly believed.

For example, the majority of the offspring of individuals who spent substantial time on
welfare as children and adolescents had or were able to complete high school by their Lae
teens, We could find no evidence either from the surveys or in-depth interviews that a
welfare mentality” was being passed on from parents to children.

Policy Recommendations

‘Will cutting the welfare rolls result in declining levels of non-marital childbearing?
On the basis of the existing research data, I do not expect welfare policies to have much, if
any, impoct on pattems of family formation. Welfare is not a significant deterrent to
marriage or an incentive to have children,

‘Will work training and support increase the propensity of women to marry? [ don't
see why it should unless we address the lack of training and available Jobs for men, Men
without stable and remuncrative employment are not deemed cligible partners, especially by
‘women who are self-supporting.

‘Changes in non-marita! childbearing largely have occurred not because more women
are electing to have children out-of-wedlock, but because marriage is becocuing a more
elusive goal for aay young people, When asked wiy they are not marrying, inany of the
young people in my study indicate that they lack confidence about men’s ability to help
‘support @ family.

Public policies are largely about how to make single parenthood less attractive, not
marriage more attalnable, Unless and until we craft policies and programs that make it
possible for young people to marry, we are unlikaly to see a change in the direction of non
naarital childbearing.

Here are @ few suggestions for consideration:

1, Improve access to job training, higher education, and--most of all-- job avallabilily fur lyw-
Income men as well as women.

2. Increase the availahility af ancial benefite-- childcare, food stamps, educational support
for couples so that it is truly cheaper for two to live together as one.

3. Raise, not lower as has been proposed in some legislation, the earned income tax credit.
Provide @ favored status for parents who live together.

4. Provide social support for young couples who frequently could use education, counseling,
‘and community services. Most of these programs are being cut back by cost-conscious
government and philanthrople agencies.

Unless we match our rhetoric about the importance of marriage with real resources, we
are likely to have little success in bring about decrease in out-of-wedlock childbearing.


28

‘Retarded cognitive (especially verbal) development;
Lower educational achievement;

Lower job attainment;

Increased behavior and emotional problems;
Lower impulse control;

‘+ Retarded social development

‘Such children are far more likely:

‘+ to engage in early sexual activity;

‘+ tohave children out of wedlock;
to be on welfare as adults; and

+ toengage in criminal activity.

‘The absence of married parents is related to retarded development in earty
childhood. Illegitimacy leads to delays in development. A study of black infants (aged 5

‘will arise Inter in the child's development." ‘The effect on boys is greater, at least in the
early years.

Similar findings were enumerated again in the recent 1992 National Institute of

instance, Project
evelopment of 375,000 high school student frm 1960 trough 1971, ound that
children bor outside marriage were likely to have lower cognitive scores, lower
educational aspirations, anda greater likelihood of becoming teenage parents themselves,
Once again, all ofthese effects were greater for boys.

‘Tae absence of married pareots risks emotional and behavioral problems during
childhood. The effects of illegitimacy continue to compound

‘National Health Interview Survey of Child Health (NS CH conf that len
‘bom out-of-wedlock have far more bebavioral and emotional problems than do children
in intact married families. These problems include:

‘+ antisocial behavior: disobedience in school; cheating and lying; bullying and cruelty
to others treaing hing lb lure to feel sorry after misbehaving;

‘© hyperactive behavior: difficulty concentrating or paying attention; becoming easily
confused; acting without thinking; being restless or overactive;

* Frank A. Peterson, Judith L. Rubenstein and Leon J. Yarrow, “Infant Development in Father-Abseat
137 No 138 pp. S14, Te say fs he

diferences in development were dus tothe eve! of withthe futher rather thas the umber of
‘dul inthe household or the household's ai san
* Wah 1 ‘Chil Abuse and Neglect, and Cognitive Development,” Joumal af Genetic

legitimacy,
Bastalan, Vol 15 (190). pp. 2.285,
J. Card, "Long Term Consequences for Children Born to Adolescent Parents," Final Report a
‘NICHD. American Instintes for Research, Palo Aho, California, 1977; and also, 14. Card, “Long vem
‘consequences for children oftenage parents," Demography, Vol. 18 (1981), pp. 137-156.

sit,

11. Brooks-Gona and Frank "The Children
ted Pcie Oteomen* Deval Bei, Vol. (1990, pp 22025



94

Chairman SHaw. Well, maybe we ought to look at that, but I
think if you are talking minimum wage—that is around $9,000 a
year—and if you put the earned income tax credit on top of that,
with a child, you are getting close to that sum. I am not saying it
is easy. No one says it is easy.

One of the toughest things that somebody can do is to go from
welfare to work. We understand that. That is why people are not
taking that final step.

We are going to have to change things. We have a different idea
of where to come from, but all of us, I think, including the most
liberal and the most conservative in this room, would certainly like
to see people working rather than living on welfare.

Mr. Levin. Mr. Chairman, we will talk further. For example, in
the conference report, Medicaid is not assured, and I hope we can
change that. Also, the earned income tax credit does not change the
gross income.

Dr. ZmLL. Congressman Shaw, another thing that many of us
would plead is not to forget to focus on the father. I mean, one of
the ways to get people above poverty is to have more than one
wage earner contributing to the support of the family.

Chairman SHaw. Oh, I can tell you, I think the best way to stop
out-of-wedlock births is to get the dad, and we are going to have
to address that, as we did in the welfare bill, as we are going to
continue to do, because it is about time that we have the male re-
sponsible. I think what Charlie Rangel was saying in his testi-
mony, was that these are not teenage boys that are getting these
teenage girls pregnant.

Most of them are in their twenties, and that is absolutely hor-
rible, and we are going to identify them, we are going to find them,
and we are going to make them pay.

I think that is tremendously important, and that will be the best
way, I think, of all the things that we are doing; and of all the
things we might disagree on, I think that is one thing that we can
agree on, that that is the best way to stop all of these out-of-
wedlock births, or certainly have a big effect on it.

These guys are just walking away, fancy free. They think it is
funny. They think it has in some way proven their masculinity,
and they are destroying these young girls’ lives, and they are bring-
ing kids into the world who are going to be impoverished
themselves.

I want to thank this panel.

Mr. Cou.ins. Mr. Chairman, may I ask a question?

Chairman SHAW. Yes; go ahead.

Mr. COLLINS. I would like to ask Dr. Furstenberg this. You men-
tioned the program should be designed so that the wage would be
equivalent to a living.

Are you saying that the $12,000 would be ample for mother and
child as a substantial living to replace the program currently pro-
vided as a welfare benefit——

Dr. FURSTENBERG. Congressman, I am a sociologist, not an econ-
omist, and I would leave it to the economists to say what an ac-
ceptable, modest standard of living. I am very encouraged, if I un-
derstood Congressman Shaw saying, that the medical benefits
would continue, that you would beef up the child care benefits.


9

Somehow we should, I think, get a guarantee that no matter who
we hurt, it is not going to be the kids. Somehow in the negotiation,
even my President will not tell me that, do not worry about it, no
matter what deal we cut, the kids will be protected. Hey, that is
politics.

I want to commend the Chairman, too, because sometimes we
hear all these things about illegitimate births and not supporting
kids born out of wedlock, but he did say that is what they are. No
matter what God we worship, we won’t believe he is involved in il-
legal activity in allowing these kids to be born. The kids are legiti-
mate. Kids are very legitimate, they are very real. They feel pain.
They are American kids. I appreciate that.

Now, we have to ask what are some solutions? Some of the solu-
tions are just, give a definite amount of time, if the mother is not
working, then cut off the welfare. You know, options, no options.
Or, make certain that they are all working at a given period of
time.

Mr. Chairman, without coming up with a solution, I want to give
you the benefit of my experience and trust that in our conversa-
tions, outside the Committee, we might find some agreement that
this is not a welfare problem alone. Providing for the mothers or
the grandmothers or the kids, that’s not just the problem.

We would have to reach out to get Committee and staff who deal
with the problems of education, job training, and a variety of other
subjects to see whether or not we could find out why we are having
this explosion of these births?

You can cut off all the funds you want to these children who are
untrained and do not realize or care about the devastating effect
of poverty. What is getting into these kids? Why can’t we talk with
them? There is no relationship between punishing them and stop-

ing out-of-wedlock childbirth. These kids are just having babies
like they are having dolls.

If we concentrate in the areas throughout the United States
where most of these babies are being born, we need to take a look
at who is impregnating them. It is not just kids, you know. A lot
of these drug dealers on the street are older men attracting these
teenage girls with a couple of dollars and trips to the Caribbean.

Even if you take a look at the male kids, these are basically stu-
pid kids. Many of them are involved in drugs. Oh, we are against
the drug dealers, as long as they are poor, on the street, addicted,
and pushing drugs. You look at the drug dealers in my district, and
if you were to discuss with them the problem of money laundering
they think you have to go to a laundromat. They do not know how
to count, much less launder money. They cannot count money with
a money counter. When police arrest them, they find carloads full
of money, they find closets full of money. It is corrupting my police
department. I mean good policemen just cannot resist the. tempta-
tion of seeing hundreds of thousands of dollars in these bums’
apartments and in a low-rent area.

After they buy a boom-box and a Jeep and get mom a television,
they would not know how to travel. If you asked them to go to Co-
lombia for a deal, they would be down in the District of Columbia.
If you asked them to go to Rome or Paris and enjoy the money,
they would not know how to buy a ticket.


77

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83

Mr. REcTOR. I am sorry, Co! ssman. I did not understand your
question. The figure you are looking for, I believe, is something like
70 percent. About 70 percent of the children that are born out of
wedlock will end up on some type of welfare at some point——

Mr. LEvIN. No, that is not my question. That was not my
question.

Chairman SHAW. Repeat the question and then we will go on.

Mr. Levin. Because I remember that statistic from your
testimony.

Mr. RECTOR. Seventy percent will be on AFDC.

Dr. FURSTENBERG. We will get you the answer, but we do not
have it right now.

Chairman SHAW. We will have to let that be the last word.

Dr. Ensign may inquire.

Mr. ENSIGN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I want to get a little bit to the idea about work and some things
that Dr. Furstenberg talked about, because you have raised some
issues in my mind. You talked about the idea that we have to pro-
vide jobs and that jobs are somehow the answer to a lot of the
problems that we have in the inner cities.

You also talked about, Dr. Rector, being in the inner cities and
maybe not talking to these people about why they got pregnant.
Why do they get pregnant?

en you talked to the people in the inner cities, you gave rea-
sons why they did not, but you never gave the reasons why they
did get pregnant.

Dr. FURSTENBERG. I do not want to sound facetious, but they get
pregnant because they are having sex, and if we could imagine a
circumstance where the women that I have studied very closely —

Mr. ENSIGN. Why are they having out-of-wedlock births? That is
the question.

Dr. FURSTENBERG. If we could imagine a circumstance where
they had to take a pill, 30 days in a row, to get pregnant, you
would see a sudden and dramatic drop in the rate of pregnancy.

Once they have sex, they use birth control improperly, most use
it improperly, and that is related, largely in part, to their tangible
sense of opportunity.

Once they get pregnant, the question is abort, have the child,
give the child up for adoption. At that point-——

Mr. ENSIGN. In poor areas the reasons for out-of-wedlock births
are strictly improper birth control?

Dr. FURSTENBERG. No. I would say, as Marion Wright Edelman
said some years ago, that opportunity is the best form of contracep-
tion, and in fact I think the drift into pregnancy——

Mr. ENSIGN. Poor people have more opportunity, is that what you
are saying, to have more out-of-wedlock births?

Dr. FURSTENBERG. No, I am saying——

Mr. ENSIGN. That is what I am asking you. You were saying you
have talked to these people in the inner city, and Dr. Rector had
not talked to them, and you knew why, you gave us the reasons
why they did not get pregnant.

T am just asking you for the reasons why they are having out-
of-wedlock births.

You also, seem to be saying things about birth control.


5

warding young mothers for violating the rules is compassionate. In-
deed, any politician who questions this policy is accused of all sorts
of evil motivations.

House Republicans are now challenging the conventional wisdom
by trying to end the use of Federal dollars for cash payments to
unmarried minor mothers. These mothers could retain their Medic-
aid and food stamps and States can provide the mothers with
vouchers to help care for the children’s needs. States would be
barred from providing minor mothers with cash, the biggest incen-
tive for unacceptable behavior.

The bill that finally passed this Committee and Congress, but ve-
toed by the President, made it a State option to change that.

Federal policies can no longer have it both ways. We cannot con-
tinue to say that we are against out-of-wedlock births and then
turn around and provide a substantial set of subsidies for precisely
the behavior we condemn. Sooner or later, the Nation’s rate of
births outside marriage and the terrible consequences of these
births will force States to cut back on government subsidies. More
and more people will conclude that it is false and self-deluding
compassion to continue subsidizing failure.

Finally, the House and Senate agree that States should not be
able to use Federal dollars to increase the cash welfare benefits of
mothers already on welfare who have additional children. Because
the States objected to a Federal mandate of this type, we gave the
States the option of exempting themselves if they do not agree with
this policy. We continue to think that it is disastrous social policy
to provide more welfare for families who already rely on the tax-
payers for their support. The correct birth rate for mothers already
on welfare is zero.

Today’s hearing is addressed to calling the Nation’s attention to
the consequences of early sexual activity and of childbearing out-
side of marriage. We have also invited a wide variety of witnesses
to testify about what should be done to reduce out-of-wedlock

irths.

Above all, we want the public to know that if the President con-
tinues to defend the status quo, the small but important steps
taken in welfare reform to combat births outside of wedlock will die
and the dreadful problems outlined in such graphic detail during
today’s hearing will continue unchecked.

I want to thank all of our witnesses for taking time out of their
busy schedules to appear before our Committee and I look forward
to the testimony.

{An attachment to the opening statement follows:]


1

be a cultural trap in their communities in which single-parent families are the norm, and
that there are no social stigma attached to being a single mother. For instance, recently
a 15-year-old caller to our crisis telephone hotline asked how she could get pregnant
because all the “coolest” girls in her high school class were having babies!

‘These young women are choosing to have their children. They want to do what's
right for these babies and toddlers. We simply cannot punish the babies because of the
actions of their mothers and fathers. And punish them we will if we don't help their
mothers and fathers. I agree that they need a setting where the mothers are supervised
and assisted in caring for their child. 1 am unalterably opposed to separating mother and
father and child unless there simply is no other choice to protect the well-being of the
baby.

‘Those who have not lived in these poor communities simply must try to
understand that when you are poor and have no options, no hope, in this society, there is
no reason to delay sexual gratification; particularly when you are desperately looking for
someone to love and someone to love you. A welfare check is simply not a decisive
factor in determining a teenager's decision in this matter.

Covenant House believes that it has a program that is at least as successful as
anything being offered today by way of an alternative to these mistaken community
norms. In sum, our experience in dealing with single young women demonstrates that
teens who develop positive aspirations and perceptions, self-esteem, and clearly defined
goals for the future, are far less likely to seek the immediate satisfaction of sexual
gratification, or become a parent to make up for a lack of family, or, if they are already
a single parent, risk the chance of a second pregnancy.

Currently 120 young people between the ages of 18 and 21 reside in our New
York City long-term transitional living program called “Rights of Passage". This includes
20 young mothers and their children. Since 1986 more that 1,000 young men and women
have participated in this 12- to 24-month program.

While living here each resident creates an individual plan designed to result in his
or her self-sufficiency. They maintain employment, attend classes and pay a minimal
rent based on their income. Participants do not accept AFDC assistance, and rely on in-
house vocational training programs, employment workshops and the encouragement and
support of staff members and mentors to accomplish their goals.

Statistics indicate that if given this opportunity, young mothers can succeed at a
rate that is often higher than that of other program participants. Why? Because with a
lot of work they begin to believe in themselves, that they themselves can have a better
future and that they can give their child a better future. In other words, we give them
hope.

What is even more impressive, only about 5% of these young women become
pregnant again while in the program.

As we analyze the factors which make “Rights of Passage" a success, five elements
surface: 1) the skills training programs, normally six months in length, prepare the
participants for meaningful employment with genuinely marketable job skills; 2) the
program itself was developed, and is partially staffed, by pro‘essionals from the relevant
industries, who 3) agree to give our kids entry level jobs in their companies once the
young people have successfully completed the program; 4) *Rights* relies heavily on
Volunteer mentors as role models, people established in their own business who agree to
get involved in the life of a young person, and 5) for the single mothers Covenant House
has an infant-toddler center allowing the young mothers (who pay a modest fee for this
service) to work through the job training modules and maintain full employment.


81

Mr. LEVIN. Let me just interject because I think we need to try
to get at the heart of this. I am sorry we did not have a chance
to talk with some of our colleagues.

Mr. Talent said the problem is that welfare lures people into
having their children without being married. The choice of lan-
guage here, is of some importance, that welfare lures poor people
into having their children. You would not say it quite that way.

Mr. REcTOR. I would say that what welfare does is that it serves
as a substitute for marriage. It teaches people that it is acceptable
and possible to have children without the necessity of marriage. It
undermines marriage as a norm, and it facilitates what is, in
essence, a terribly self-destructive choice.

Mr. LevIN. You are saying that you are very sure that the with-
drawal of the benefit will change the culture and prevent births in
the first place?

Mr. REcrTor. Yes. I am very confident of that, particularly —

Mr. Levin. All right. Do any of you want to comment on that?

Dr. FURSTENBERG. I do not think Mr. Rector has spent a great
deal of time in inner-city communities, talking to the people he
purports to understand, whose motivation he purports to under-
stand.

I have spent a great deal of time, and there are very few people
who say that they got pregnant to get on welfare, to stay on wel-
fare. The vast majority are like the women in my study. They go
on welfare out of necessity, not out of desire. They share your view
that welfare is a stigmatized status. They feel stigmatized by it.

There is not a great deal of talk about, “Well, if I can get on wel-
fare, I can support my children,” because every kid knows that wel-
fare is not going to pay—most of the people on welfare have to
work, and that has been established in one study after another.
The family picks up the difference, and the family is really the wel-
fare system, not the state.

Mr. LEVIN. Let me just say something to you, because this is an
important difference here, and I think we need to get to the bottom
of it.

Even if your position is correct—and a lot of people agree with
you—I think it is a mistake, if I might say so, to conclude, if I can
pick out your testimony—that will work, training, and support will
increase the propensity of women to marry?

I say this as someone who thinks that the welfare to work link-
age is a critical one. It may be that it may not increase the propen-
sity of women to marry. It may, though, affect their propensity to
have more children. Those two things are not the same.

Dr. FURSTENBERG. Most of the studies, Congressman, that I am
familiar with, that have been done on women on welfare, show that
women on welfare do not have more children after they get on wel-
fare than women in comparable statuses. That welfare does not
stimulate increases of childbearing.

In my own study, and IJ think Mr. Zill has some data that is simi-
lar to this, the vast majority of people on welfare and off welfare
were voluntarily sterilized by their late twenties.

Mr. LEVIN. One last question, Mr. Chairman. The light is not
working. I do not want to take advantage of it too much.


107

The most important point which needs tobe made about the bankruptcy of our current
welfare system is that tatempts to treat one dimension of poverty material poverty—while
leaving behavioral poverty to run amuk.

Much work needs to be done in our communities and we need to look to each other before we
look to HES or some new federal grant program. The children who are pictured each night
on our evening news ~ children lying shot on some Washington street are our children—
they are American kids.

Each of us as individual citizens needs to take personal responsibilit recapturing some
of our country which has been negligently entrusted to goreanent by day and forthe
criminals by night.


92

Chairman SHAW. Have you looked at the Massachusetts statis-
tics? Have you looked at the Wisconsin statistics, and the Michigan
statistics?

I think it shows that certainly time-limiting welfare certainly
works.

Dr. FURSTENBERG. It works to get people off welfare. Whether it
works to improve—there is no question about that.

Chairman SHaw. Some people think that that may be funny, but
I certainly do not, because I think it shows them that there is an-
other way out there, and that they had better find a job and not
use up the time that——

Dr. FURSTENBERG. Yes, as I understand it, those studies that
have not followed those people for long periods of time, to ask the
kinds of questions that I want to know—Are they living in poverty?
Are their children living in poverty?

Are their children doing well, or better because they have been
off welfare?

Those are the kinds of questions. I think we assume—I think the
welfare system as it has evolved has numerous faults that need
correction and I have spoken out on the need for welfare reform.

The idea that somehow anything is better than what exists now
does not seem to me to be obvious, or well-founded, based on any
evidence that we have.

Chairman Suaw. I do not know of anybody who has said or
thought that anything is better than what we have today, but I can
assure you that every welfare bill that I know of, that has been
filed in the Congress, is certainly better than what——

Dr. FURSTENBERG. Will time-limited welfare decrease—

Chairman SHAW [continuing]. We have today, and I think is
shown by the fact that not one person defended the status quo in
the Congress when the question came up.

Everybody in the Congress voted for a welfare bill, time-limited
welfare, by the way.

Dr. FURSTENBERG. Will that decrease illegitimacy or nonmarital
childbearing? I think not.

Ghairman Suaw. Well, only time will tell on that.

r. Ziil.

Dr. ZILL. Some of our concern is that while there is broad agree-
ment that there needs to be a change in welfare, this welfare cul-
ture has evolved over a long period of time. Some of us are con-
cerned about making changes too precipitously, without knowing
what the effects of those changes might be.

I think that what is more called for is genuine trying out solu-
tions on a demonstration project basis, and looking at what the re-
sults of those are.

Chairman SHaw. We have done that in the States. Delaware is
a fine example. Massachusetts is a fine example. Wisconsin is a
fine example.

Dr. ZILL. Very few of those are really what we might call—

Chairman SHAW. Michigan is a fine example. You can even see
where certain things are working, such as where there are only one
or two counties, like in Florida, and you see that the States are
gravitating more and more toward doing that.


60

Figure 5b. Percent Increase in Risk of School-Related Problems for Students From Mother-Only
Families Over Students From Mother-Father Families, U.S. Children Ages 7-17, 1988

OiRaw difference Ml Adjusted difference
Student in bottom 58%
half of el
ans 15%
154%
Student repeated grade
pene 47%
Parent conference 131%
requested 3%
Student suspended 240%
100%
os 30% 100% 150% 2008 7508

Difference as Percent facrease Over Risk for Mother-Father Group

Source: Zill, N. (1994). Famuly Change ané Student Achievement: What We Have Learned, What It Meant
{for Schools. In Booth & Duan (Eds), Family-School Lisks: How Do They Affect Educational Oxicomes?
Hillsdale, NI Lawrence Erlbaum


56

Figure 2: Children of Unmarried Mothers in the United States:
State of Their Health

Children living with:
Mvnmarried mothers EA Both birth parents

In excellent
bealth, no activity 41%
limitation 55%

Fair or poor
health or with 11%
limiting condition 6%

Days spent in bed 48

uring past year 39

Hospital visits

im past year 8.2
(per 100 children) 43

Percent of children aged 0-17 years



18

Reducing teenage childbearing is likely to require more than
eliminating or manipulating welfare programs, as much as we
would like to think so. Experience tells us that threats and punish-
ment are not the best way to get teenagers to believe or to behave
in the way we would have them to behave. The most successful ap-
proach to reducing teenage childbearing is to design policies and
procedures that are targeted to encourage positive developmental
behavior through beneficial adult role models and job opportunities.

We must implement pregnancy prevention programs that edu-
cate and support school age children between 10 and 21 in high-
risk situations and their family members through comprehensive
social and health services with an emphasis on pregnancy preven-
tion. On average, it takes teens 1 year after becoming sexually ac-
tive to receive family planning services. This needs to be stopped.

The pregnancy rate among sexually experienced teenagers fell 19
percent from 1972 to 1990, suggesting that teenagers who have ac-
cess to birth control and who are motivated have been successful
at preventing pregnancies. Conducted by the Johns Hopkins School
of Hygiene and Public Health, a study showed that the reproduc-
tive clinic and other health care providers had an opportunity to
intervene and to provide contraceptive counseling to a group of sex-
ually active teenage girls before they became pregnant. This study
shows that spending more money on counseling these young girls,
indeed, reduced pregnancies for a large percentage.

Teenage girls seeking pregnancy tests are already sexually active
and we should understand when they seek information, we are not
deterring sex or encouraging sex by simply providing information.
Clinics struggling for funds have a distinctive mission to serve
teenagers not to encourage them to become sexually active. Most
teenagers cannot pay. We should provide funds for these clinics.

In addition, counseling teenagers is quite expensive. They need
more attention than older women, it means understanding that you
have to be involved in their lives. In the study, most girls who
came for a test had reason to believe that they might be pregnant.
Oftentimes, they had missed a period, so they are already in trou-
ble when they come to these clinics.

A significant number, almost 14 percent, believed there was little
chance that they were, indeed, pregnant. One has to wonder why
are we not supporting these clinics to make sure there are equal
opportunities? Perhaps, it is a way to get someone they want to
trust. They want to understand that there is an opportunity for
better services and better information. Devoting more resources to
preventing teen pregnancy will not only save us money in the long
run, but it is also healthy for the teenagers and our communities.
It is an economical way of providing these teenagers with the op-
portunity to be productive citizens.

I thank you for the opportunity to participate.

Chairman SHaAw. Thank you, Ms. Clayton.

Our final Member witness is Jim Talent from the State of Mis-
souri.

Mr. Talent.


47

tence, warmth, and emotional stability, the parent’s education
level, family income, the presence or absence of strong moral val-
ues, support from other relatives and friends, and the child’s own
temperament and adaptability.

Being born to unmarried parents is only one, among a number,
of risk or protective factors that help determine how a child turns
out. It does represent a genuine and significant risk for a child’s
economic, physical, intellectual, and emotional well-being. Anyone
who cares about the welfare of American children must hope that
in the future fewer children, not more, will grow up having to
confront this risk.

What I do in my written testimony is to present some of the re-
search evidence presenting the link between unmarried parenthood
and various aspects of children’s well-being. There is a set of charts
that you can look at and see some of the differences. Robert Rector
has mentioned some of them.

I want to talk a little bit though about the link between poverty
and welfare dependency. We have to understand that when there
is no marriage, there is a less strong bond between fathet and
mother and between the father and the child. This is evidenced by
survey data on the lower frequency of contact and lower likelihood
of financial support by never-married fathers than by divorced
fathers.

Only 15 percent of unmarried women with children from an ab-
sent father report getting child support from that father compared
to 54 percent of divorced women. A lack of marital ties or legal ob-
ligations also means that the father is less likely to be counted on
for providing child care for the child while the mother might be out
working or looking for work.

It should be noted that nonmarriage also has implications for the
man. The lack of marital ties or legal obligations means there is
less pressure on the father to work steadily, lead a regular lifestyle
and keep out of trouble with the law. That’s the kind of adult so-
cialization that many men go through following marriage and fa-
therhood. As they said in “Guys and Dolls,” marry the man today
and change his ways tomorrow. That kind of socialization is not ex-
perienced by the many young men who now become fathers outside
of marriage. It is perhaps not surprising, then, that many of them
wind up with arrests and prison records.

It is important to note, also, that the financial inadequacies of
mother-only families are not attributable solely to the absence of
one parent or the factors just enumerated. Never-married mothers
are not just lacking husbands, they also tend to be younger, to
have lower literacy Tevels, lower education levels, less work experi-
ence and often other problems such as histories of depression,
delinquency or drug abuse.

A typical elementary-school child, living with a never-married
mother has a black or a Hispanic mother who is 29 years of age
and has completed less than 1 year of college. The family lives in
a rented apartment in the central city of a major metropolitan
area. There is no grandmother or other adult present in the house-

old.

The mother is likely to be working or looking for work. Her likeli-
hood of not finding work or being laid off is twice that of a divorced


51

‘What the findings of these studies consistently show is that, in our society, the best thing for a
child's wel-being is to be raised by both biological parents who live together in reasonably harmonious —
but not necessarily a perfectly fulfilling ~ marriage. rowing up ine sngle-pre family, a septal,
and, indeed, virtually any family type other than an intact two-parent family is associated with

Teal, lower acheveaet, and anicreased incidence ofcondict and emodonal problems in dren. Only
when there are high levels of open an persisent conflict between parents docs the two-parent family pose a
hazard to children comparable to that connected with family disruption or lone

This isnot o say that all chilren fom single-paret families turn out badly orto deny that many

there are a several other factors that can ameliorate or exacerbate the risk tothe child, factors such a8
parental competence, warmth, and emotional stability, the parents’ education level, family income, the
presence or absence of strong moral values, support from other relatives and friends, and the child’s own
temperament and adaptability. Being born to unmarried parents is only one among a mumber of risk or
protective factors that help determine how a child turns out. But it does represent a genuine and significant
risk for a child’s economic, physical, intellectual, and emotional well-being. Anyone who cares about the
welfare of American children must hope that in the furure, fewer children, not more, will grow up having to
confront this risk.

‘What 1 would like to do next is present research findings that illustrate the nature and magnitude of
the economic and developmental difficulties unmarried parents and their children face, and give some
reasons why having unmarried parents is a risk factor for children. I conclude by making some suggestions
as to what we might do to reduce unmarried childbearing in the future,

A Greater Risk of Poverty and Welfare Dependency

To begin with, being born to unmarried parents substantially increases a child’s risk of growing up
in poverty and welfare dependency. In 1992, for example, the poverty rate for single-parent,

period from 1983 to 1986 (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1989). ‘Dus from the 1993 Survey of Income and
‘Program Participation show that 68 percent of women currently receiving welfare were unmarried at the
birth of their first child, whereas 27 percent of mothers not on welfare had their first child outside of
marriage (U.S Bureau of the Census, 1995). As the work of David Ellwood, Mary Jo Bane, and Donna
Pavetti has shown, unmarried women with young children are more likely than other welfare recipients to
remain on welfare for extended periods of time (Pavetti, 1995).

‘There are several reasons why mother-only families in general and those headed by never-married
‘women in particular are likely to be poor. They include the following:

© Its inherently more costly for two parents to live apart and have to spend significant portions of
their incomes on separate housing, separate appliances, separate transportation, and s0 on;

© When there is no marriage, there is a less strong bond between the father and mother and between
the father and the child. ‘This is evidenced by survey data on the lower frequency of contact and
lower likelihood of financial support by never married fathers than by divorced fathers. For
example, only 15 percent of unmarried women with children from an absent father reported getting
child support from that father in the last year, compared with 54 percent of divorced women (Zill
and Nord, 1994, p. 8). Even when nonresidential fathers do pay support, they typically do not pay
such;

* The lack of marital ties or legal obligations also means that the father is less likely to be counted on
for providing child care for the child while the mother might be out working or looking for work;

© Wage rates for women still lag behind those for men, even though the wage gap has been
narrowing;

© When single parents must rely on welfare for support, the cash payments they receive are usually
‘not sufficient to lift their families above the poverty level.

It should be noted that non-marriage also has implications for the man. The lack of marital ties or
Segal obligations means there is less pressure on the father to work steadily, lead a regular life style, and
‘keep out of trouble with the law. ‘Thus, the kind of adult socialization that many men go through following
marriage and fatherhood is not experienced by the many young men who now become fathers outside of
marriage. It is perhaps not surprising, then, that many of them wind up with arrest and prison records.


80

Virtually all are divorced. They look like the last column, they
have shifted out of marriage. He shows that, of course, when mar-
riage is intact, there are very few people on welfare. That makes
a lot of sense because marriages intact have a family income.

When you do not have a family income, you do not have marriage
and that is the problem that I was referring to.

Mr. ENGLISH. In your view, this is a post-hoc, proper-hoc kind of
an argument?

Dr. FURSTENBERG. Completely and the same for welfare. Mr. Rec-
tor reported that there was an increase in welfare used from 1965
to 1975 in black communities, referring to Congressman Rangel.

That was the time that the Moynihan report was written, in
1964, when he was very concerned about rising rates of unemploy-
ment.

He was noting trends that were occurring from the fifties on-
ward. In fact, unemployment went up during that time. I do not
know where you are getting your statistics, Mr. Rector, but that is
not correct.

Chairman SHaw. Mr. English’s time has expired.

Mr. ENGLISH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Chairman Suaw. Mr. Levin may inquire.

Mr. LEVIN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

It is difficult listening to everybodys individual perspective. It
may be a little easier to detect where people are going.

I do not think there is that much oF. a quarrel today about effect,
at least, from me and maybe I am old fashioned. I think there is
a strong, preference for a two-parent family.

There are numerous advantages to a two-parent family and the
economic advantages that have just been referred to are probably
the lesser of the advantages.

We are all the products of our upbringing, I suppose and for me,
it is a given. It is preferable in many respects. There is much dis-
agreement, though, over causation.

The difference in cause has led people to try to tone down what
the effect is.

Let us say that there is a very substantial effect. We still need
to argue through what the causation is here. I think, Mr. Rector,
you favor not only a family cap on a mandatory basis but the with-
drawal of benefits from a mother who is under a certain age.

Mr. RECTOR. I favor the withdrawal of cash benefits.

Mr. LEVIN. OK. You would withdraw a cash benefit from a child
whose mother is under a certain age. That must be based on the
assumption that the cause of the pregnancy, in very substantial
measure, was the lure of a cash benefit.

Mr. Rector. I would not say, Congressman, that there are
women who are having children out of wedlock because they think
they are going to make a windfall profit out of the welfare system.

There are women who look around them in their community and
see that the norm for many other women around them, if not al-
most every woman they run into, is to raise children outside of
wedlock. They do not regard it as unusual.

I was in this very room about a year ago and there was a witness
here in which the woman said, no one ever told me that having a
child out of wedlock was, in any sense, wrong. .


142

These kind of data and nuance make it much more difficult. I ap-
preciate it, but I think, in fact, that is the way it is.

I am going to stop there. I “thought I was going to beat the red
light, I am sorry I did not. I would be happy to answer any ques-
tions you have, in particular, any you might have about the new
teen pregnancy campaign.

Thank you for the opportunity to be here.

Chairman SHAW. Thank you, Ms. Brown.

Mr. Levin.

Mr. LEVIN. Tell us about the new national campaign.

Ms. BRown. One of the ill effects of having too much publicity
too soon, having the light shined on you in technicolor, is that it
gave the impression that everything was settled, everybody was ap-
pointed, all the funding was in place, staff in place, and we were
rearing to go. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth.

We have organized a new independent nonprofit, nongovern-
mental organization, a new 501(c)(3) totally separate from govern-
ment. We have had one board meeting but we are still very much
in the process of trying to figure out what might be best to do. We
have a 17-member founding board but it is not complete. We have
to line up funding.

I can give you some information about our early ideas, and the
founding board, but I do not want to get off on that agenda because
I know that is not your focus. I will tell you that our chairman is
former New Jersey Governor Tom Kane, our president is Isabell
Sawhill of the Urban League, and as of last week, I have been
asked to be the director of the campaign.

Mr. LeEvIN. If you would, put together the first and the four
points that the vast majority of the pregnancies among teens are
unplanned, unintended. Those women in poverty and unmarried
teens most of all, and the fourth point about Europe. I mean if they
are unintended and unplanned, then how does——

Ms. BROWN. Why do they do better?

Mr. LEVIN. Why, yes?

Ms. BROWN. Well, it is a very important question, and I get
asked that all the time. There is a very limited scholarship in this
area, but let me tell you what we think we know. There are about
four reasons why Europe seems to do better in these issues of teen
pregnancy, nonmarital births and so forth.

The first is that there seems to be a very strong social consensus
in Europe that although sexual activity may be acceptable, getting
pregnant when you are in no position to bear a child is not. Here,
in this country, as we well know, we spend a lot of time arguing
about sexuality, not only for teens, but for unmarried people in
general. The television says one thing, our communities and fami-
lies often say other things. What we end up doing is giving a very
confusing message.

The observers of Europe say the message is very straight. It is
not that sex is bad or wrong, unless you are very young, it is that
what is wrong is bearing children when you are in no position to
take care of them.

The emphasis is on protection, avoiding unwanted, unintended
pregnancies, and avoiding STDs.


185



13

into this world because the government will do it instead of him.
It is little wonder that welfare recipients reasonably conclude that
work and marriage are not rational. We have contributed to that
thinking by developing this system.

What else can you call it when government stands in the way of
families and communities helping young unwed mothers? I have
had people in my office who told me of a mother who wanted her
minor unwed daughter to remain in her home once that child gave
birth to her own baby. In fact, this grandmother wanted to take
care of her grandchild and let her daughter finish high school. The
daughter wanted to move out and why not? The government was
going to set her up in her own home and so this grandmother was
told by social services that if her daughter wanted to move out, it
was her right.

I think there is something inherently wrong with that type of a
system. A little more than 30 years ago, only a little more than 2
percent of all births occurred out of wedlock. Today, almost one out
of three of all births occur out of wedlock. There are many reasons
for that increase and I do not pretend that all of it is welfare, not
at all.

I am concerned that our current welfare system has contributed
to this national tragedy. Children born out of wedlock—Mr. Chair-
man, you have pointed this out—are seven times more likely to be
poor than those born to couples who stay married.

Girls raised in single-parent homes on welfare are five times
more likely to give birth out of wedlock compared to girls from in-
tact nonwelfare families. A boy from a single-parent home in the
inner city, is twice as likely to engage in crime compared to a simi-
lar boy who is poor, but is living with a father and mother.

A child who grows up absent a father is more likely to live a
troubled life. He is more likely to end up in prison. He is more like-
ly to use drugs, to drop out of school, to join a gang, and more like-
ly to end up back on welfare.

Out-of-wedlock births, illegitimacy is at the core of most social
pathologies—crime, drugs, illiteracy, and poverty. To claim that we
are going to address welfare reform and not make the problem of
out-of-wedlock births the primary focus is to repeat the failed re-
forms of the past.

Instead of lifting people out of poverty and despair, we have de-
veloped a cycle of dependency that is now entering its third genera-
tion. I think it is time for us to say it is enough. This system has
failed. It has failed those whom it was designed to help.

When President Kennedy sent his welfare package to Congress
more than 30 years ago, he stated it and stated it well. He said,
“Welfare programs must contribute to the attack on family break-
down and illegitimacy. Unless such problems are dealt with effec-
tively they fester and grow sapping the strength of society, as a
whole, and extending their consequences and troubled families
from one generation to the next.”

He said it right. Our welfare policies have failed to fulfill the goal
that President Kennedy articulated.

Mr. Chairman, whatever final welfare reform bill is enacted it
will, in my opinion, be a sham if, at its core, it does not address
the issue of out-of-wedlock births. We can give all the flexibility we


187

Illinois Pilot Schools 1995 - 1996

Project Reality has been a pioneer in the national field of adolescent health education. It has been teaching and
evaluating abstinence-centered programs in the public schools since 1985.

For the current school year, 1995 - 96, Project Reslity is administering a program with three divisions under a
grant funded by the State of Illinois Department of Public Aid.

‘Two of these di

ms have sites throughout the State. The third is concentrated in the City of Chicago.

Project Reality provides teacher training seminars for all three divisions. We also conduct an extensive evalua
tion through a pre-post survey of 69 questions in both high school and middle school programs. The analyses
for these two divisions is done by Northwestern University School of Medicine, Psychology Department. The
Chicago City program (which is more compact) has a 10 question survey (pre-post) and is analyzed by Dr.
William C, MeCready, Norther Illinois University.

‘The three divisions and a brief description are as follows:

‘Statewide:

Senior High School, Facing Reality, Grades 9-11,
15 units. A composite approach, abstinence towards drugs, alcohol and sexual activity.
Instruction and questionnaire administration by in-school faculty.

Students: 3,000

Midale School, Choosing the Best, Grades 7-9,
8 units. Strong medical emphasis concentrates on sexual abstinence. Includes eighteen
slides, from the Medical Institute for Sexual Health, and two videos. Is appropriate for
AIDS education. Instruction and questionnaire administration by in-school faculty.

Students: 11,000
icago Division: 700 Schools

City of Chicago, Southwest Parents Committee Division

‘A two-part series presented by a seven member team, whose credentials include medical,

educational and bi-lingual training, The evaluations are administered by school faculty
before and after abstinence presentations.

Students 12,000
Southwest Parents, started with 11 schools five years ago, served 88 schools last year with 925 presentations.

Total Students served in FY'95: 23.000


55

Figure 1: Children of Unmarried Mothers in the United States:
Quality of Their Home Environments

Mi vamarried mothers EA Both birth parents

Adult smoker 52%
in household 39%

Child rarely or never 41%
uses seatbelts when
riding in car 26%

Child has late or 30%
irregular bedtime 16%

No regular 33%

provider
of sick care 15%

No dental visit
in last two years
(3-17 years old)

25%
18

|

Percent of children aged 0-17 years

‘& Bloom, B. Health of Our Nat
ational Health [aterview Survey on

"5 Children (1994), and additional
Heath

analysis of data from th


ADVISORY

FROM THE COMMITTEE ON WAYS AND MEANS
SUBCOMMITTEE ON HUMAN RESOURCES

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE CONTACT: (202) 225-1025
March 5, 1996

No. HR-

Shaw Announces Hearing on the
Causes of Poverty, with a Focus on
Out-of-Wedlock Births

Congressman E. Clay Shaw, Jr. (R-FL), Chairman of the Subcommittee on Human
Resources of the Committee on Ways and Means, today announced that the Subcommittee
will hold a hearing on the causes of poverty, with a focus on illegitimacy. The hearing will
take place on Tuesday, March 12, 1996, in room B-318 of the Rayburn House Office
Building, beginning at 1:00 p.m.

In view of the limited time available to hear witnesses, oral testimony at this hearing
will be heard from invited witnesses only. However, any individual or organization not
scheduled for an oral appearance may submit a written statement for consideration by the
‘Subcommittee and for inclusion in the printed record of the hearing.

BACKGROUND:

The welfare reform debate has focused national attention on illegitimate births, which
now constitute more than 30 percent of all births.

Witnesses are expected to describe the consequences of illegitimate births on children
and families: children bom into never-married families fare worse than any demographic
gzoup in our country; and a mother’s long-term physical health suffers as a result of early
sexual activity with multiple partners. The Subcommittee also will hear testimony about
policies designed to reduce the rate of illegitimate births. Finally, the Subcommittee will
receive testimony from representatives of family groups and others who believe that poverty
ccan best be fought by focusing on abstinence and returning to two-parent families.

In announcing the hearing, Chairman Shaw stated: *Out-of-wedlock birth is the
driving force behind surging welfare caseloads and long-term dependence. Children, mothers,
communities, and taxpayers all suffer as a result of welfare policies that subsidize
irresponsible and self-destructive behavior. Welfare reform will not work if illegitimacy
continues out of control. In order to solve the problem, we must face facts and deal with one
of the nation’s greatest problems. Ignoring it won't make it go away."

DETAILS FOR SUBMISSION OF WRITTEN COMMENTS:

‘Any person of organization wishing to submit a written statement for the printed
record of the hearing should submit at least six (6) copies of their statement, with their
address and date of hearing noted, by the close of business, Tuesday, March 26, 1996, to
Phillip D. Moseley, Chief of Staff, Committee on Ways and Means, U.S. House of
Representatives, 1102 Longworth House Office Building, Washington, D.C. 20515. If those
filing written statements wish to have their statements distributed to the press and interested
public at the hearing, they may deliver 200 additional copies for this purpose to the
Subcommittee on Human Resources office, room B-317 Rayburn House Office Building, at
least one hour before the hearing begins.

(more)


72

20U, S. House of Representatives, Committee on Ways and Means, Overview of Entitlement
Programs: Background Material and Data on Programs within the Jurisdiction of the
Committee on Ways and Means (1992 Green Book) Washington, D.C.:U.8. Government
Printing Office, 1991), p. 675; U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, Administration for

ildren and Families, Characteristics and Financial Circumstances of AFDC Recipients, FY
1990 (Washington, D.C: U. S. Government Printing Office, 1991), Table 14.

21Davis & McCaul, The emerging crisis: Current and projected status of children in the United
States.. August, ME: Maine State Department of Education. (ERIC Document Reproduction
Service No. 348 434), p. 22. 1991.

22Nicholas, Zill, Kristen Moore, Christine Nord, and Thomas Stief, Welfare Mothers as
Potential Employees: A Statistical Profile Based on National Survey Data, (Washington, D.C.:
Child Trends, Inc.), Table 17.

237bid.

241992 Green Book, p. 687.

25trvin Garfinkel and Sara McLanahan, Single Mothers and Their Children: A New American

Dilemma (Washington, D.C.: The Urban Institute Press, 1986), pp. 30, 31; and McLanahan,
“The Long-Term Economic Effects of Family Dissolutior 12.

26Davis & McCaul, The emerging crisis: Current and projected status of children in the United
States... Augusta, ME: Maine State Department of Education. (ERIC Document Reproduction
Service No. 348 434), p. 89. 1991.


27

‘church attendance in a single year (1982).” As the chart shows, 13 percent of women
who frequently attended church (once or more per week) have had a child out-of-
wedlock, compared to 24 percent among women who did not attend church at all. Thus,
‘regular religious observance cut the probability of out-of-wedlock births roughly in half.
‘The impact of religion is maintained when race and poverty status are held constant.
‘Similarly, teenage girls who regularly attend church are two-thirds less likely to be
sexually active than those who do not.”

Chan 4

Church Attendence and Out of Wedlock Births
‘Among Young Women

om. 26%

21%

Never Attended regular Frequent
(Church Atendence ‘Atendence

Murphy Brown Despite stoties in the popular press connecting the growing rate
of illegitimacy with a new generation of “Murphy Browns”, having a child out-of
‘wedlock is stil a phenomenon which is largely found among less educated women. A
‘examination of births to women in the NLSY survey in 1992 shows that among white
women who had not finished high school, 4 percent of births were out-of-wedlock.
‘Among women witha high school degree, the number was 14 percent. By contrast,

has 0 pervasive that a large percentage of better
black women now give birth outside of wedlock. Still the general pattem out-of-wedlock
births remains the same;, black high school dropouts are more than twice as likely to have
a child out of wedlock as were black women with graduate education.

‘THE SOCIAL CONSEQUENCES OF RISING ILLEGITIMACY

From the very beginning, children born outside of marriage have life stacked
‘against them. While some single mothers work wonders and raise their children well
kant the cbt hey cocoate for many ots he challenge i to rat nr

children suffer the consequences. The impact on the child is significant and can be
‘permanent. For many, out-of-wedlock birth and growing up ina single-parent family
‘means the child is more likely to experience:

1 The NLSY church anendance survey as very rarely asked information on religious practice. It would
‘be very usefl to have church atendance dat foreach ear. Nevertheless, even a single year's record
‘of church aneadanes shows religia tobe an important factor

by The Heritage based on the National L ‘Survey of Youth



70

The epidemic of teenage pregnancy and of sexually transmitted disease is being driven by two
common problems of teen sexuality -- the early age of initiation of sexual activity and the
number of sexual partners. Both of these have a profound influence on risk for teens. One
researcher states, "Those adolescents who initiate intercourse at younger ages are more likely to
report a history of sexually transmitted disease, more sexual partners, and having risky sexual
partners."!5 The Centers for Disease Control showed that if teenagers initiated sex before the
age of 18, 45 percent had four or more partners when interviewed late, i inated after 19 only 1
percent had four or more partners. All studies show that the more lifetime sexual partners, the
more risk of sexually transmitted disease.16

A very significant issue in this discussion is reasons that teens have sex. It is not usually
happening because two young people fall in love and maturely decide to have intercourse. Most

of the teens who have sex are victims:7, 18

One-fourth of teen girls have been sexually abused. A common result of this is
for them to become sexually promiscuous.

‘Neglected teens -- most from single-parent homes
Teens with little purpose in life

Teens who respond to peer pressure

‘Teens who drink excessively and use drugs

Our failure to break the cycle of teenage sexual activity will only allow further victimization of
these people.

As a physician let me break the frustrating news that medicine does not have the answer. Why
do I say this? Have you ever thought about the fact that syphilis is at a forty year high in this
country and yet there are no syphilis "germs" re i i

HIV, the epidemic will not disappear. This
thirty years -- a time when U.S. citizens have had the finest medical care ever provided on the
face of the earth.

Clients of the present welfare system represent a large group of people whose lifestyle includes
activity that increases risk of out-or-wedlock pregnancy and sexually transmitted disease.

50% of all families receiving AFDC are headed by an unmarried parent.20

90% of these single parents are women.21

80% of adolescent mothers receive welfare within five years of becoming a
parent.

40% of long-term welfare recipients had their first child at age 17 or younger.23

39% of never married mothers who receive welfare will remain on the rolls ten
years or longer.2

And the problem of their moms doom many of the children:
111% more likely to have children as teenagers.
164% more likely to have premarital birth,25
All of these things not only hurt the individual, but they also hurt society. For example, 82
percent of incarcerated individuals were high schoo! dropouts, most of whom were from low-

wealth communities.26 Therefore, as much as one might like to, there is simply no way of
separating:

Welfare from sexually transmitted disease or from teen pregnancy
‘Teenage pregnancy from single-parent homes

Single-parent homes from damage to both the parents involved and to the
children, and even more to all society.


146

media ridiculed it. Everybody said, oh, do not be ridiculous, kids
won't listen. Today, it is a national debate everywhere. Now, the
criticism is well, we have not been evaluated enough.

I really wonder about the numerous evaluations referred to
today, as I said, the researchers evaluate the evaluations, a lot of
those references are 10 or 15 years old. That is why you are not
seeing answers to a lot of the questions you are asking, they cannot
give the answers because the research is old research.

If I could take the liberty of just diverting slightly, for instance,
one of the things I would like to suggest for welfare reform is that
there is some interesting talk about added day care. If every wel-
fare mother took in one other as a day care home project, that
could create a tremendous decrease, and it would very likely teach
those mothers to be better mothers.

We need some creative approaches, and this abstinence approach
with the degree of success that we are seeing the interest in the
schools. Hardly anybody has anything good to say about the Chi-
cago public schools, yet, starting with 11 schools we now have up
to 90 schools that say we want you to come in and teach our kids
how to be healthy. I can give you anecdotal stories that are incred-
ible.

One, in particular, our teacher was in the first part of the two-
part Chicago session. The first program went great. The second
week there was a student there that was not there the first time,
and he was very disruptive. He kept saying, “it ain’t going to work.
You can’t last with one person, you get tired of them, it just isn’t
going to work.” This was eighth grade.

The teacher took our team teacher aside and said, there is some-
thing you ought to know about this student. The others in the class
kept answering him, they were giving all the good answers to the
disruptive student. The teacher pulled her aside and said, “that
child lives with 6 siblings, but there are 20 children in this school
that are fathered by his father.” Sure, the point is those students
had never had the opportunity to hear the disease factor, yet they
were experiencing the emotional trauma.

Chairman SHAW. You were here during Dr. MclIlhaney’s testi-
mony, and is that part of —

Ms. SULLIVAN. Of our program?

Chairman SHaw [continuing]. The teaching that young girls are
-more susceptible to the disease?

Ms. SULLIVAN. Oh, emphatically. Their tissue linings are not yet
developed. They are extremely more vulnerable. The sad thing is
they do not know that. They do not know that disease can be af-
fected in other parts of the body not covered by a condom.

Chairman SHAW. Let me switch over to Dr. Howard now. Do you
have anything to add to Dr. MclIlhaney’s testimony, with regard to
the disease factor with young girls who are sexually active?

Dr. Howarb. Well, one of the things we do know is that the in-
ability to bear a child has tripled among young black women and
doubled among young white women over the last decade or so be-
cause of having sex early over time and having a number of part-
ners. As much as we are concerned about out-of-wedlock births I
think we also have to be concerned about the infertility rates. It


63

Figure A. Nonmarital Births as a Percent of All Births, 1940-1993

100
80 -
Black 69%
Sf .
oo Nonwhite 59%
40
All races 31%
White 24%
205
t) Spe teeters

1940 1945 1950 1955 1960 1965 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990

Source: National Center for Health Statistics (in press), Vital Statistics of the United States,

1993, Vol. 1, Natalty

shington, DC: GPO.


20

ning or any of its other programs can overcome the damage done
to our children by illegitimacy.

Children in single-parent families are three times as likely to fail
and repeat a year in grade school than children raised in two-
parent households. They are four times more likely to be expelled
or suspended from school. By the way, as Mr. Hutchinson, said
these are figures controlled for income level. The difference is not
between poor people and nonpoor people. The difference is between
poor people who come from families on welfare where illegitimacy
was the rule and other people in poverty.

Girls raised in single-parent homes on welfare are five times
more likely to give birth out of wedlock. Children born to a single
mother are seven times more likely to be poor than those born to
married couples.

Nor should those of us in comfortable, middle-class neighbor-
hoods believe that the fallout from illegitimacy is limited to poor
neighborhoods or poor areas of society. No culture can survive if it
attempts to raise a large portion of its children entirely outside the
institution of marriage.

Thirty years ago, Daniel Patrick Moynihan warned that a society
which marginalizes the role of fathers in urban communities, “Asks
for and gets chaos.”

Mr. Chairman, there are only two things we can do to change the
incentives in the welfare system, broadly speaking. We can change
either the size or the structure of the package of benefits.

The bill which the President vetoed relied heavily on changing
structure. It required work from those welfare recipients who are
the closest to employability. Since this makes welfare less attrac-
tive, when compared to private sector employment, its effect is to
reduce the welfare rolls and increase the work rolls.

In addition, the bill took some small steps toward getting cash
out of the welfare system and replacing it with inkind benefits. The
most important of these steps is the family cap which ends the

ractice of paying cash for additional children born out of wedlock.

tates could use these funds, which now effectively are a reward
for illegitimacy, to encourage adoption or marriage or to care for
single moms in a nurturing setting like a group home.

It is no accident that these structural changes, in addition to dis-
couraging illegitimacy and, thereby, reducing welfare roles are also
far better than the existing system for those who still enter or re-
main on welfare. The children in a family receiving welfare are bet-
ter off if their parent is working in return for benefits.

Sending cash indiscriminately to young moms, while leaving
them in an environment where they are quite likely being exploited
by pushers, boyfriends or gangs is not a way of caring for them.
It is a way of sweeping them under the rug.

Mr. Chairman, there is another way of reversing the effects of
welfare and that is to rebuild the neighborhoods and institutions
that give order and meaning to daily life. Fortunately, all across
America, people in distressed areas are coming together to bring
private sector jobs, home ownership, school choice, charity, and
faith back to the center of their neighborhoods. The Federal
Government cannot be a substitute for these groups, but it can en-


37

Current Welfare Families:
Average Years on AFDC

i298
i
i
j i

‘Years on Rolls to Date Total Expected Years on Rolls

Source: Urban hnsttute

Of the 4.7 million families currently receiving AFDC, most will be dependent on wel-
fare for very long periods of time. As Chart I shows, families receiving AFDC atthe pre-

rage
length of stay on mong tne Tunis earent receiving AFDC beets
astounding 13 years.” Moreover, these figures actually underestimate the length of wel-
fare dependence, since such families are very likely to receive other welfare benefits
(such as food stamps, SSI, Medicaid, and housing) even after they leave the AFDC
caseload,

‘As Chart 2 shows, among those families currently receiving AFDC, 72 percent have al~
ready spent over two years on AFDC, and nearly half have already spent over five years
on AFDC.

{All figures inthis section retaken from R. Kent Weaver and William T, Dickens, Looking Before We Leap: Sociat

‘Science and Welfare Reform (Washington, D.C: The Brookings Institution, 1995) pp. 36-1. Figures are based on

the work of LaDonna Pavet ofthe Urban lstinte

2 Allfigues include mukipl spells of AFDC receipt which may be imeerapted by periods when the family isnot 09
‘AFDC.


157

19, William Kristol, "The Future of Conservatism: In the United States,” The American
Enterprise, 5.4 (July/August 1994): 37

20. Charles Murray, In Pursuit of Happiness and Good Government, (San Francisco: Institute for
Contemporary Studies, 1994) p. 99

21, Gertrude Himmelfarb, Poverty and Compassion, (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1991) p. 389.

22. George Liebmann, "Back to the Maternity Home," The American Enterprise,
January/February 1995, vol. 6, no. 1, p. 5S.

23. US. President. Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States. Washington, D.C.: Office
‘of the Federal Register, National Archives and Records Service, John F. Kennedy, 1962, p. 103.

24, Joe Klein, “The Out-of-Wedlock Question," Newsweek, December 13, 1993, p. 37.

25, Rebecca Maynard, ed., "Building Self-Sufficiency Among Welfare-Dependent Teenage
Parents: Lessons from the Teenage Parent Demonstration,” Mathematica Policy Research, Inc.,
June 1993, p. 46

26, Charles Murray, In Pursuit of Happiness and Good Government, (San Francisco: Institute for
Contemporary Studies, 1994) p. 190,

27. David W. Murray and Dave Kopel, “The Welfare Factor in Social Decay.” St. Louis Post-
Dispatch, May 5, 1995,

28, Gertrude Himmelfarb, Poverty and Compassion, (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1991) p. 3
29. Charles Murray, “Catastrophe Now,” The New York Times, November 14, 1995.

30 Robert A. Sirico, “Escape from the Welfare Trap,” Washington Times, September 1, 1995,


57

Figure 3: School Readiness of Children of Unmarried Mothers in the United States:
Accomplishments at Age 4

Children born to:
Mi Unmarried mothers E¥3 or more risk factors [] Married mothers

Identifies colors m%
by name

Recognizes 52%

most letters 59%

Counts to 20 56%

or higher 1%

to read or

teads stories 8%

Writes 62%
own name

87%

13%

Percent of 4-year-old children not yet in kindergarten

‘Source: Zill,N., Colas, M, West J, Hauaken, E.G. (1995), Approsching Kindergarten: A Look
st Preschoolers in the United States, U.S, Department of Education, National Center for Education
‘Statics (NCES 95-280). Washington, DC.


23

phasis either on reducing out-of-wedlock births or on increasing
marriage. In doing that, it focuses on the least effective means for
reducing poverty and increasing children’s well being.

I think that even more striking than that are the social con-
sequences on these children that are born out of wedlock. We find
that a child being born out of wedlock and raised in a single-parent
home triples the probability that that child will have emotional and
behavioral problems, even when compared to other children who
are poor.

Being born out of wedlock and raised without a father in the
home triples the rate in which a girl will engage in teenage sexual
activity and all the harmful consequences that flow from that.
Being raised in a single-parent home and spending a long period
of time on welfare can decrease a child’s IQ by up to 24 percentage
points. That is research from CBO Director, Dr. June O'Neill.

Finally, being raised in a single-parent home, even holding all
other social variables constant, doubles or triples the probability
that a young girl will go on, herself, and have a child out of wed-
lock. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, being born out of wed-
lock and raised in a single-parent home doubles or triples the prob-
ability that a young boy is going to be involved in crime.

This is the most important problem facing our society. The bill
that was passed by Congress took several small, but significant
positive steps to deal with this issue. Unfortunately, the President
has vetoed that bill. I would ask that in any subsequent legislation
that you take an even stronger effort to deal with this problem be-
cause it is the most important problem facing our children.

Thank you.

{The prepared statement and attachments follow:]


144

Mr. Stark. Your suspicion is that they are apt to be unmarried
and perhaps, unfortunately, very young people.

am——

Ms. BRowN. Well, actually let me just clarify that. I think this
issue of very young, people slip between nonmarital births and teen
births as though they were one and the same. A number of wit-
nesses have pointed out repeatedly this afternoon that only one-
third or less of births to single women are teenage women.

We seem to think that——

Mr. Stark. Say that again?

Ms. BRown. if you put all the babies in the room who have a sin-
gle mother, less than 30 percent are teenage mothers. These are
women in their twenties, also in their thirties, principally in their
twenties. Teen childbearing is not the same as single women hav-
ing babies. There is an overlap but they are not synonymous.

Mr. Stark. What you are suggesting is that less than one-third
are of out-of-wedlock births?

Ms. Brown. That is right.

Mr. Stark. Are with mothers under 20?

Ms. Brown. That is correct, and let me give you——

Chairman SHAW. Could I ask you a question?

Mr. STarK. Sure.

Chairman SHAW. Do you have the statistics as to the age of the
mother at the time of the birth of the first child? Because obviously
a mother, you could have less than one-third if a mother was a
teenager when she had her first child she was in her twenties
when she had her second. So, that could prove your point right
there. I am just wondering, in fact, I am surprised that the statistic
you gave is as high as a third.

The question is, what percent of first child births are born to a
teenage mom?

Ms. BROWN. I want to get you the precise number, and there are
people in this room who have it, but your point is well taken. We
do not just focus on first births. The issue is if the mother is 28
phen, she has her third, how old was she when she had her first

irth?

There are two reasons to be concerned about adolescent child-
bearing. Not only that first birth, but also what sort of a sequence
it sets off. You are absolutely right about that. It is a major issue
but I think it is important to clarify that it is not just teenagers
in this country who are having trouble managing their fertility. It
is women in their twenties and their partners, and even in their
thirties and forties. Seventy-seven percent of pregnancies among
women 40 and over, are unintended. It is not just teenagers.
mabe stakes are particularly high for teenagers, but it is not just

em.

Mr. STARK. I guess my next question is—I do not mean to be fa-
cetious, Mr. Chairman—but wouldn’t it be more difficult to sell ab-
stinence to a person over 20 who had already bitten the apple, so
to speak?

I could see trying it with 10- and 12-year-olds who have yet to
have their first encounter. It is difficult for me to remember when
I might have been a good subject for this. I am not sure that absti-
nence is a very useful approach to what I would consider for an


90

As teenagers, they are victims of an environment that, because
their parents are not paying attention to them, because their boy-
friends are going to leave them unless they have sex, or because
of sexual abuse.

Most of those youngsters having sex are being pushed into sex
by older guys. Seventy-seven percent in a California study.
Seventy-seven percent of the girls having sex, and I think it was
below the 10th grade, or something like that, were having sex with
people outside of high school.

It is a big job. I think we can do it. If we do not do it, we are
going to end up with an STD epidemic, or an HIV epidemic, just
like in countries that have had that epidemic longer than we have.

A third of the whole population infected with HIV. That is the
direction we are heading.

Mr. COLLINS. The lady’s time is up.

We appreciate this panel’s testimony.

Chairman SHAW. Let me, if I can, just inquire, just a moment,
of Dr. MclIlhaney.

I was interested in your testimony, about something that I have
not heard before, and that is a question of the increased instances
of venereal disease among sexually active youngsters as opposed to
the adult population.

I do not think that word is out, at least I had not gotten it, and
I think probably most of the Members of the Committee were prob-
ably surprised to hear that.

If the CDC, Center for Disease Control, were to approach this
problem like that of other diseases, what would be the steps that
we could take to combat it?

In other words, what can we do now to get that word out, that
people are really putting their whole reproductive future in danger
as well as the danger, of course, of early pregnancy?

Dr. McILHANEY. Well, I think that first, the ‘Cpe and medical
professionals need to state the issue as I have stated it, and I think
that we will see that happen.

If the medical people will state this, as it exists—and that is ba-
sically what our organization is dedicated to, is to bring the issue
before medical organizations, to say, look, what has happened in
the past has not worked in preventing these diseases. The epidemic
is raging. It really is raging.

I mean, it is a crisis. It is a crisis that is basically—you know,
it is tearing at me, personally, to see what is happening to patients
I have taken care of through the years, enough to quit a practice
that has been very successful, and get involved in this, full time,
to basically bring this issue before the medical organizations.

I think the CDC should institute policy that points out especially
the vulnerability of young people. These statistics I have shown
you, if you start looking at your newspaper or information from
CDC, you will see these numbers there all the time.

It is just that they have not decided to do something about it,
and it is your children, and it is our grandchildren that are being
affected by this.

Chairman SHAW. My grandchildren, too, I am afraid.

Dr. MCILHANEY. Yes.


44

Table 1
Polling Data on Welfare Reform
‘Question: nee eas of poor. sna pregant woman. who do yu dns best able to hep her
conomiealy. moony. and phyaealy dunng and ae het Bre aney?
Faryad fen ox
‘Aretpous or norteigou chirty 2x
Goverment wear progres lox
Dont row “

‘Question: De you beeverecplets of government walie programs should have to wor for
{her Denis, or should they noe

Should have to work 90%
Shad et have 0 werk ”
Don't now *

‘Question: Where are enough Jobs fora wear recipients who are require to wot, wich ofthe
‘Slowing diferer: pes of welae recent do you think shoul be required to go wo work st ~

Faners wih dependent chan 16%
Marmers of noo! ged encren mx
Mothers of pre-scheelciren *
Dont know TM

‘Quenton: And fis a wh do you ble shouldbe em be required go 2 wor?

Famers wah dependent chien 2%
‘others of choot aged oberen x
Mesers of pre-scholchiren ox
Don't now ra

‘Question: Do you strony favor, somewhat fvor, somewhat oppors. oF sroney oppose
craig wire eter ney wre ech fs te ad ot oct

Strongly vor ncreasng
Somewhat favor resting =
Somewhat oppose increasing ex,
Svongly oppose creasing wx
Dontinom *

‘Querdon And sing about Amari’ ware problems wich of te alowng two goa o
you tink would be easier to reach

Gexang single motners wth fw jb sit rd

‘to Jobs that wal pay them enc to

suppor themeaives and th chicren

a

Gating young people to delay having ox

Conde nt they are abe to support themeehes

ard atenty

Don't now *

Seura: Far Reach Court E00 dtc tits contest VterCaraeer Reh re be 95,



85

Dr. ZILL. In line with what you are saying, there is a survey that
is done every year of high school seniors, called Monitoring The
Future. One of the questions they ask is, how acceptable is it for
young people to have a child outside of marriage.

A very substantial proportion of American adolescents think that
it is acceptable, it is not particularly bad.

Changing that attitude needs to have some work done on it. Part
of what Dr. Furstenberg and I are saying, is that just changing
welfare is not going to change that attitude.

Mr. ENSIGN. I agree. I agree with that.

Dr. ZILL. That attitude is held by young people who are not poor.

Mr. ENSIGN. I agree with that, and I do not think that welfare
is the only thing that causes illegitimacy. I do think it is a contrib-
uting factor.

I do think that this whole welfare mentality, because—and you
mentioned, getting back to this worth thing, Dr. Furstenberg—that
if you just provide the jobs, that these people have the work ethic.

J would submit to you that they have lost it because of the wel-
fare mentality in their culture. They have grown up with this cul-
ture.

The best example I can give is Tunica, Mississippi, that now has
riverboat gambling. In Tunica, Mississippi, initially, they all went
to work. Unemployment rates just bottomed out.

After 3, 4, 5 months of people working, they realized welfare is
easier, “I do not want to work.” The unemployment rates have gone
back up.

It is not that People have moved in and displaced those jobs.
Those jobs are now being replaced by people actually from Mem-
phis and other places, because those people are willing to work,
where the people in Tunica are not willing to work because it was
easier just to sit back on the welfare roles.

I come from southern Nevada. If you do not work in southern
Nevada, and you are an able body, it is because you do not want
to work.

I mean, the jobs are absolutely available there, the same as they
are in Tunica, Mississippi.

If we had an incentive for people, and it is called a time limit
on welfare. In other words, after 2 years you have to go to work
or you lose your welfare benefits.

Do you think that that might start changing the culture of this
whole thing?

Dr. FURSTENBERG. I do not, and I think that we have a time
limit that is in existence right now, that most of the people that
go on welfare get in the labor force. Many of them hold jobs. Most
of them hold jobs. Most of them are working. Most of them do not
have a welfare mentality.

Mr. ENsIGN. Dr. Furstenberg, the welfare system is destroying
people across this country.

Dr. FURSTENBERG. You can insist on that——

Mr. ENSIGN. It is destroying the inner-city families.

Chairman SHaAw. I have an idea that we will not reach an agree-
ment here between Dr. Furstenberg and Dr. Ensign, so time has
expired.

Mr. Rangel.


62

Table 1. Typical Family Circumstances of Children Under 18 Years of Age Living

with ied Mothers, Divorced and in Two Parent United States 1994
CHMLDREN CHILDREN CHILDREN
(WITH NEVER- with with
MARRIED DIVORCED Two
‘MOTHERS ‘MOTHERS PARENTS:
[Number of childre in population ‘6,000,000 5,199,000 48,088,000
Al children 9% 8% 0%
Black children 30% 10% 38
Hispanic children u% % oe
White, non-Hispanic children 3% 8% 9%
(Childrea living with mothers only 31% 368 -
INCOME & POVERTY
‘Average family income (median) 39.348 si7gst saan
Below official poverty line on 388 2%
PARENTAGE & EDUCATION
‘Average age of pareot (median) » 6 8
‘Average educational atainmeot ‘Less thaa one Ove year of More than one
‘of parent (mesian) of college college year of college
arent hat graduated from high school on oy 36%
Parent has graduated from college m 14% 2%
PARENTAL EMPLOYMENT.
Parent working or looking for work so% 16% 9%
Parent working fullsime 28 1% 0%
Both parents working. - - 7%
Pareneal unemployment rate 22% 10.08 49%
EAMILY COMPOSITION
‘Average numberof brothers or
sisters in household (mean) One Ove One
= Only one ono sibs in howsebold oe 65% 08
= Three oF more sibs in household 18% 1% 15%
‘Adults other than parents
{typically present in houschokd None Nose None
= Adult elauive present 308 21% tom
~ Non-telated adult present 16% mm 2%
EAMILY RESIDENCE
‘Most common area of residence (Contra city (56%) Suburbs (44%) Suburbs (53)
Residence typically owned or rented Rented (80%) Rented (54%) Owned (73%)

Source: US. Bureu of the Census, March 1994 Current Popeltion Survey, ealulated by N. Zl from data ables provided
bythe Mamane and Famy Branch, 1994


86

Mr. RANGEL. I thank the Chairman.

Dr. Rector, we have these hearings so that we, as nonexperts,
can make up our mind based on those that have done a lot of re-
search into these areas.

It has been my experience, however, that certain of these re-
search groups get reputations as being conservative research
groups, and then liberal research groups.

Notwithstanding the expertise of the research staff, it always
seemed to come to the same conclusions on most issues as to how
the not-for-profit research group is. So that, if you say someone
came from the ADL, you know, they would not be shouting a lot
about illegitimacy.

They would talk about out-of-wedlock births, education, no gam-
bling, and things like that. If you go to someone that is considered
conservative, they would say cut the welfare, and you would cut il-
legitimacy, and things of that nature.

Do you agree that certain groups get a reputation, it really does
not make any difference what the issue is, that you and I can guess
9 out of 10 times, what the conclusion would be with most of the
social problems like immigration, affirmative action, longer jail sen-
tences, capital punishment, or capital gains tax cuts?

I mean, we can kind of figure out what the testimony would be
based on the group.

Mr. Rector. I think, unfortunately, that is often the case. I
would say, however, if you look at the list of studies that I have
put in——

Mr. RANGEL. I am going to get to that.

Mr. RECTOR. Yes.

Mr. RANGEL. No, I am going to get to that. If that is so—

Mr. Rector. There are actually several notable liberals there
who actually have found the effect I am talking about.

Mr. RANGEL. No, no. No, no.

Mr. Rector. You do not like my policies at all.

Mr. RANGEL. No, no. Listen. Let us stick on where we agree, be-
cause I have the same problems. I am a lawyer, and lawyers do not
care what the moral question is, how much money you have, and
whatever the problem is, they will be able to be flexible enough to
reach the conclusion that best satisfies their client.

In this particular case, I guess you, as a professional, would
think your client is the Heritage Foundation.

Mr. REcTOR. No. The Heritage Foundation certainly does not, in
any sense, dictate the conclusions of my research. I would simply
say——

Mr. RANGEL. I am just asking.

Mr. RECTOR. No.

Mr. RANGEL. The answer is no.

Like Dr. Furstenberg, I would hardly think he would be a can-
didate to be hired by the Heritage Foundation.

Mr. REcTOR. I probably would not be a candidate to be on his
faculty either, so I do not think that gets us very far.

Mr. RANGEL. Either you professionally had your ideas, and they
hired you, or you knew what they were looking for, and you
reached the conclusions.


121

Mr. RANGEL. You do good work, but will you call a child being
born outside of the law a child?

__Ms. SHELDON. We are discussing in public policy that illegit-
imacy——

Mr. RANGEL. I am with you. I am a lawyer.

Ms. SHELDON. Part of the problem, with all due respect, Con-
gressman, is that there is no longer any shame, there is no longer
anything right and wrong.

You know what the problem is, that children suffer, the children
suffer because of their parents actions.

Mr. RANGEL. Do not they suffer——

Ms. SHELDON. They suffer not only because of whatever name
you want to put on it, or do not want to put on it. I have seen the
total complete and utter destruction of the children, of their par-
ents, because of the actions, and——

Mr. RANGEL. I agree with you.

Ms. SHELDON [continuing]. It starts at birth and it continues on.

Mr. RANGEL. I am just asking do you think it helps a child to
be stigmatized as being illegitimate?

Ms. SHELDON. All the kids that I work with—I do not say, that
“you are illegitimate.” We talk about a variety of issues.

Mr. RANGEL. I am just trying to bring Christ’s teaching——

Ms. SHELDON. Let us come back to jobs. You mentioned jobs also.
Jobs are also very important. We believe that we need to talk about
more than just jobs.

We need to bring back into the issue the debate of, as I talked
about, behavioral policy. What does that mean?

Mr. RANGEL. I thought you were going to say education and
training.

Ms. SHELDON. Well, no, let me go on.

Mr. RANGEL. You said more than jobs, because you cannot work
in this country unless you know how to do something.

Ms. SHELDON. You are a great lawyer, but let me just also say
that we do believe that education is important, and that is why we
believe, that school choice is vital, and that parents should have a
right to put their children in any school that they choose.

Unfortunately, your colleagues, including Maxine Waters, think
it is OK for them to send their own children to private school, but
do not want to allow these poor inner-city children the same oppor-
tunity. Or Ted Kennedy.

Mr. RANGEL. What would Maxine Waters and I have in common?
She is from California.

Ms. SHELDON. I said a Member of Congress.

Mr. RANGEL. You mention her.

Ms. SHELDON. A Member of Congress, Maxine Waters, is some-
one that we have known for years. Maxine, Ted Kennedy. There
are other people that choose to send——

Mr. RANGEL. Oh, Ted, he is Catholic, and I am Catholic. I can
understand that. Ycur search for Maxine, you know, surprised me.
{Laughter.]

Ms. SHELDON. Bill Clinton. There are a whole host of people.

Mr. RANGEL. Well, you certainly are getting a broader range.
{Laughter.]


124

Different makeups of families are on welfare. Mothers, grand-
mothers, daughters. I would really encourage that there be some
real significant study done to address the issue of generational wel-
fare dependence.

Mr. ENGLISH. Ms. Stirrup, anticipating, if we were to pass in
Congress an opt-out policy with regard to the family cap, how
many States do you think, knowing the national picture, would you
expect to opt out?

Ms. Stirrup. I could not give you an exact number, but the good
news is that if you were to include that policy, all 50 legislatures
would have to discuss the issue, if, for example, they wanted to opt

out.

You could be sure, that for those States that had the debate and
felt strongly enough, that opting out was what they wanted to do.
They would at least have to have that debate. It is difficult for me
to assess how many would do that, but the important thing is to
have the debate.

Mr. ENGLISH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. My time has expired,
but I am deeply grateful to all of the panelists for taking the time
to come here, and provide a variety of perspectives.

Thank you.

Chairman SHAW. Thank you, Mr. English.

Dr. Ensign.

Dr. ENSIGN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Sister, I just want to address one of your—we were talking about
the studies and the correlations. Some people say it is causal effect.
Some people say it is just more of a correlation. Some people say
that there is definitely no cause between welfare, and out-of-
wedlock births.

Let me just ask a common sense type of a question, without get-
ting into studies or statistics, or anything like that.

If you have a culture that has developed, where things become
acceptable in that culture—premarital sex becomes acceptable, wel-
fare becomes acceptable, not having the father around becomes ac-
ceptable. In other words, if someone gets pregnant, they are just
going to have the child, because everybody else they see around
gets pregnant, and has a child.

Do you think that may be a factor within the whole welfare men-
tality, the whole welfare culture.

Is it possible, that that has been a very significant contributing
factor, because of this whole welfare mentality that can develop?

Sister McGrapy. I have to say, I am not sure that I understand
the concept of welfare mentality. We get girls who come to our Cov-
enant Houses, and the usual story is this.

“I was not happy at home, I went to live with my boyfriend. I
thought the way to hang on to him was to have his baby. I got
pregnant, and he took off.” Or, “I had the baby, and he abandoned
me.

Here they are, without much education, without a job, without
anybody to take care of —

Mr. ENSIGN. OK. Before you go on, let me paint it this way.

Do you think that—and what I mean by the welfare culture, to
further define that, is because there used to be quite a lot of nega-
tives associated with being a single parent—but there used to be


31

“associate with dei Jeam definitions favorable to and tly,
violate the law."

‘These academic findings on the relationship between crime and illegitimacy are
‘confirmed in government studies. For example, the U.S. Department of Justice reported
in 1987 that 70 percent of juveniles in state custody did nat live with both parents while
srowing up, and almost three-quarters of those lived primarily in a single-parent family.”"
‘The National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY) presents a nearly identical
picture. In general, young boys mised in single parent or blended families (where
‘one parent is a step-parent) were four and a half times more likely to engage in
criminal activity and end up in jail than were boys living in intact families with
iological parents Even after controlling for race and differences in mental
ability, boys in single parent or blended homes were still twice as likely 19
‘engage in crime. Family income, in contrast, was not shown to be a factor.”

‘WELFARE PROMOTES ILLEGITIMACY

‘Three separate factors have been proposed to explain the decline in marriage
‘nd the rise in illegitimacy. These are: 1) economic changes leading to decline in
‘earnings and jobs for low skilled males in certzin pats of the country thereby,
reducing their capacity as bread winners; 2) changes in cultural norms and values
concerning non-marital sexual activity and child bearing, and; 3 ) the impact of the
‘welfare system in subsidizing out of wedlock births and single parenthood.

Any change as huge and momentous as the disappearance of marriage in society
will not be driven solely by one factor. In truth, each ofthe factors mentioned above bas
‘Played some role in the rise of illegitimacy. However, the evidence seems to point to
‘welfare asthe factor which has played the largest role as well as the one which most
susceptible to corrective action.

‘Despite repeated claims tothe contrary the overwhelming majority of scientific
studies conducted in the ast decade and a haf ink conceming between welfare and
illegitimacy confirm common sense, economic and psychological theory; they show that
‘welfare promotes illegitimacy and discourages marriage. Many show that welfare has a
‘Si pte fling ro ngincy Sey, The owing
is alist thirteen studies which have found a relationship between higher welfare benefits and
1. Research by the Director of the Congressional Budget office, Dr. June O'Neill's has

found thet, holding constant a wide range of other variables such as income, parental

‘education, and urban and neighborhood setting, a 50 perceat increase in the monthly

‘value of AFDC and Food Stamp benefits led to a43 percent increase in the number of
out-of- wedlock births. Hill, M. Anne, and O'Neil, June, "Underclass Behaviors in the
United States: Measurement and Analysis of Determinants", Center for the Study of
‘Business and Government, Baruch College, February 1992.

2. Research by Mikhail Bemstam of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University shows
‘that childbearing by young unmarried women may increase by 6 percent in response 10
‘810 percent increase in monthly welfare ‘among blacks the aay be as
‘igh as 10 percent. Bemstam, Mikhail S., “Malthus and Evolution of the Welfare State:
‘An Essay on the Second invisible Hand, Parts 1 and II", working papers E-88-41,42,
Palo Alto, CA, Hoover Institution, 1988.

5 Ross L, Matsueds and Keren Heimer, “Race, Family Sucre and Delingueocy: A Test of Differetial
‘Associ nd Sat Cx! Theos” Anaran Sail ave. Vol. $2197. pp.

21 Kea Becks Sut A. Kio, Survey of Youth in Cast, 1987 US. Deprtnent of ste,
Buea of Posie Satins, Spuial Rana, September 1988,
Foundation researc based on NLSY data from 1979 through 1992. Criminal activity was
‘measured by residence inal.


156

the degree of suffering that is occurring now. Proponents of the status quo say
that only the federal government has the resources to maintain existing welfare
programs. But perhaps existing welfare programs should not be maintained
precisely because they have caused so much duress for the children and adults
mired in dependency. The degree of Senator Moynihan’s despair is an argument
that we can do no less than search for a radically different approach to welfare.
The time to begin is now

ENDNOTES

1. Ann Blackman and James Carey, "We Go After the Real Source of This Problem" (interview
with President Clinton), Time, June 20, 1994: 3.

2. Quoted in William J. Bennett, "The Best Welfare Reform: End It," Washington Post, March
30, 1994: A 19,

3, James Q. Wilson, “The Rediscovery of Character: Private Virtue and Public Policy,” The
Public Interest 81 (Fall 1985); 15.

4. Marshall Ingwerson, "A Clinton Aide Cites Unwed Teen Births,” Christian Science Monitor,
June 17, 1994: 3.

5. A study released in June 1994 by the Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation found
‘that 82% of the 2,300 young mothers participating in workfare demonstration programs were sill
‘on welfare 18 months after they entered the program. Although 40% found paid work, many of
them quit because of job dissatisfaction and/or work-family role strain. In addition, more than
half became pregnant out-of-wedlock afer beginning the program,

6. David Willetts, "The Future of Conservatism: In Britain," The American Enterprise, 5.4
luly/August 1994): 28.

7. Quoted in William J. Bennett, “Reflections on the Moynihan Report,” The At
Enterprise, 6.1 January/February 1995): 30.

8. Charles Murray, "What To Do About Welfare," Commentary, 98.6 (December 1994); 27.

9. Quoted in Matthew Robinson, “Can the U.S. Afford tllegitimacy?,” Investor's Business Daily,
October 16, 1995: A2

10. Nicholas Eberstadt, “Prosper
(Ganuary/February 1996): 23-24,

rous Paupers and Affluent Savages,” Society, 33.2

11. Charles Murray, "The Coming White Underclass,” Wall Street Journal, October 29, 1993.
12, Research by Inwin Garfinkel and Sara S. McLanahan at the University of Wisconsin, cited in
“Matthew Robinson, “Can the U.S. Afford Iilegitimacy?,” Investor's Business Daily, October 16,
1995: A2,

13, Robert Rector, “Why Congress Must Reform Welfare,” The Heritage Foundation
Backgrounder, no. 1063 (December 4, 1995): 8

14. George Liebmann, “The Compassionate Paternalism of Mary Richmond," The American
Enterprise, 6.1 lanvary/February 1995) 54

15, Gertrude Himmelfarb, Poverty and Compassion, (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1991) 8

16, Michael Novak, “The Crisis of the Welfare State: Ethics and Economics," Center for Policy
Studies, London, July 1993; 11

17. Steven Waldman, "Welfare Booby Traps," Newsweek, Dec. 12, 1994; 35

18, Joe Klein, “The Out-of-Wedlock Question,” Newsweek, December 13, 1993. 37,


7

Chairman SuHaw. Mrs. Kennelly.

Mrs. KENNELLY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

First, let me thank you for convening this hearing. This is a
problem that vexes us all, we all are looking for better answers. I
also thank you for bringing so many people who are interested in
this situation together today.

For the past 50 years, out-of-wedlock births have'increased dra-
matically. In this country and others around the globe, this is the
situation. This a trend that we cannot ignore. We need to look be-
yond this basic fact and understand more about why it is happen-
ing. This hearing gives us that opportunity.

‘When you take the time to look more closely, you learn some
startling facts. As several of our witnesses today will tell us, many
of the myths and stereotypes that seem to drive much of public pol-
icymaking today are misleading. If we simply accept the stereo-
types, we would have to conclude that most out-of-wedlock births
are to minority teenagers on welfare. What are the facts?

In the Past 50 years, the rate of nonmarital childbearing has
been steady for teenagers. As one of our witnesses, Sister Mary
Rose, will point out many of the single women giving birth are not
poor, have completed high school, are not teenagers, and do not get
welfare. There is no consistent evidence—and each of us here today
who have worked on this problem over the years can cite various
evidences and various reports—that the decision to have a child out
of wedlock has a tie with what one is getting on welfare.

In fact, I will quote one of our Nation’s finest researchers who
says the best social science research suggests that welfare pro-
grams are not among the primary reasons for the rising number of
out-of-wedlock births. Dr. Frank Furstenberg will report that in the
past 30 years, the so-called illegitimacy rate has risen only among
whites. Among African-Americans, the rate has declined. Better
education and employment opportunities for men are linked to a
higher proportion of births taking place within marriage.

Our task this afternoon is to learn facts like these. Even more
importantly, to start discussing constructive solutions. My bottom
line is this; it is in the best interest for a child to be raised in a
loving and nurturing family that includes both parents. The ques-
tion becomes, what outcome can Federal and State governments be
reasonably expected to bring about?

I also hope this hearing might offer some explanations for three
unanswered questions. First, if welfare is fueling the growth in out-
of-wedlock births, then why do so many of the States with the low-
est AFDC, Aid to Families With Dependent Children, payment lev-
els have some of the highest out-of-wedlock birth rates? Second,
why have out-of-wedlock births increased as the relative value of
welfare benefits have gone down over the last 20 years? Third, why
do other nations, with more generous welfare benefits, have lower
teenage birth rates?

I thank you for letting me make this statement, Mr. Shaw, I
would like to mention that I am also speaking for Mr. Ford who
is on his way.

Chairman SHAW. Thank you very much.

We have a number of Members to testify.

Mr. Hutchinson, do you want to come to the table?


139

They need knowledge, and then they need support to use that
knowledge. If they do know about condoms they need to be under
the guidance of health professionals. If they are going to use con-
traceptives they need to be guided by health professionals.

Young men and young women think everybody is doing it. They
need role models their own age. We actually hired and trained 60
11th and 12th graders to come down to the 8th grade. These are
young people who believe it is not appropriate for young people to
hhave sex. They come down and actually teach young people skills
to resist social and peer pressures to become sexually involved.

We also give young people information about how to protect
themselves but these young men and women are such powerful role
models that after we added that program we found that young peo-
ple who did not have the program were five times more likely to
become sexually involved in the cighth grade, and at the end of the
ninth grade there was still a one-third reduction in sexual involve-
ment and there were actually fewer teen pregnancies, just by see-
ing that there were kids who could be successful and popular in the
teen world and not become sexually involved. Providing them with
role models is a tremendously important thing to do.

I remember there was one young man who came to us who said
that he had actually had sex before we came to the eighth grade
with the team leaders. He said I was going to sit in the back of
the room and nobody was going to tell me what I was going to do.
I was just going to talk with my buddies and I was going to be real
cool. Then he said, but the team leaders were so engaging, we just
had to talk, and finally, as my buddies and I talked outside after
school, we just decided that what you were saying made sense. I
have not had sex since. He said, I couldn’t wait to become an 11th
or 12th grader so I could do for somebody else what was done for

me.

Ultimately what do we need to do? We need to help young people
understand throughout life that they will either abstain or protect
themselves and help them to do both. We must give them knowl-
edge and information to do that in ways that are meaningful to
them. In other words, give them messages in ways that youth can
understand and accept them, in this very sexually provocative
world that we give them to live in. That has been mentioned
before.

We have to give them support to do that. Programs that support
abstinence, and if they choose not to abstain because young people
exist all along a continuum, programs to support protection.

Finally, I put this in my Prepared statement, we must recognize
that the problem is not a welfare culture problem that has
discussed here today but, essentially, it is a total cultural problem.
There are issues having to do with not recognizing and not adjust-
ing the fact that young people are becoming fertile today so much
earlier. Half of all girls now become fertile before the age of 12.
That is unprecedented. Boys 1 year later. We have not adjusted to
this change in biology, and because of that we have a problem.

Two, we have to recognize that poverty and racism do exist in
this country, and do affect choices that young people make. Three,
that we have enormously changed our attitudes in parenting. We
do not exult parenting in this culture. Until we can make parents


147

is very important that we stress to young people all the
consequences.

That is why I say no one operates intelligently in a vacuum, and
we have to give young people this kind of information but not from
a point of view of fear, but from a point of view of with knowledge
we can empower them to make better choices.

Chairman Suaw. Dr. Howard, I want to focus on part of your tes-
timony with regard to the fertility of women dropping and of men,
too. Is that global? Second, what is causing that?

Dr. Howarb. Some of the best thinking says that it is related to
nutrition. In other words, our improved lifestyles and choices are
an ability to protect ourselves and that is the reason that fertility
is dropping, particularly among Westernized countries.

Chairman SHAW. Is that at all economic levels? I would guess
that somebody from a middle-class or a higher income group would
probably have a better nutrition program than somebody who is
living in poverty?

Dr. Howarp. Well, I think just generally nutrition across the
board has been changing.

Chairman SHaw. Is this in other countries, too?

Dr. Howarb. Yes, it is happening in other countries.

Chairman SHAW. How about countries without television?

I am curious because I am just wondering about the bombard-
ment that these kids are jetting on matters from television. I think
Mr. Collins was talking about this a few moments ago. My mother
broke her hip, and for the last few weeks she has been staying at
our house down in Florida, the lady taking care of her watches the
soaps, as I walk through the room, and this is during the time that
the kids are home, I have seen things on television that I do not
see at 8 or 9 o’clock at night. I am just very curious about whether
the children having this available regularly to them—and many of
them watch the soaps I am sure—whether this and other things
that they can see through other entertainment could be affecting
them, could be responsible for stimulating them early and, there-
fore, contributing to early fertility?

Dr. Howarb. Well, I really think it really does relate more to
better nutrition. I think a good example of that is that there was
a period around the sixties and early seventies when we had an in-
flux of Puerto Rican women coming to New York. The cesarean
rate just zoomed, and the reason was because of the better nutri-
tion they get in New York. They grew such bigger babies that their
pelvic capacity just could not deliver those babies. Nutrition can

ave a tremendous role to play on reproductive health.

Chairman SHAW. Not television?

Dr. Howarb. Not television.

Ms. SULLIVAN. We cover that in our questionnaire, do the movies
and television have an influence on your behavior, and it is very
interesting to see the movement because at the beginning the kids
will say, oh, no, it doesn’t really. At the end of the program, they
realize from analyzing and discussing it they see very clearly that
it does influence them.

Dr. Howarp. I would agree with that. Kids say they do it be-
cause they see it on television but I just do not think that it bio-
logically makes a difference.


153

Out-of-wedlock births, moreover, remain a strong predictor of poverty. A recent
U.S. Census Bureau report on poverty found that the median household income
for women householders with no husband present is only $19,872. For black
‘Americans, the median single parent household -- which now represents the family
structure of 48% of all black families -- is less than $12,000 per year. Married
black families, by contrast, receive a median income of $45,041. Both Republican
William Bennett and Democrat William Galston have noted that, according to the
Census Bureau, the family income of black two-parent families is almost two-and-
a-half times the family income of white single-parent families. Children of white
single-parents are two-and-a-half times likelier to be living in poverty than children
in black two-parent families. Today’s major economic indicator, in other words, is
family stability ~ not race

Ina meticulously researched article in the January 6, 1996 issue of World
magazine, Robert Rector of the Heritage Foundation demonstrates that it is neither
easy to raise family income through welfare transfers nor historically true that
higher welfare benefits and broadened eligibility have improved children’s life
prospects, It is true, however, that unwed mothers are not only more likely to rely
on government to support their children, but are also more likely to spend years
dependent upon welfare, Because illegitimacy feeds both poverty and itself, we
cannot reasonably expect to address welfare dependency until we address
illegitimacy,

Charles Murray anticipated the problem in his 1988 book In Pursuit of Happiness
and Good Government. “The task," he concludes, “is not to devise a public
relations campaign to discourage single teenage girls from having babies, but to
neutralize whatever is impeding the age-old impulse of human beings to form
families."** Eliminating grants to unwed teenage mothers will be necessary, but
not sufficient, to restore the integrity of the family unit,

‘The primary argument is nor that women have babies just to get the dollars ~
although anecdotal evidence does exist to suggest that welfare checks can drive
fertility directly. ‘There is the story of a five-month-old girl named Ariel Hill who
‘was born on Christmas Eve 1992 and died a brutal death in May of 1993. She
lived with her 22-year-old mother and four other siblings in a squalid unit of public
housing, The family’s chief source of income was welfare. One day, her mother
grew tired of her screaming and dumped her in a sink of scalding water as
punishment. She died, weighing less than seven pounds. She had not been fed in
days. When investigators examined the apartment, they found a scrap of paper
‘with the name of each child and the dollar amount of welfare that child earned for
the mother.

In ll probability, however, Ariel Hill’s mother is an aberration. The chief concern
is simply that welfare enables men and women to indulge in irresponsible behavior
by shielding them from the natural economic consequences of their actions —-
actions that often do issue in tragic results for the children who are born of their
thoughtlessness. “By lessening the costs attached to unwed reproduction,”
anthropologist David Murray argues, “welfare subsidizes choices that interfere
with future opportunity. ... A monthly increase in cash is usually not enough to
‘cause’ someone to bear a child. But by increasing the benefits and reducing the
burdens of a choice that is desirable on other grounds, welfare becomes a catalyst
in the timing and frequency of the decision. How could it be otherwise?” —
unless one assumes that welfare recipients are less likely to be rational judges of
their own self-interest.

Fealty to the premise that all individuals are morally autonomous creatures argues
against such a premise, And the migration of welfare recipients to states with


46

Chairman SHAW. Thank you, Mr. Rector.
Dr. Zill.

STATEMENT OF NICHOLAS ZILL, PH.D., VICE PRESIDENT AND
DIRECTOR, CHILD AND FAMILY STUDIES, WESTAT, INC.,
ROCKVILLE, MARYLAND

Dr. Z1LL. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I have prepared a rather lengthy lecture for you in the written
testimony. I will have to try and condense it, but I hope that the
full testimony can be put in the record.

Chairman Suaw. It certainly will for you and for all of the panel-
ists.

Dr. ZILL. The family situations in which American children are
born, cared for, and raised have changed dramatically over the last
30 years. As has been discussed, one of the most striking changes,
and probably the one that has generated the greatest public con-
cern, is the wth in the numbers of children who are born to un-
married mothers.

The reasons for the enormous increase since the sixties have
been hotly debated. What I would like to focus on here is not the
reasons for the increase, but the consequences for the economic
well-being of the family that is so formed and for the development
and well-being of the children involved.

Over the last decade and a half, social scientists have generated
a considerable volume of solid research on family composition and
children’s well-being. Although there has been considerably more
research on the effects of divorce than on those of nonmarital up-
bringing, there is a growing body of evidence on the latter topic,
as well.

The more recent research has made use of data from epidemio-
logical surveys and longitudinal studies based on large robability
samples of children, such as the National Survey of Children which
Frank Furstenberg and I have both worked on, the National Longi-
tudinal Survey of Y ‘outh, and the National Health Interview Survey
on Child Health.

What the findings of these studies consistently show is that in
our society the best thing for a child’s well-being is to be raised by
both biological parents, who live together in a reasonably harmo-
nious—but not necessarily a perfectly fulfilling—marriage.

Growing up in a single-parent family, a stepfamily and, indeed,
virtually any family type other than an intact two-parent family is
associated with poorer health, lower achievement and an increased
incidence of conduct and emotional problems in children. Only
when there are high levels of open ‘and persistent conflict between
parents does the two-parent family pose a hazard to children com-
parable to that connected with family disruption or lone parent-

This is not to say that all children from single-parent families
turn out badly or to deny that many single mothers are capable
and responsible parents who do admirable jobs of raising their chil-
dren in difficult circumstances. What I am talking about is a statis-
tical risk, not an inevitability.

Furthermore, there are several other factors that can ameliorate
or exacerbate the risk to the child. Factors such as parental com-


Provisions to Combat Rising Out-of-wedlock Birth Rates
Conference Report on H.R. 4
March 1996

Cash welfare block grant

= Creates a $127.6 billion cash welfare block grant for states to use to “prevent and reduce
the incidence of out-of-wedlock pregnancies,” among other purposes.

m Requires state plans to establish goals and take action to prevent and reduce the incidence
of out-of-wedlock pregnancies, with special emphasis on teenage pregnancies, and
establish numerical goals for reducing the illegitimacy ratio of the State for calendar
years 1996 through 2005,

= Provides additional grants for states that reduce out-of-wedlock birth rates without

increasing abortions (5% increases for reductions of one percentage point; 10% increases
for reductions of two or more percentage points).

Family cap
m= Allows states the flexibility to end the practice of increasing cash welfare benefits when
mothers on welfare have babies (20 states currently have applied for or are operating

family caps; under the new block grant, states can use family cap savings to pay for more
child care or child protection services or save funds for use in a recession).

Combatting teen pregnancy

= Allows state flexibility on limiting cash welfare for unmarried teens.

Requires teens to be in school and living at home or with an adult to receive assistance.

Allows states to use block grant funds to provide, or assist in locating, adult-supervised
living arrangements, such as second-chance homes, for teen mothers.

Added funds for abstinence education

= Provides $761 million for abstinence education,

E i , ‘

= Allows states to reduce cash welfare for families that include a child whose paternity has
not been established. As with the family cap and teen provisions, states have an incentive

to reduce benefits both to deter out-of-wedlock pregnancy and to save money for use
elsewhere.

National goals to prevent teen pregnancy
m= Within one year, the Secretary of Health and Human Services must implement a strategy

for preventing teenage pregnancies and assuring that 25 percent of U.S. communities have
teen pregnancy prevention programs in place.

ing of ‘ i f

= The Secretary of Health and Human Services must annually rank the five most and five
least successful states in reducing out-of-wedlock births.

C ional findi

= Includes section of findings on the crisis out-of-wediock births pose for children, families,
and the nation, which concludes: I is the sense of the Congress that prevention of out-of-
wedlock pregnancy and reduction in out-of-wediock birth are very important Government
interests and the policy contained in...this Act is intended to address the crisis.


40

‘The third liberal tenet is that higher welfare benefits and broadened eligibility will help
‘children and improve their success in later life. In certain limited cases, such as when
welfare is needed to eliminate serious malnutrition, welfare can help. But there is no evi-
dence that enlarging benefits and expanding enrollments in most U.S. welfare programs
will improve children's lives. While higher welfare payments and spending do not bene-
fit children directiy, they do increase dependence and illegitimacy, both of which have
devastating negative effects on child well-being. Thus, overall, welfare operates as a sys-
tem of organized, well-funded chitd abuse.

‘The available scientific evidence clearly refutes the liberal hypothesis that attempting
to raise family income through more generous welfare payments will benefit children.
For example, the average monthly value of welfare benefits (AFDC and food stamps
‘combined) varies between states. The conventional liberal assumption is that children on
welfare in states with lower benefit levels will be markedly worse off than children in
states with higher benefits. Children on AFDC in high benefit staes, according tothe the-
‘ory, should have improved cognitive ability when compared to children without access
to more generous welfare. However, recently published research by Congressional
Budget Office Director June O'Neill and Anne Hill of Queens College, City University
‘of New York, demonstrates that this theory is incorrect. O'Neill and Hill examined the
1Qs of young children who were long-term welfare dependents, having spent atleast half
of their lives on AFDC. Contrary to the expected theory, they found thatthe higher wel-
fare benefit did not improve children’s cognitive performance. The IQs of long-term wel-
fare-dependent children in low-beneft states were not appreciably different from those in
high benefit states

‘Moreover, this picture is overly optimistic. In restricting the sample to long-term de-
pendent children, the analysis ignores the effects of higher welfare benefits in encourag-
ing welfare enroliment and lengthening the time spent on welfare. O'Neill and Hill have
shown that a 50 percent increase in monthly AFDC and food stamp benefit levels will
lead to a 75 percent increase in the number of mothers with children enrolling in AFDC
and a 75 percent increase in the number of years spent on welfare.” Once the effects of
increased are included, it becomes clear that higher welfare benefits have a
decisively negative effect on children

‘Comparing children who were identical in social and economic factors such as race,
family structure, mothers’ IQ and education, family income, and neighborhood resi-
‘dence, Hill and O'Neill found that the more years a child spent on welfare, the lower the
child's 1Q. The authors make it clear that it is not poverty but welfare itself which has a
‘damaging effect on the child. Examining the young children (with an average age of five-
and--half), the authors found that those who had spent at least two months of each year
since birth on AFDC had cognitive abilities 20 percent below those who had received no
welfare, even after holding family income, race, parental 1Q, and other variables con-
stant’

5M. Anne Hill and June O'Neil, “Family Endowments and te Achievement of Young Children With Special
Reference to the Underclass." Journal of Human Resources, Fal 194, pp, 1090-1091

Determinants (New York: City University of New York, Baruch College, August 1993),


120

for a job, that statistically they will be less inclined to be irrespon-
sible, including pregnancy.

Is there anyone that would challenge that?

Because it is going unchallenged, I never understand why we
have all this welfare reform and no education.

Do you know there are some Christians in this Congress that
would say, that after a certain number of years, a mother of a child
should be cut off from Federal assistance if she is not working,
even if there are no jobs available and she is unemployable. These
are Christian people. They are mostly politicians, too, though.

Christians could never accept that, now, could we? That you
would penalize a child and a mother, when you know, statistically,
there are no jobs. We say you have got to stop somewhere.

Would a Christian support that? Pao not think so.

I would like to know, too, since I do not get hung up with this
religion thing too much. I was an altar boy, and very close to the
church and understood all of this business about birth, and I was
relatively clean before I became a lawyer.

Could you tell me what the miracle of birth of any child has to
do with whether that child is legitimate or illegitimate?

I mean, I understand all the law, but a miracle of God passing
on his image and likeness through the womb of a woman, made in
his image and likeness, and the child is born, and smiles are every-
where.

What part of that exercise is illegitimate?

The Christian Coalition, I thought, would have more experience
with this.

Ms. Stirrup. All I would say to that is it is not so much that
it is—that we are not trying to suggest that it is the child that is
illegitimate. I guess it is the fact that the child was born outside
of marriage, which, frankly, we find is in conflict with moral law
and God’s law, which says that children should be born within
marriage.

Mr. RANGEL. Would you not believe that for this child, Christian
or not, that we could be kinder if we just said that the child was
born without the blessings of a marriage, rather than having this
idea that there is something illegal about the child?

I mean, I would hate to know how a child would feel if a Chris-
tian would say, “You know you're illegitimate.” I think they call the
child—do they not call the child illegitimate?

Ms. STIRRUP. It is the birth that is——

Mr. RANGEL. No, but do not they call the child—I mean, “That
is an illegitimate child.” Do not we say that?

Ms. Stirrup. I think what we are talking about, whether or
not——

Mr. RANGEL. I know what we mean, but can we not stop talking
about the child being illegitimate, and say the parents did not do
what was legal? I mean, just to get off on the right foot with all
of this stuff.

Ms. STIRRUP. Go ahead.

Ms. SHELDON. We would say that illegitimacy means outside of
law, and we believe that morality needs to be brought back into
this debate.

I work, as I have said in my testimony, I work with kids——


19

STATEMENT OF HON. JAMES M. TALENT, A REPRESENTATIVE
IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF MISSOURI

Mr. TALENT. I thank the Chairman and I would like to echo the
other witnesses in expressing my appreciation to you for holding
this hearing and the Subcommittee for coming and listening.

For the past several years I have spent much of my time on ef-
forts to reform the welfare system. I concluded that reducing ille-
gitimacy and restoring marriage and the family must be the
central focus of that effort. The President vetoed a bill that began
moving toward that end. Now, it seems we are back to the drawing
board and I urge the Subcommittee to be careful and rewrite this
bill so that the policies still accomplish what we set as our central
goal.
We can call a bill reform if it gives Governors flexibility and pro-
vides additional day care funding. If the mission of welfare reform
is to break the cycle of dependency, we must aim our policies at
the heart of the problem—illegitimacy.

Our welfare’ system today rewards illegitimacy and creates an at-
mosphere conducive to its growth. The government pays welfare re-
cipients approximately twice the minimum wage, provided that
they have a child without being married. Some of these statistics
have already been mentioned, Mr. Chairman, and I will go over a
few of them again.

In nine States, welfare pays more than the average first year sal-
ary for a teacher. In 40 States, welfare pays more than an $8-an-
hour job and in 6 States more than a $12-an-hour job. In your
State of Florida, Mr. Chairman, a woman who receives AFDC, food
stamps, Medicaid, housing, WIC, Special Supplemental Food Pro-
gram for Women, Infants and Children, and so forth, makes, on av-
erage, $18,200 a year in pretax income, cash and inkind benefits.
This is equivalent to a job worth $8.75 an hour.

The problem is not so much that people have children to get wel-
fare, Mr. Chairman, the problem is that welfare lures poor people
into having the children they would not otherwise have without
being married. That is the reverse of the normal situation.

Apart from welfare, it would be economically irrational for a poor
person, who only has the skills for a low-paying job, to have a child
without the committed support of another parent. The welfare sys-
tem has reversed this normal incentive and made illegitimacy a
conventional lifestyle. In fact, in poor neighborhoods, illegitimacy is
the conventional lifestyle. Nationally, one out of three children is
born out of wedlock, up from 6 percent in 1965.

Even that figure is misleading. In lower income neighborhoods
the figure is more like three out of four. It is not surprising that
most people in these neighborhoods choose illegitimacy given the
economic incentives in the system. What is surprising is that some
people, notwithstanding the public policy of the government’s wel-
fare system, still heroically insist on marriage and work as a pre-
condition to having children.

Mr. Chairman, I believe that the growth in illegitimacy is the
single most important change in our country in the last generation.
It is a fact so powerful that it annihilates all other facts. Nothing
the government does in school, day care, job training, family plan-


14

want to the States. I am for it. If we ignore the breakdown of the
family and the contribution of our government’s policies to that
breakdown we are going to do a disservice to our citizens.

At the very least we should include a family cap with an opt-out
for the States, at the very least. This will at least, and at last force
States to discuss the issue and debate the issue. If they wish to not
have a family cap, they can pass legislation opting out. However,
if the family cap is changed to an opt-in, States can continue to
completely ignore the issue and many will.

They do not even have to debate it. Isn’t the breakdown of the
family and the cycle of dependency important enough that, at a
minimum, a discussion of the family cap and the issue of out-of-
wedlock births take place in all 50 legislatures? The opt-out family
cap provision will force a long overdue national debate on the prob-
lem of out-of-wedlock births.

I think Jennifer Marshall, with the Family Research Council said
it very well. She said, “Given the consequences for the individual
child, the surrounding community and the national policy, bringing
a baby into this world without a sense of sacred responsibility can-
not long be regarded as a morally neutral act. Congress should now
recognize that it is also wrong to sanction such activity by subsidiz-
ing it.”

Out-of-wedlock births, I believe, are at the very core of the wel-
fare debate and must be the central focus of welfare reform. Edu-
cation is not enough, we have seen that. Because as we have in-
creased our stress upon sex education, we have continued to see
out-of-wedlock births increase in our society over the last 30 years.
State flexibility is not enough. Work requirements, as important as
they are and the great contribution they will make, that is not
enough. More of the same will not work. We must fundamentally
change this system and chart a new course for our Nation.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

[The prepared statement follows:]}


WAYS AND MEANS SUBCOMMITTEE ON HUMAN RESOURCES:
PAGE TWO

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Note: All Committee advisories and news releases are now available over the Internet at
GOPHER.HOUSE.GOV, under *HOUSE COMMITTEE INFORMATION’.

teen


132

CHOOSING THE BEST CURRICULUM 1994-1995

Students responding: 5807 Average age: 14
27. Do you think sexual urges can be controiled?

1994 1995
PRE
ALWAYS: 22% 26% 42% 49%
SOMETIMES 42% 39% 30% 32%
NEVER 5% 5% 3% 4%
35, Having sex before marriage is against my own personal standards of right and wrong.
1994 1995
PRE Post PRE POST
STRONGLY AGREE 18% 26% 21% 26%
AGREE 18% 24% 18% 23%
NOTSURE 25% 22% 19% 20%
DISAGREE 23% 17% 25% 19%
STRONGLY DISAGREE 12% 8% 12% 9%

55, The best way to avoid an unwanted pregnancy is to wait until marriage before having sex?
1994 1995

PRE PosT PRE POST
STRONGLY AGREE 36%. 49% 41% 47%
AGREE 35% 32% 37% 35%
NOTSURE 13% TM% 8% 8%
DISAGREE 1% 4% 8% 4%
STONGLY DISAGREE 4% 4% 3% 2%

34. The best way to avoid a sexually transmitted disease is to wait until marriage before having sex?
1994 1995

PRE Post PRE POST
STRONGLY AGREE 33% 54% 38% 53%
AGREE 31% 31% 29% 29%
NOTSURE 14% 6% 11% %
DISAGREE. 13% 3% 12% 4%
STRONGLY DISAGREE 6% 3% % 3%

37. A teen who has had sex outside of marriage would be better off to stop and wait for marriage?
1994 1995

PRE. POST PRE POST
STRONGLY AGREE 18% 33% 21% 30%
AGREE 32% 37% 32% 39%
NOTSURE 28% 18% 24% 1%
DISAGREE 16% 6% 14% 8%

STRONGLY DISAGREE 6% 3% 6% 4%


110

‘STATEMENT OF SISTER MARY ROSE MCGEADY
PRESIDENT, COVENANT HOUSE

Mr. Chairman, Congressmen:

In calling for this hearing, Mr. Chairman, to address the national crisis of out-of-
wedlock births and the impact of these births upon the welfare of young people across
this country and upon the good of American society as a whole, you are performing &
significant service to all those people in this country for whom the values of family life
and the growth of our young people to healthy and responsible adulthood are matters of
critical social and moral concern.

I am grateful for this opportunity to share the experience and recommendations
of Covenant Houses throughout the United States regarding bow we may best encourage
our young people to put off having children until they can do so as responsible and
nurturing parents in stable relationships.

I am the President of Covenant House, the largest privately funded shelter
program for homeless kids in the country. I am also a Daughter of Charity, the largest
‘order of Catholic women in the Catholic Church. I have spent my lifetime serving the
poor as our founder, St. Vincent de Paul, called us to do.

Most of that time I have worked with children, many of them teen mothers,
mostly from the poorest of families, and from some of our toughest neighborhoods. In
fact, | live in the Bedford Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn, New York, a very poor and
troubled neighborhood. So what I tell you today is a reflection of both my own
experience and the experience of thousands of poor kids and their families with whom I
work and live.

I would like to begin my brief remarks by challenging what appears to me to be a
given” in this discussion thus far. ‘The phenomenon of skyrocketing single parent
families is not only arousing troubling concerns in the United States; it is, in fact, a
major provlem throughout all of Western Europe. The causes of this breakdown in the
traditional two parent family is the subject of enormous debate and analysis. However
regrettable, and I say this from the perspective of my own Christian tradition of family
life, such global questions are not resolvable within the limited context of our discussions
today.

‘The point I wish to make is that while “the welfare reform debate has focused
national attention on illegitimate births* in the United States, in fact fully two-thirds of
these single women having “illegitimate births" are

@ not below the poverty line,

© not high school drop outs,

© not teenagers, and

© not on welfare.

My point is, quite simply, that there is absolutely no correlation between dependence on
public assistance ("welfare") by single mothers and the out-of-wedlock birth rate in this
country. This is all the more true with teen single mothers.

Conversely, it is reasonable to argue that freezing public assistance, as is being
proposed, for single mothers who have a second child, will have no impact on out-of-
wedlock births. It may, of course, impact the rate at which the innocent children of
these single mothers fall below the poverty line, or the rate at which pregnant women
have abortions. Any change in the current welfare program that discourages these young
women once they are pregnant from having their babies is in my view morally
unacceptable. These are outcomes which this Committee must carefully consider as it
goes about its deliberations.

Despite the fact, therefore, that draconian cuts in public assistance will not cause
a decrease in out-of-wedlock births in our society, it does, indeed, remain true that many,
too many, young women living at or near the poverty level are caught in what appears to


69

TESTIMONY,
U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
SUBCOMMITTEE SNHUMAN RESOURCES

IE
COMMITTEE ON WAYS AND MEANS.
J. S. McILHANEY, JR., M.D.
PRESIDENT, MEDICAL INSTITUTE FOR SEXUAL HEALTH
MARCH 12, 1996,

‘Thank you, Chairman Shaw, and other distinguished members of the committee.

Iam a gynecologist who has practiced medicine for twenty-eight years. I have had a rewarding

practice involved with infertility care, in vitro fertilization, and surgery, but I left that practice

two months ago. I left my practice to commit the rest of my medical career to helping prevent

two of the most profound medical problems of our day -- out-of-wedlock pregnancy and sexually

transmited disease ~ working in and trough a new organization called the Medical Instinte for
ex "

Most of you know that one million babies are born to teens each year in the U.S.! Twenty years
ago 31 percent of babies born to teens were bom out-of-wedlock, Now 65 percent of them are.

What most of you probably do not know is how seriously these same teenagers are being

ed by a terrifying epidemic of sexually transmitted disease. This epidemic is not just HIV.
It includes human papillomavirus, chlamydia, herpes, and more than twenty other sexually
transmitted diseases which are ravaging our youth because their bodies are far more susceptible
to becoming infected with sexually transmitted disease than the bodies of adults.3 For example a
15-year-old is ten times more likely to develop pelvic inflammatory disease than a 24-year-old
involved in the same type of sexual encounter.4 Pelvic inflammatory disease (PID) is the most
‘common cause of hospitalization of U.S. women between the ages of 15 and 55 except for
childbirth. Pelvic inflammatory disease is most often caused by chlamydia and it results in
situations such as that of a young woman I took care of. At 18 she had had sex, developed pelvic
inflammatory disease, and after seven years of severe pelvic pain finally demanded a
hysterectomy. She had never married, never had children, and now never will. Chlamydia,
which probably caused this woman's problems, is found in 20-40 percent of teens having sex
outside of marriage, the highest prevalence rates of any group in our society.5 There is good
evidence that condoms do not give adequate protection from the infertility that can be caused by
pelvic inflammatory disease.6

The most common sexually transmitted disease in the U.S. is human papillomavirus. It causes
veneral warts. It also causes almost all precancerous Pap smears and most cervical, vaginal,
vulvar, and penile cancer, killing about 4,600 women in the U.S. yearly. Human papillomavirus
was found to infect 46 percent of sexually active coeds going through the Student Health Center
at UC/Berkeley.? Not all of these girls will develop cancer, but an Oregon study of 18,000
women showed that 60-70 percent who had the wart virus present developed abnormal Pap
smears.8 This sexually transmitted disease is the most common reason for a woman to see a
gynecologist in the U.S.9 I had a 24-year-old patient see me with a vulvar growth. It was an
early cancer caused by human papillomavirus. 1 asked her about sexual activity. She had had
five partners and had used condoms with every one. She had not been told that all experts agree
that condoms give almost no protection against human papillomavirus. !0

Herpes infects about one-third of sexually active unmarried people. This prevalence is partly
because it can be spread even when a sex partner does not have a sore.!! A woman can pass this
virus to her baby at delivery, and, if she does. the baby has a 60 pereent chance of dying. One-
half of the babies who do not die will be severely brain damaged, !2

We, of course, cannot forget HIV. Do you realize its impact on youth? Twenty-five percent of
newly diagnosed HIV is found in yous people below the age of 22.13 Seven thousand HIV
positive mothers deliver each year.!4 Many of these mothers are young women. All their babies
willbe motherless and many of them wil lose their fathers. Also, mere than 1,000 ofthe babies
will die.


24

‘STATEMENT OF ROBERT RECTOR
SENIOR POLICY ANALYST, WELFARE AND FAMILY STUDIES
:PENDENC!

‘THE GROWTH IN ILLEGITIMACY AND THE DECLINE IN
MARRIAGE

‘According to the most recent statistics released by the Center for Health Statistics
at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, illegitimacy continues to rise
rapidly and marriage continues to decline across the U.S. According to the recently
released HHS data, out-of: wedlock births represented 31.0 percent of all births in the
USS. in 1993 ~ up from 30.1 percent just a year earlier in 1992. This rapid increase in
illegitimacy, nearly 1 percentage point in a single year, follows the pattern of increasing
illegitimacy which has oceurred since the beginning of the War on Poverty in 1965. In
that year, 7.7 percent of children were bom out-of-wedlock, By 1993 the number had
risen four-fold.

Chart |

Mlegitimate Births as a Share of Total Births

‘The percentage of births that are out-of- wedlock is expanding rapidly for both
whites and blacks. Among whites in 1993, 23.6% of births were out of wedlock, up from
11 pereent in 1980, Among blacks 68.7 percent of births were out-of- wedlock in 1993 up
from 58 percent in 1980.

‘The most recent HHS data show that the absolute number of children born within
‘marriage fell in the ast reported year. In 1992, 2.84 million children were born to
‘married couples; in 1993 the number had declined to 2.76 million. By contrast, the
absolute number of children bom out-of-wedlock rose from 1.22 million in 1992 to 1.24
milion in 1993

‘The most useful too! in measuring the dectine in marriage and the growth in
illegitimacy is the illegitimacy rate (more formally called the illegitimacy ratio). The
illegitimacy ratio measures the number of out-of-wedlock births in a given year as &

‘of all births in that year. Thus if there were 100 births in a society in a year
and 30 of those births were out-of-wedlock, the illegitimacy ratio would be 30 percent,

The illegitimacy ratio is important because it measures the extent to which
iMtegitimacy is displacing marriage in our society. Since illegitimacy is a profound
‘underlying factor contributing to most other socal ills, the illegitimacy ratio isthe best
possible tool for measuring a wide array of future social problems. The continuing rise
in the illegitimacy ratio is propelled by three factors:

1) the decline in the portion of women of child bearing age who are married;
2) the increase in the birth or fertility rate among non-maried women; and
3) the decline in the birth or fertility rate among married women.

‘American society is now characterized by a growing number of non-married
‘women who, as a group, have an increasing tendency to bear children out-of-wedlock.


143

Now, is that the right message for us? I do not know. We are not
Western Europe, we have a lot of differences in this country. The
lesson to take home is consistency of the message, not even nec-
essarily what the specific message is.

The second reason, very quickly, the belief is that contraceptive
services are much more widely available through a wider variety
of providers. Again, we are not just talking about teenagers, we are
talking about men and women in their twenties, thirties, and for-
ties. The financing for preventive services is in place more uni-
formly and systematically than it is in the United States It is this
consistency of message of media, church, family, home, and school
that seems to be behind the lower rates.

A last comment, I would love to see some more work in that
area, though. What I am basing this on is a very limited series of
observations, and it is a really important question. Their rates of
sexual activity are the same as ours. The age of first intercourse
is the same as ours, but the Europeans do not get pregnant in the
same way we do.

Mr. LEVIN. Thank you.

Chairman SHAW. Mr. Stark.

Mr. Stark. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I am sorry I could not be here but we had corrections day which
is not where you go to jail, but this Committee had a bill on the
floor and I am sorry that I—

Chairman SHAW. Perhaps you could call this hearing corrections

lay.

Mr. STARK. Yes, I am sure I could have learned a good deal. I
am most happy to see Sarah Brown, who has worked with many
of us and with the country on children’s issues for a number of
years.

I would presume is, indeed, the recognized authority on this. I
have just been looking at some of the testimony of the previous wit-
nesses. Outside of the religious area, the modern-day pharisees
who appear before us from time to time, may or may not be experts
in intercourse and abstinence and the like.

There seems to be this idea that somehow single parenthood is
directly related to births without benefit of sacraments. Do you
have any statistics that show that that is true? Is there some rela-
tionship between single parents and out-of-wedlock births?

Or are many single parents there as the result of divorce, death?
Which is the case?

Ms. BROWN. You know, I think I am going to punt on that one,
which is uncharacteristic for me. I am not going to be able to give
you quickly—I can certainly get it for you soon—the proportion of
honmarital, births that are to never-married women as distinct
from divorced or widowed women.

My strong sense is that the latter category is, by far, in the
minority.

Mr. Stark. Which?

Ms. Brown. The divorced or widowed, and so forth, previously
married. I think what has been of concern in this Committee, and
in the nation, is really the unmarried women giving birth. It has
not been so much a woman who finds herself single later or a rela-
tionship collapses in her thirties and she has a nonmarital delivery.


10

Take a look at these communities, take a look and see whether
there is a relationship between drugs and out-of-wedlock births, as
I know exists. The Congressional Black Caucus did not come to-
gether with this problem because of our color or some unique inter-
est in it. This is our district. Why?

We have the highest unemployment. We have schools that are
not producing trained people. We have the highest amount of hope-
lessness that even if you did go to school, you are not going to get
a job. We have the highest number of professionals who are unem-
ployed. When the President says, sign NAFTA, the North American

‘ree Trade Agreement, and move on to high tech because America
is going to be richer as a result of the international trade, these
are the communities that know you do not mean them.

In these districts, there is no relationship between school and
job. Everybody who talks about a more prosperous America or
drug-free America, have to qualify it, of course, not in the areas of
hardcore drug addiction. Hardcore drug addiction means what? Do
you think our kids love shooting each other up?

Do you really think that in these neighborhoods where children
attend more funerals than they attend graduations that this is
something exciting? Do you really think that making a couple of
thousand dollars a month is worth not knowing what day someone
is going to come and shoot you down in the streets and not be
arrested?

I suggest to you that if you want kids to get married they would
not even understand the concept. People who talk about marriage,
homes, a picket fence, an IRA, their children’s and their grand-
children’s future; they are the ones that have hope.

Being poor in this country is no big deal. Most of the Members
that I am the closest with come out of poverty, white or black, but
they had hope that they could beat it. Not everyone beats it, but
everyone can survive better with hope. Even if you die poor, you
fight to do better, your kids can see that you want better.

‘What I am suggesting is to see these young mothers with young
children visiting the fathers in jail. They are talking about loving
each other, but they are not talking about marriage. Marriage is
not even there. When you take a look at the millions of young peo-
ple who are in jail and see the relationship between the inability
of the schools to produce, the lack of employment opportunities and
the fact that these kids do not care—because 70 percent of them
are going to return after they are discharged in 3 to 10 years—but
we get a kick out of building more prisons.

My former Governor built more prisons than houses in the State
of New York. We pay $60,000 a year to keep a kid at Riker’s Island
in New York City. You have never heard my mayor complain about
prison budgets.

You hear people talking about the $6,000 a year that it takes to
keep a kid in elementary school. Mr. Chairman, if we can pull to-
gether a committee and see what gives a community hope, if we
can find out the relationship between graduating from school and
not just getting a diploma, but getting a job, if we can do what we
are doing in the empowerment zones and bring a partnershij
between business and schools giving businesses incentives to worl
with the schools and not just complain about what they are produc-


141

are unintended, as are a full three-quarters of pregnancies among
women in poverty. This data obviously does not square with the
current welfare debate image.

High levels of confusion, denial, and ambivalence, in fact, charac-
terize the beginnings of most of these pregnancies that have been
the topic of this hearing.

The second idea, new data—and I think this really is a new area
that we are learning about—new data have clarified a hunch long
held by practitioners that many of the youngest women who be-
come pregnant and bear children were, the victims of sexual abuse
in their own childhoods.

In one recent study in Washington State of pregnant teens, a full
two-thirds of the sample of teen mothers had been sexually abused
as children, significantly more than a comparison group of equally
poor teens who were not pregnant. The growing understanding is
that these kind of traumatic childhood experiences leave young
women with very few personal resources to resist precocious sexual
involvement or to resist pregnancy.

Please remember, as a number of people have stated, the young-
er the age of first intercourse, the higher the likelihood that sexual
activity is involuntary.

Third idea, many of the fathers of babies born to teen mothers
are over 20 and sometimes they are well over 20. This age gap fur-
thers our growing sense that teen mothers in poverty and those
close to it are more often victims of predatory males than willing
participants.

Finally, with regard to the particular issue we have been discuss-
ing all afternoon, of whether welfare payments stimulate poor,
often unmarried women, to have babies, I think that a look at
Western Europe is very instructive.

Please puzzle over the following fact. Social welfare benefits in
many Western European countries are far more generous than
ours, and, yet, their rates of unintended pregnancy, teen preg-
nancy, and childbearing by poor women are appreciably lower than
ours. Before we convince ourselves of the clear relationship be-
tween welfare payments and specific fertility measures, we need to
understand this paradox, and we have to understand it in the con-
text of the United States.

These data on United States versus Europe, incidentally, are
very clear, much clearer than the sort of U.S.-based data that we
have been discussing all afternoon.

The simple point in conclusion is that unfortunately things are
more complicated than they seem. Pregnancy and childbearing by
teens and by women in poverty are typically unintended and un-
planned. There is an important overlay in this population that in-
volves early histories of sexual abuse and relationships with men
who are significantly older. Finally, U.S.-European data give us lit-
tle reason to be absolutely certain that welfare payments dictate
fertility.

What this means in a policy context is that unfortunately we are
going to have to be more textured, we are going to have to be more
complete and more complex in our discussions of underlying causes
and remedies.


29

© headstrong behavior: easily losing one's temper; being stubbor, irritable,
disobedient at home; arguing excessively;

‘+ peer conflict: having trouble getting along with others; being not liked; being
withdrawa;

* dependent behavior: crying too much, being too dependent on others, demanding
attention, clinging to adults.

Children raised by never married mothers have significantly higher levels of all of
the above bebvior problems when compared to chien ied by both loge
‘parents. When comparisons are made between families that aré identical in race, income,
‘number of children, and mother’s education, the behavioral differences between
ilegitimate and legitimate children sctually widen. Compared to children living with
both biological parents in similer socio-economic circumstances, children of never
‘married mothers have 68 percent more antisocial behavior; 24 percent more head strong
‘behavior; 33 percent more hyperactive behavior; 78 percent more peer conflict; 53
percent more dependency. Overall children of never martied mothers have behavioral
problems sore nary thes mes higher than eileen ised in comparable ict

Children born out of wedlock have less ability to delay gratification, poorer
{impulse control (that i, control over anger and sexual gratification). They have a weaker
sense of conscience of sense of right and wrong." Adding to allthis i the sad fat that
the incidence of child abuse and neglect is higher among single-parent families.

‘Being Born Out-of Wedlock Increases the Probability of Teen Sexual Activity.
‘Boys and girls born out-of-wedlock and raised by never married mothers are two and a
half times more likely to be sexually active as teenagers when compared to legitimate
children raised in intact married couple families. This finding applies to both blacks and
whites. Children bom out-of- wedlock whose mothers marry after the child's birth
spear tobe slightly less likely to be sexualy active as tens but are stil twice as active,
on average, as legitimate tens of intact married couples.'*

‘The absence of marred parent related to poor academic performance dering

studies conducted in the United States and abroad. These studies
illegitimacy is also associated with lower job and salary attainment.'* 9

‘The absence of married parents leads to intergeueratioual illegitimacy. Being bor
‘outside of marriage significantly reduces the chances of the child growing up to have an

© Deborah A. Dawson, “Family Stwcare and Childra’s Heath and Well-being: Data fom the 1988
‘National Heath Interview Survey on Child Heat,” paper presented atthe annual meeting of the
Popo Auch of Ameri, Trt May 190,

EM, Hetherington and B. Mari, Family Interaction," in H.C. Quay and JS, Wery ods),

ew York: John Wily & Sons, 1979), pp. 247-302.
als, “egtinacy, Chld-Abuse and Neglect, and Copative Development," Journal of Genetic

Poake. a 15 (1990), pp. 279-285.

by The Heritage Foundation besed on the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth.

i

Sein. Rica Ante Bei, “EovcaonlAtsiea fC Fre
Files: Ditierces by Espen, Greed Rac” Damagapt,Vol. 25 Oey 198.28.

7 Toxnage Mothers:
tient Pane Foe a af Maa sda, Vol £2 (190) pr 290-0

[
i
{
F

"Father Availabilty and Academic eng
‘Thiré-Gmnde Boys," Developmental Prchalogy, Vol. 4, No. 3(1971) pp. 301-308.


98

STATEMENT ON BEHALF OF CHRISTIAN COALITION
PRESENTED BY HEIDI STIRRUP, DIRECTOR OF GOVERNMENT RELATIONS
TO THE COMMITTEE ON WAYS AND MEANS
SUBCOMMITTEE ON HUMAN RESOURCES
U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

HEARING ON
“CAUSES OF POVERTY -- ILLEGITIMACY”

March 12, 1996

Mr. Chairman, members of the Subcommittee, I am Heidi Stirrup, Director of Government
Relations for the Christian Coalition, Thank you very much for the opportunity to present
testimony to the subcommittee on the topic of poverty and illegitimacy. Christian Coalition
applauds Chairman Shaw for holding this important hearing. Illegitimacy is one particular aspect
of poverty in the context of welfare reform that we believe is essential to address.

Asa pro-family organization, members of the Christian Coalition are comprised of people of
differing faiths who are all dedicated to strengthening families and restoring common sense
values. Our members are concerned about the breakup of the family, the size and growth of
government, and the higher tax burden imposed upon them. They expect government policies to
look out for the family -- encourage marriage, reduce the crushing tax burden and promote
policies which value families. The current debate over welfare reform offers a great opportunity
to address some of these concerns and pethaps even accomplish some of these goals.

Few will dispute the fact that there is a moral and social decline in America today beginning with
the decay of the very basic unit of our society -- the family. In fact, it seems there has been a
steady decline -- even destruction -- of the family over the last thirty years. What worked for
families in the first 190 years of this great nation has given way to what arguably has not worked.
The basic family unit has been under attack from illegitimacy, promiscuity, adultery, divorce and
homosexuality. It is the increasing rate of out-of-wedlock births that is particularly shocking and
troubling and which demands some attention. Our federal public policies should encourage
marriage, help families stay together and discourage out-of-wedlock births.

Programs that were once judged by the height of their aspirations now must be reconsidered by
the depths of their failures and the magnitude of their casualties. The current welfare system is
considered by many as a complete failure. Over $5 rrillion dollars has been spent over the past
thirty years and as a result, America has a larger poverty element that is more violent, more
poorly educated and includes many more single parent households than ever before. It is time to
try something different. Given an opportunity to change the welfare system without
affirmatively addressing illegitimacy, we believe will result in an incomplete and inadequate
effort. Social policy experts identify illegitimacy as the single most important social problem
today largely because it contributes to many other social problems such as crime, drugs, poverty,
illiteracy, welfare and homelessness.

Out-of-wedlock births are a strong predictor of poverty. Unwed mothers are not only more likely
to rely on government to support their children, but are also more likely to spend years dependent
upon welfare. According to a report issued by the Heritage Foundation, one in every three
children were born out-of-wedlock last year. The illegitimate birth rate continues to rise about
one percentage point every year. Children born out-of-wedlock are seven times more likely to be
poor than those born to couples who remain married. Girls raised in single parent homes on
welfare are five times more likely to give birth out-of-wedlock themselves when compared to
girls from intact non-welfare families. Because illegitimacy feeds both poverty and itself, there
is no way we can reverse the dual trends of welfare dependency and family breakdown until we
address illegitimacy.


140

feel that their job is worthwhile, and help them understand what
parenting is, how can we help young people understand what it
means to be a parent?

Finally, we have to recognize that perhaps we have not resolved
the problems between the sexes. More women are battered in the
United States than in any other country. Maybe we need to help
young people understand what it means to be respectful of self, re-
spe of others, that men need to respect women and vice versa,
and young people need to learn that from us.

There has been a value shift, but as I said, young people, no one
sets out to make a mistake. Young people want what we want for
ourselves, to be optimistic about their own life chances and the life
chances of their children. With our help they can do a much better
job of that.

Thank you.

(The prepared statement is being held in the Committee’s files.]

STATEMENT OF SARAH S. BROWN, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL
CAMPAIGN TO PREVENT TEEN PREGNANCY, WASHINGTON, DC

Ms. Brown. Well, thank you for inviting me to this Subcommit-
tee. As the last person here I think one of my problems is that
most of the things that I wanted to say to you have been touched
on by other people. I am going to soldier on anyway.

My name is Sarah Brown, and I am here in two capacities. One,
as the director of a brandnew national campaign to prevent teen
pregnancy. Second, as the director of a recently completed project
with the Institute of Medicine on unplanned, unintended
pregnancy.

ly main message to you today is that the debate in recent
months on the Hill about welfare reform has overlooked at least
four important ideas and data sets. The first has to do with wheth-
er pregnancies among women on welfare are consciously desired
and planned? The second concerns sexual abuse of young women.
The third centers on the age differential between teenagers having
babies and the men who father them. The fourth focuses on U.S/
Western European comparisons on a variety of demographic
measures.

Now, as I said, a couple of these have been touched on already
but let me go through them quickly, nonetheless.

With regard to the first point, national, State, and local data are
crystal clear that the vast majority of pregnancies among women
in poverty, including those who are teenagers, are neither planned
nor actively desired. Somehow the picture has been painted in re-
cent months that pregnancy and childbearing among welfare popu-
lations, and especially among unmarried teenagers are very pur-
posefully undertaken. In particular, the small amount of money
that an additional baby may bring is a clear incentive for
childbearing.

National data show that most pregnancies and births to women
in poverty and to unmarried teens, in particular, are unplanned,
unintended, and often flat out unwanted altogether at time of
conception.

For example, data from the National Survey of Family Growth
shows that over 80 percent of pregnancies among unmarried teens


91

Chairman Suaw. I think this is something that should be talked
about.

You know, we see all of these little health segments on “Good
Morning America” and the various other morning shows, it seems
like this would be a segment that certainly should be handled.

I think the parents should know about it, to warn their kids, and
the kids should know about this. I just do not see this word getting
out, and I think it is very important.

Dr. McILHANEY. Thank you.

Chairman SHaw. Thank you, doctor.

I hate to open up the discussion that you and Dr. Ensign had a
few minutes ago, Dr. Furstenberg, but as I understood your testi-
mony, you said by putting a fixed length of time on which someone
could receive welfare without having to perform some type of work
would not—what was it, exactly?

I do not want to put words in your mouth. I want to be careful
not to do that.

Dr. FURSTENBERG. Well, I am not sure what you are asking, but
I think I said it would not result in a decrease in nonmarital child-
bearing. It probably also would not be good for many of the women.
The ones that, welfare records, that I am familiar with, suggest
that many women—the vast majority of women who go on welfare
cycle in and out of welfare over a long period of time.

Chairman SHAW. The average person on welfare today will be on
the rolls for 13 years. I think you probably agree with that figure,
do you not?

Dr. FURSTENBERG. Depending on how you count the-——

Chairman SHaw. Total,

Dr. FURSTENBERG. Pardon me?

Chairman SHaw. In and out total of, you know, in 6 months, out
6 months, in 6 months, would amount to 1 year.

Dr. FURSTENBERG. I have not heard a figure that is as high as
13. You are saying that half of all people are 13 years, or over, or
the mean number?

Chairman Suaw. I will send you the data. I am surprised you did
not know that. The average person in welfare today will be on wel-
fare for a total of 13 years. Some will be in a total of —

Dr. FURSTENBERG. You are saying the average person who enters
welfare——

Chairman SHAW. I did not say the average person. The average
stay on welfare is 13 years.

, Dr. FURSTENBERG. I see. That is a little bit like saying that if we
look at——

Chairman SHAw. That is right. Somebody who is on a month to
month would bring that figure down; somebody who is on a lifetime
will bring that figure—

Dr. FURSTENBERG. Congressman, it makes a lot of difference
whether you study people who go on welfare, because the people
who are on welfare a very long time represent a disproportionate
share of the population of people on welfare, just as the chronic dis-
ease people would be a disproportionate number in a hospital.
et would not be able to calculate the average person by taking
the——


11

ing. Tell the schools what you need and make certain that they
produce students with job skills and make certain that tax dollars
are working and give businesses tax incentives to be involved, if
necessary.

Mr. Chairman, I conclude by saying that if you show me a com-
munity that is proud of its public school system or vouchers or pri-
vate school system, if you show me a community where people can
get a job if they are trained, if you show me a community where
people have hope for the future, then no matter whether we are
going through recessions or what not, they know darn well in
America, the greatest country on the face of the Earth, that they
are going to do better.

y is it that I can promise you that I am not going to show
you a bunch of young addicts? Why is it that I can promise you sta-
tistically that you are not going to see all of these children born
out of wedlock? Why am I going to show you kids that are more
anxious to be producing Americans than to risk their lives and go
to jail?

What I am saying, Mr. Chairman, is that I am going to be in this
political battle to cut them off.

All these things we have to do, liberals/conservatives and Demo-
crats/Republicans, and try go to the mat in November. While we
are doing those things that people are going to force us to do, I
hope Pie will consider bringing in the best Members, Republicans
and Democrats, from the Education Committee, from the Labor
Committee, from the taxwriting committee, those that have dedi-
cated their lives to education, those that are dealing with economic
development, those that are working with the empowerment zones
and say that it takes a village to raise a kid. You do not have to
always need a father, it really helps, but in my community I did
not have a father and everyone acted like they were my father.
They pushed me around, the grandmothers of someone else said
you are going to go to jail before you go to Yale. It was all right.

Some of us have been able to survive because the community had
hope. I was the dope. I did not understand it. They had hope that
every bum kid would make it. We need more of that, Mr. Chair-
man, instead of the animosity and the emotion that goes into this.

I am not an expert in why these little kids feel the necessity to
have these little Babies that, as you said, are going to end up in
poverty. What difference does it really make when they do not
believe that they will ever get out of poverty? What difference does
it make?

I hope that you and I and the Members of this Committee, once
the political deal is cut, can get together and make a difference to
help people to believe that having children when you are not ready
is immoral and it is wrong.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Chairman Suaw. Thank you, Mr. Rangel.

Mr. Hutchinson.

STATEMENT OF HON. TIM HUTCHINSON, A REPRESENTATIVE
IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF ARKANSAS

Mr. HUTCHINSON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for call-
ing the hearing today. I want to express my appreciation for your


97

Provide reward incentives when welfare mothers marry and exit
welfare? Require states to devise their own plans to reduce out-of-
wedlock births.

Fix the existing illegitimacy bonus ratio plan so that States can
more successfully lower their illegitimacy ratio.

Tnerease funding for abstinence education from $75 to $200
million.

Require establishment of paternity as a criteria for eligibility of
benefits.

Provide tax credits for contributions to private charities to en-
courage greater reliance on private sector and faith-based organiza-
tions who can give prompt aid to those who need it most.

In short, what is needed for true welfare reform are policies
which will discourage dependency and restore a sense of personal
responsibility, control costs, and reduce the illegitimate birth rates
by promoting stable two-parent families.

Instead of offering more Federal money to provide more social
services to the ever-expanding dependency population, we must
offer policies designed to save marriages and remove the economic
incentives and rewards for single parenthood.

We commend the Congress and this Subcommittee for the tre-
mendous effort it is making in attempting to change welfare as we

‘now it.

We encourage you to include policies that will help people help
themselves. If we do not save marriage so children can be raised
in two-parent households, we will have done a great disservice to
our children and our society.

ank you.
{The prepared statement follows:]


102

It has been pointed out, time and again, that no other family in
our society, except for those on government assistance, receives an
automatic increase in their paychecks for having additional
children.

Americans are kind and generous People; however, it is clear
that taxpayers want to see an end to their hard-earned dollars
being used to subsidize illegitimacy.

Another means of addressing the increasing rate of illegitimacy
is through abstinence education. Funding should be used for absti-
nence only, with a focus on those groups which are most likely to
bear children out of wedlock.

Additionally, and equally important, the government must assist
in the process of moral rebuilding by allowing private social organi-
zations such as churches and other community institutions to play
a far greater role in educating and shaping the moral code of young
people.

There is no question that parents, and in particular, low-income
parents, must be given far greater choice in how their children are
educated, including the right for their tax dollars to follow their
children to the school of their choice. The Renewal Community
Projects cosponsored by Congressmen Watts and Talent is an
essential step in this direction.

Robert Rector of the Heritage Foundation has talked about the
necessary role of morality by talking about behavioral poverty.

Behavioral poverty refers to the breakdown of values, and con-
duct, which lead to the formation of healthy families, stable person-
alities, and self-sufficiency.

There is no question that welfare spending, intended to alleviate
material poverty, has actually led to a dramatic increase in behav-
ioral poverty.

T have seen this in my own work with families who are on wel-
fare. Let me share with you a personal experience.

One day while visiting one of the homeless motels, I had a con-
versation with two women who were cousins, about 20 years old.
They asked me if I had any children, and I said no, that I was not
married.

They both responded, almost in unison, and without much
thought: “Oh, that does not matter.” What was a very natural re-
sponse for these two young women made a profound impact on me.

These young women had been raised in the system, and knew
every benefit it had to offer. Tragically, they were caught in a
generational cycle and mentality of behavioral poverty.

The negative consequences of an out-of-wedlock birth on the
child, the mother, the family, and society, are well documented.
Children born into families receiving welfare assistance are three
times more likely to be on welfare when they reach adulthood than
children not born into families receiving welfare.

Historically, it has been through social and faith-based institu-
tions, such as churches and synagogues, not the value-free govern-
ment institutions, that have Pest lealt with poverty and despair,
because they can take into account the spiritual as well as the
physical needs of individuals.

Research shows that inner-city children with religious values are
47 percent less likely to drop out of school, 54 percent less likely


118

In addition to expanding school-to-work, the National Urban
League recommends expanding, not retrenching, our national
investment in Head Start, Title I for the educationally
disadvantaged, Job Corps, and access to funds for higher
education such as Pell Grants.

3) Providing services to reduce the occurrence of unintended
childbearing also offer potential for reducing out-of-wedlock
births.

Resources that can reduce the incidence of unintended
childbearing clearly must include research on and better access
to family planning services. Education about sexual involvement
and its consequences must be made available to men and women,
whether at home, in school, and through the health care system

4) Increasing wage levels and job opportunities for men and
women also represent a critical area for policy development.

The relationship between poverty and out-of-wedlock births
requires a major national focus on the labor market. The issue
of increasing wages and job opportunities especially for women
and minorities must be addressed, as well as the role that
racial and sex discrimination play in denying minorities and
women equal access to jobs with liveable wages.

Our national focus must be on developing a national workforce
development system that works for everyone, especially during
these dramatically changing times regarding the requirements of
a labor market that is driven by technology. This system must
include a basic income entitlement for those who have been
never-employed, temporarily unemployment, or under-employed, so
as to provide an income while transitioning to the labor market

Mr. Chairman, we have much to do. The National Urban League has
and continues to do its part through its myriad of local
community based programs. Our national policies and strategies
for reducing out-of-wedlock births will only be effective if we
fully examine the research, rather than basing them on
perceptions and stereotypes about the children and their
parents.

Thank you for this opportunity to testify. I will be happy to
answer any questions.


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Thope I have shown you that the threat to our society is so profound that we must be willing to
take bold steps in solving the problem. Clearly the educational and social efforts of the past ten
to fifteen years have not worked, Multiple reports in peer-reviewed journals document that
failure, both in our curent approach to sexuality education and in our dpproach to care for low
wealth communities. These efforts seem not only to perpetuate the problem but also seem to be
aggravating it.

For those in the welfare system, we need to provide a safety net, but we do not want it so
comfortable that it induces people into single-parent family conditions.

If dramatic changes are not initiated, the medical and societal consequences are going to impact
millions more of our citizens that we could have saved.

More than that, if the trends continue, we will see the trend toward two communities in our
society be magnified, the community of the married providing greater opportunities to their
children and the community of the single-parent often forced to live in poverty with diminished
hope for their children.

Tam not pessimistic. I believe that the situation is so bad and the old appraoches so discredited
that men and women of wisdom will realize the necessity of new approaches. The federal
government can take the lead in setting policy that encourages young people to delay sex until
they are married. This can be a joint venture with all of society — parents, schools, media,
churches and others -- to bring an end to a problem literally tearing apart the fabric of our
society.

1Alan Gutmacher Institute, 1994,

2Famities First, Report of the National Commission on America’s Urban Families, John
Ashcroft, Chairman, Annette Strauss, Co-Chair, January 1993, p. 28.

3 anderson, J.R., and Wilson, M., "Caring for Teenagers with Salpingitis," Contemporary
OBIGYN, August 1990.

4Westrom, I., Pelvic Inflammatory Disease, New York: McGraw Hill Book Company, 1992.
SYAMA, June 1, 1994, vol. 271, No. 21, p. 1652.

Cramer, D. W., et al, "The Relationship of Tubal Infertility to Barrier Method and Oral
Contraceptive Use," JAMA, 257:18, May 8, 1987.

TBaver, H. M. et al, JAMA, 1991; 265, 472-47.
8Contemporary OBIGYN, July 1995, p. 94.
SOBIGYN News, 28:15, 1993.

1OOB/GYN Clinical Alert, Sept. 1992.

TIJAMA, Jan. 19, 1990, Vol. 763, #3, p. 418-20.

12american College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists Committee Statement, "Perinatal Herpes
Simplex Virus Infections," July, 1987.

13CDC, MMWR, Vol. 44, pp. 1-15, 7/7/95.

14NEJM, March 17, 1994, Vol. 330, #11, p. 789.

15Rosenthal, et al, Adolescent and Pediatric Gynecology, 1994, p 210-213.

16Centers for Disease Control, MMWR, 39, January 4, 1991.

17$malt & Luster, Journal of Marriage & The Family, Feb 1994, 181-192.

18QB/GYN News, "Abuse, Alcohol, Drugs Tied To Teen Pregnancy,” March 1, 1996, p. 31.
19merican Journal of Public Health, Vol. 85, #8, Aug. 95, p. 1053.


16

SO INSTRAD OF LIFTING PEOPLE OUT OF POVERTY AND DESPAIR WE HAVE
DEVELOPED A CYCLE OF DEPENDENCY THAT IS NOW ENTERING ITS THIRD GENERATION.

I BELIEVE IT I8 TIME TO SAY "ENOUGH." THIS SYSTEM HAS FAILED. IT
HAS PAILED THOSE WHOM IT WAS DESIGNED TO HELP AND IT HAS PAILED THOSE WHO
ARE FOOTING THE BILL -- THE MOMS AND DADS OP MIDDLE AMERICA.

WHEN PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY SENT HIS WELFARE PACKAGE TO CONGRESS
MORE THAN 30 YEARS AGO, HE STATED THAT "WELFARE PROGRAMS MUST CONTRIBUTE
TO THE ATTACK ON FAMILY BREAKDOWN AND ILLEGITIMACY. UNLESS SUCH PROBLEMS
ARE DEALT WITH EFFECTIVELY, THEY PESTER, AND GROW, SAPPING THE STRENGTH OF
SOCIETY AS A WHOLE AND EXTENDING THEIR CONSEQUENCES IN TROUBLED FAMILIES
FROM ONE GENERATION TO THE NEXT." OUR WELPARE POLICIES HAVE FAILED TO
FULFILL THE GOAL THAT PRESIDENT KENNEDY SO ELOQUENTLY ARTICULATED.

IS IT ANY WONDER THEN THAT WELFARE REFORM CONSISTENTLY PLACES AS ONE

THEMSELVES IN NEED OF PUBLIC ASSISTANCE. HOWEVER, ABLE-BODIED INDIVIDUALS
SHOULD NOT EXPECT TO REMAIN ON PUBLIC ASSISTANCE THEIR ENTIRE LIVES. AND
AGAIN, WE HAVE A SYSTEM THAT ENCOURAGES THIS TYPE OF EXPECTATION.

1 BELIEVE ELEARE REPORM LEGISEATION MUST ALSO INCLUDE STRONG WORK

JOB, WELFARE RECIPIENTS SHOULD BE REQUIRED TO WORK FOR THEIR BENEFITS.

‘THE WELFARE REFORM BILL THAT PASSED THE HOUSE AND SENATE LAST YEAR
FULFILLED OUR PROMISE TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE OF REAL WELFARE REFORM, WHILE

NEED.
TELY, THR PRESIDENT HAS CHOSEN TO VETO THIS LEGISLATION TWICE.

HOWEVER, WHATEVER PINAL WELFARE REFORM BILL IS ENACTED, IT WILL
CERTAINLY BE A SHAM, IF AT ITS CORE, IT DORS NOT ADDRESS THE ISSUE OF OUT
OF WEDLOCK BIRTHS. “WE CAN GIVE ALL THE FLEXIBILITY WE WANT TO THE STATES,
BUT IP WE IGNORE THE BREAKDOWN OF THE FAMILY AND THE CONTRIBUTION OF OUR

"8 POLICIES TO THAT BREAKDOWN, WE WILL DO A DISSERVICE TO OUR
CITIZENS.

AAT THE VERY LEAST WE SHOULD INCLUDE A FAMILY CAP WITH AN OPT OUT FOR
THE STATES. THIS WILL AT LEAST AND AT LAST FORCE STATES TO DISCUSS THE
ISSUE. IP THEY WISH TO NOT HAVE A FAMILY CAP, THEY CAN SIMPLY PASS
LEGISLATION OPTING OUT. HOWEVER, IF THE FAMILY CAP IS CHANGED TO AN OPT
IN, STATRS CAN CONTINUE TO COMPLETELY IGNORE THE ISSUE AND MANY WILL.
THEY DON'T EVEN HAVE TO DEBATE IT. ISN'T THE BREAKDOWN OF THE FAMILY AND
THE CYCLE OF DEPENDENCY IMPORTANT ENOUGH, THAT AT A MINIMUM, A DISCUSSION
OF THE PAMILY CAP SHOULD TAKE PLACE IN ALL FIPTY STATE LEGISLATURES. THE
"OPT OUT" FAMILY CAP PROVISION WILL FORCE A LONG OVERDUE NATIONAL DEBATE
ON ILLEGITIMACY.

PERHAPS JENNIFER E. MARSHALL OF THE FAMILY RESEARCH COUNCIL HAS SAID
IT BEST -- AND I QUOTE, "GIVEN THE CONSEQUENCES FOR THE INDIVIDUAL CHILD,
TEE, SURROUNDING COMMUNETY, AND THE NATIONAL POLITY, BRINGING A BABY INTO

ED AS A MORALLY NEUTRAL ACT. CONGRESS SHOULD NOW RECOGNIZE THAT IT
IS ALSO WRONG TO SANCTION’SUCH ACTIVITY BY SUBSIDIZING IT."

IN CONGRESS MUST HELP TO PROVIDE FOR THE NEEDS OF OUR MOST
VULNERABLE CIITZENS. BUT WE MUST ALSO ENCOURAGE PERGONAL REGEONGIBILITY,
IF WE CONTINUE WITH THE FAILED WELFARE POLICIES OF THE LAST THIRTY YEARS,
THE CONSEQUENCRS TO OUR FAMILIES AND OUR COMMUNITIES WILL GROW MORE
DEVASTATING. WE MUST CHART A NEW COURSE. THE VERY FOUNDATION OF OUR
SOCIBTY I8 AT STAKE.

‘THANK YOU MR. CHAIRMAN.


160

On the other side of the coin, for a family to be involved in
a program as I have described, they would have to show proof of
working, in training or going to school. It would be verified
every six (6) months. The parents have to be truly interested in
helping their families and our country.

This is all a positive step for our country and a simple
solution to the child care reform of today. To change the tax laws
to allow businesses to donate money and gifts-in-kind to FOR-PROFIT
child care with a SLIDING SCALE FRE for families of low income.

This structure also promotes families to get off the welfare
system if the parents are required to work a MINIMUM of 30 hours
per week and no maximum. The parents going to school or getting
training would have to carry a full load (12 units) or (8 hours) of
training per day.

‘The government could also use this as an opportunity to create
more jobs, and training centers for parents who wish to improve
their quality of life and the standards of living for the United
States.

Thank you for your consideration of my proposal. 1 would be

happy to come to Washington and speak with the committee and
further explain and demonstrate my ideas.

Yours truly,’

Theresa B. Schneider

e)


99

While some may question whether welfare causes illegitimacy, it is certainly true that welfare
cash and assistance provides a perverse economic support system for it. A young girl on welfare
can get a cash grant, food stamps, medical care, day care, a transportation allowance, and in
many cases a rent allowance. This rapid expansion of welfare benefits makes welfare more
attractive than entry-level jobs and subsidizes unwed motherhood making husbands quite
dispensable. In fact, for many fathers, welfare provides an automatic escape hatch. They do not
have to take responsibility for their children -- the government will.

Suggesting ways to combat illegitimacy requires a multi-faceted approach. First, let’s consider
some proposals designed to fight illegitimacy already included in the context of welfare reform
as contained in the conference report to H.R. 4, Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity
Act of 1995.

Eamily cap: Allowing states to “opt-in” to a requirement restricting additional cash payments to
welfare recipients having additional children while on welfare is really not much more than the
status quo and is a minimal step. The financial support that “rewards” irresponsible behavior is
in itself irresponsible. Taking away the cash incentive could be the single most immediate step
to break the cycle of illegitimacy and dependency.

Cash welfare block grants: While it is true that current welfare reform proposals (both the
conference report and the Governors’ proposal) rely on block grants which the states may use to
“prevent and reduce the incidence of out-of-wedlock pregnancies”, there is no specific set-aside
for an exclusive use of funds to combat illegitimacy. Right now, states have some flexibility
with their funds but typically AFDC simply subsidizes divorce and very little if any funds are
used to directly prevent and reduce illegitimacy.

legitimacy ratio bonus plan: The conference report proposal designed to reward states by
providing additional block grant money if they successfully reduce out-of-wedlock birth rates,
without increasing abortion rates is a positive incentive. However, this reward will be very
difficult to achieve. The bonus would apply only if states reduce their out-of-wedlock birth ratio
by a full percentage point from the base year (1995). With illegitimacy rates rising one
percentage point per year on average, even a vigorous effort to contro! this trend may not result
in a net reduction of one percentage point.

Teen pregnancy: Again, allowing states to “opt-in” to requirements restricting cash to unmarried
teen mothers is more of the status quo. Requiring teens to be in school or live “with an adult” to
be eligible for assistance will not affect much new since most dependent teens already do this.
Allowing states to provide “adult-supervised living arrangements” such as second-chance homes
for teens, is nothing more than a welfare service add-on. This is another way to make it easier to
bea single parent.

Encouraging patemity establishment: Again, allowing states to encourage paternity is helpful.
Why not require states to require paternity in order to be eligible for benefits. Until there are
significant consequences for certain behavior, we cannot expect much change.

‘National goals to prevent teen pregnancy: A proposal to require the Secretary of Health and
Human Services to implement a strategy to prevent teenage pregnaricies must not be a condom
distribution plan. Abstinence is essential and must be a national priority. It is the only fool-
proof solution to prevent pregnancies.

-ofw irths: Requiring the Secretary of Health and
Human Services to annually rank the five most successful and five least successful states in
reducing out-of-wedlock births is useful, but not central to the fight of reducing illegitimacy.

What is striking about these proposals is how timid they are. America is faced with a
skyrocketing rise in illegitimacy and what Congress and the National Governors Association
recommend is more federal money to the states with added flexibility, but no requirements when
it comes to fighting illegitimacy. When considering the amount of money this legislation will


21

courage them in part by simply lifting the taxes and regulations
that get in their way.

In the next month, Representative Watts and I will be introduc-
ing the community renewal act of 1996. That act is designed to put
government on the side of moral and economic renewal, which is
already present in these communities, like embers, just beneath
the ash in urban America.

The bill does this by empowering faith-based and other private
groups, funding school choice, encouraging private investment and
home ownership, and assisting those neighborhood groups which
are restoring structure to these communities.

We have ahead of us the task of not just reforming welfare bene-
fits, but of renewing distressed communities. As we move forward
in our efforts, let us keep in mind how important reducing the out-
of-wedlock birthrate is to accomplish these goals.

I am very pleased, Mr. Chairman—that everybody testifying on
this first panel has offered ideas as to how to do that. We may dis-
agree on illegitimate policy, but at least we all seem to be agreeing
on its importance. I urge the Committee to include, in its reform
initiatives, strong provisions to curb the alarming increase in ille-
gitimacy. Without them, we run the risk of merely making the cur-
rent system a more efficient destroyer of our families and our
neighborhoods.

Chairman SHAW. Thank you, Mr. Talent, and I thank all of the
Members for their testimony. We have a long agenda this afternoon
and in order to try to be as fair to the last panel as I am to the
next panel, I am going to enforce the 5-minute rule. As a matter
of fact, I think at future hearings I may enforce that against the
Members, too. I am going to strictly enforce it as to each of the wit-
nesses and as to the Members when they start the questioning
process.

We have each of your full statements which will be put into the
record, and I would ask the witnesses to summarize so that we will
have adequate time for questions and we can finish the hearing
this afternoon without prejudicing any of the later panels.

The next panel that we have is going to discuss the impact of
out-of-wedlock births. We have Robert Rector, who is a senior pol-
icy analyst at the Heritage Foundation, right here in Washington;
Nicholas Zill, who is a Ph.D., vice president and study area director
of Westat, Inc., in Rockville, Maryland; Joseph Mcllhaney, who is
the president of the Medical Institute for Sexual Health from Aus-
tin, Texas; and Frank Furstenberg, who is a Ph.D., professor of so-
ciology at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.

Mr. Rector, if you would proceed, as our first witness, please.

STATEMENT OF ROBERT RECTOR, SENIOR POLICY ANALYST,
THE HERITAGE FOUNDATION, WASHINGTON, DC

Mr. REcToR. Mr. Chairman, I wish to commend this Subcommit-
tee for holding these hearings today. I think the topic we are dis-
cussing is the most important topic before us as a Nation. The sim-
ple fact of the matter is that marriage in the United States is dying
and the very survival of our society is at stake. By large, it is the
current welfare system that is killing it.


50

‘Unmarried Parenthood as a Risk Factor for Children

Testimony before the

U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Ways and Means
‘Subcommittee on Human Resources

Nicholas Zill, Ph.D.
Vice President and
Director of Child and Family Studies
Westat, Inc.
Rockville, MD

March 12, 1996

The family situations in which American children are born, cared for, and raised have changed
dramatically over the last 30 years. One of the most striking changes, and probably the one that has
‘generated the greatest public concern, is the growth in the numbers of children who are born to unmarried
mothers. In 1993, the nationwide count of such births amounted to 1.2 million, or 31 percent of all births.
“This was triple the percentage of births that occurred outside of marriage in 1970. (Figure A).

Among births to white women, the percentage that occurred outside marriage quadrupled between
1970 and 1993, going from 5.5 percent to 24 percent. Among births to black women, the unmarried
percentage rose from 38 percent in 1970 to 69 percent in 1993. ‘There are signs that the rate of increase in
‘unmarried childbearing is slowing down. Nonetheless, the facts that unmarried childbearing has grown so
fast and, in several U.S. ethnic groups, a majority of births now occur outside of marriage (Figure B), are
deeply troubling to many observers.

Not only are more American children being born outside of marriage, more are growing up in
single-parent households, living with mothers (and, much less frequently, fathers) who have never married.
‘According to the U.S. Bureau of the Census, the number of children under the age of 18 living in single-
parent families with never-married mothers doubled between 1984 and 1994, going from 3.1 million to 6
million. The ethnic composition of this population group has also changed. African-American children still
constitute a majority of children living with unmarried mothers, but they now comprise a smaller majority
(Gown from 67 percent to 55 percent), while white and Hispanic children form a larger minority (Figure C).

‘The reasons for the enormous increase in unmarried childbearing since the 1960s have been hotly
debated. Clearly, the social imperative for all adults to get married has weakened, as have the ability and
willingness of parents or the community at large to insist on "shotgun weddings” in cases in which a young
couple produces a child outside of marriage. Critics of the welfare system contend that it has helped to fuel
the growth of “illegitimacy” by subsidizing and, in effect, institutionalizing childrearing outside of marriage.
Others argue that this is an overly simple view and that many other factors have played a role in the growth
of non-marital childbearing, including worldwide cultural changes and macroeconomic shifts that have made
it harder for low-skilled workers to earn enough to support a family.

__ What I would like to focus on, however, is not the reasons for the increase in unmarried
parenthood, but the consequences for the economic well-being of the family that is so formed, and for the
‘development and well-being of the children involved. This topic has also been a source of much contention,
of course. Some have argued that unmarried parenthood is a major cause of child poverty and welfare
dependency ad hat coming from sage pent anily i srious impediment oa young person's life

chances. Others have countered that the fact that a child comes from a single-parent family has no
particular bearing on how well he or she does in life. Single-parent families are simply different from, not
necessarily more stressful or less supportive than two-parent families. If there are problems with such
families itis due to other factors, such as poverty or a lack of supportive community services. Or so the
‘counter-argument goes.

‘Much of the debate between proponents of these conflicting positions has taken place on the
anecdotal level, and has relied on evidence from limited studies based on small samples that were not
necessarily representative of the general population. Over the last decade and a half, however, social
scientists have generated a considerable volume of solid research on family composition and children’s well-
being. Although there has been considerably more research on the consequences of divorce, there is a
growing body of evidence on the repercussions of nonmarital upbringing as well. The more recent research
has made use of data from epidemiological surveys and longitudinal studies based on large probability
samples of families with children, studies like the National Survey of Children, the National Longitudinal
Survey of Youth, the National Health Interview Survey on Child Health, the National Household Education
Survey, and the National Education Longitudinal Studies. Studies that have made use of these large,
representative data bases, though they have been conducted by different researchers from a variety of
disciplines and perspectives, have produced generally compatible results.


95

With that job, if you have a package of benefits, that really allow
people to live at a modest style of living, I think you will find that
most people on welfare want to work.

That is one of the big myths that has got to be exploded.

Mr. COLLINS. We understand and we agree on that. If I recall,
in the welfare reform bill that we sent to the President on a couple
of occasions, in the area of child care there were funds for child
care. In the area of Medicaid, the child will continue to be covered
under Medicaid.

Dr. FURSTENBERG. For how long, Congressman?

Mr. Cou.ins. There will also be benefits there for food stamps for
the child, nutrition programs for the child.

Dr. FURSTENBERG. Most of these people will not move into jobs
with benefits. If you have one——

Mr. COLLINS. Let me finish.

Dr. FURSTENBERG. Yes; sorry.

Mr. COLLINS. The adults would have to fend for themselves
under a job, and the job wages would supplant the cash benefits
that the adult was receiving, but the programs to make sure that
the child was provided for would stay in place.

Dr. FURSTENBERG. If you mean by 1 year, I think that is inad-
equate. It is clearly inadequate. If you are planning to keep those
benefits in place, I think that would make the bill a lot more at-
tractive from my point of view.

Chairman SHAW. OK . We are going to have to let that be the
last word. We have got to move this hearing along. I do not want
to keep the later panels here too late.

b The next panel is going to be discussing reducing out-of-wedlock
irths.

We have Heidi Stirrup who is director of government relations at
the Christian Coalition, here, in Washington; Andrea Sheldon, di-
rector of government affairs, Traditional Values Coalition, here, in
Washington; Sister Mary Rose McGeady, who is the president and
chief executive of Covenant House, one of my favorite organiza-
tions, with a very fine facility, in my own hometown of Fort Lau-
derdale. Audrey Rowe is executive vice president of the National
Urban League of New York, whom I am told lives in Connecticut.

Welcome, and as I have said to the other panelists, we have your
full statement which will be made a part of the record, and you
may proceed and summarize as you see fit.

Ms. Stirrup.

STATEMENT OF HEIDI STIRRUP, DIRECTOR, GOVERNMENT
RELATIONS, CHRISTIAN COALITION, WASHINGTON, DC

Ms. Stirrup. Mr. Chairman, Members of the Subcommittee, I am
Heidi Stirrup, director of government relations for the Christian
Coalition.

Thank you very much for holding this hearing and for inviting
me to offer some thoughts on the topic of poverty, illegitimacy and
welfare reform.

Speaking on behalf of Christian Coalition, I would like to point
out to this Committee that what is needed to combat the skyrocket-
ing rate of out-of-wedlock births are bold policies that will discour-


33

Isn’T LOW FAMILY INCOME THE REAL CAUSE OF PROBLEM
BEHAVIOR?

‘A-common liberal belief is that most social and behavioral problems are the
result, not of collapsed family structure, but of low family income. According to this
theory, crime and other dysfunctional behaviors emerge in young people raised in single
parent homes, not because of the absence of the biological father, nor because of the
‘norms within the family, but simply because single parent homes, on average, have
lower incomes. Since a lack of money causes development problems, such problems
can be reduced by providing ever larger welfare payments to single mothers.

This belief can easily be refuted by applying historical perspective. The typical

family in the 1950's had an income roughly blf of that of similar family today, after

adjusting for inflation, But no one would really expect children raised in the 1950's to

exhibit greater criminalit ‘sexual promiscuity, and behavior problems simply because

their families had less income. Similarly, the typical family living inthe 1920's was

“poor” by today’s standards, edjusted for inflation, But lack of income did not generate
‘greater behavioral problems among children of this earlier period.

‘Two principles seem to apply. First, children benefit greatly from the presence of
‘biological father and mother united in marriage. Second, in addition to family structure,
the norms within the family (and also with he surrounding community) rather than.
income that make the difference in children’s lives.

Finally, there is no credible evidence to suppor the belief that attempting to raise
the incomes of single parent home through more generous welfare benefits will generate
positive outcomes in children’s development. Instead, more generous welfare promotes
‘greater single parenthood and dependence, both of which have a sharply negative effect
‘on children’s well-being. In order to help children we must reverse the current national
‘tend in which even greater numbers of children ae being rise in welfare dependent
single parent homes.

POLICY RECOMMENDATIONS

The primary goal of welfare reform must be to reduce illegitimacy and to save
marriage. This will not be easy. Our current welfare system is like a giant ocean liner
‘bound on a socially destructive course. It will take years to stop the behemoth and
reverse direction. For example, even under the conference welfare reform bill, passed by
‘Congress, the federal and state governments would spend nearly a haf trillion dollars,
over seven years, to subsidize and suppor illegitimacy and single
‘multiple welfare benefits, day-care, job training, and other services. Under the
‘Congressional pla, govemment would spend $1,000 to subsidize single parenthood and
illegitimacy for each dollar spent to reduce illegitimacy.

However, the conference bill, enacted by Congress, did take some inital first
. Congress:
improve its efforts to deal with illegitimacy. Steps which should be taken include the
following.

1. Congress should clearly identify reducing illegitimacy as the key goal of welfare
reform and should use the bully pulpit to publicize the issue.

> Robert Rector, “Why Congress Mist Reform Welfare”, Hinge Foundation Backgrounder, No. 1063,
december 4, 1995.


133

Dirgctor Kathleen Mt. Sulivgn
Yor unmarried teens?

41. Even if there is no pregnancy, having sex can cause a lot of problems
1994 1995
PRE POST PRE POST
STRONGLY AGREE 29% 42% 30% 38%
AGREE 41% 38% 38% 39%
NOTSURE 16% 10% 15% 11%
DISAGREE 9% 4% 9% 5%
STRONGLY DISAGREE 4% 3% 4% 3%
42. In our world today, movies, TV, videos, music, and advertising influences our sexual behavior?
1995
PRE
STRONGLY AGREE 28% 37%
AGREE B% 41%
NOTSURE 12% 9%
DISAGREE 9% 6%
4%

STRONGLY DISAGREE 5%


17

Chairman SuHaw. Thank you, Mr. Hutchinson.

Our next witness is Ms. Clayton, who is a Member of Congress
from the State of North Carolina.

Ms. Clayton.

STATEMENT OF HON. EVA M. CLAYTON, A REPRESENTATIVE
IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF NORTH CAROLINA

Ms. CLayTon. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to thank you,
Chairman Shaw, and Ms. Kennelly for allowing me to testify this
afternoon and also to beg, hopefully, that we will debate this in a
deliberate and thoughtful effort and not to find opportunities to
scapegoat a very hot issue.

As politicians, we somehow can wrangle on about the perils of
teenagers, not realizing we also are responsible. Most teens who
become pregnant come from poor and disadvantaged families.
Teenage pregnancy is just one marker of disadvantage, one result
of growing up poor and poorly nurtured, both physically and emo-
tionally, I would say.

Teen pregnancy is also a strong predictor of a new generation of
disadvantaged. The equation is as simple as this. As poverty is the
most accurate predictor of teen pregnancy, teen pregnancy is a
near certain predictor of poverty.

While one in four American children are living in poverty, a 1991
report from the Casey Foundation compare children of two
groups—those who finished high school and those who did not. The
first group got married, and reached age 20 before having a child,
but the second group did not. Of children in the first group, the
poverty rate was 8 percent. In the second group, the poverty rate
was 79 percent.

Among teens, more births occur out of wedlock today than oc-
curred 35 years ago. This increase in out-of-wedlock births can be
attributed to certain changes in marriage patterns, sexual behav-
ior, contraceptive practices, abortion, and the composition of the
teen population. Young men and women are increasingly delaying
marriage, but not sexual activity.

Teens make three sets of choices about sexual behavior and its
consequences. The first is whether and when to start having sex.
The second is whether to use contraceptives. According to studies
in making the third choice, whether to become pregnant, the dis-
tinction by income is very dramatic. In 1994, of all the women aged
15 through 19, 38 percent are defined as poor and low income. Of
these same groups, 73 percent were projected to become pregnant.

Of the 1 million teens who become pregnant each year, about
half give birth, about 40 percent choose abortion, and the remain-
ing 10 percent miscarry. Actually teenage pregnancy is much larger
than just those who have given birth.

Once a teenager becomes pregnant there is no good solution.
There is pain in adoption. There is pain in abortion. There is pain
and suffering giving birth and certainly there is pain in parenting.

The best solution is to prevent the pregnancy in the first place.
Young people who believe that they have real futures to risk have
real incentives to delay parenting. That is why, when we demand
responsible behavior, we have a reciprocal obligation to offer a real
future beyond early parenting and poverty.


61

Figure 6: Children of Unmarried Mothers in the United States:
Psychological Disorders

Children living with:
Wunmarried mothers EA Both birth parents

Developmental delay,
learning disability, 25%
or behavioral problem 15%

Learning disability 8%

6%
Emotional or 20%
behavioral problem 8%

Developmental delay sy a

Percent of children aged 7-17 years

Family Change and Student Achievement: What We Have Lei at Means
Family-School Links: How Do They Affect Educational Outcomes?



130

TESTIMONY ON ABSTINENCE EDUCATION PRESENTED MARCH 12, 1996
BY KATHLEEN M. SULLIVAN-DIRECTOR OF PROJECT REALITY

COMMITTEE ON WAYS AND MEANS.

Subcommittee on Human Resources
HEARING ON CAUSES OF POVERTY WITH A FOCUS ON "OUT-OF-WEDLOCK" BIRTAS

In our experience of working in and studying the area of adolescent health, both emotional and physical, for
the past ten years, we have observed notable changes:

‘A. The problems associated with adolescents becoming sexually involved have been compounded and
have become a major public health cost and concern in areas other than pregnancy, e.g. rampant
sexually-transmitted diseases and severe emotional trauma, caused by rejection, depression, stress
and Joneliness resulting from broken physical unions

B. _Abstinence-centered education, the only true solution, which was thought impossible ten years ago,
has been exceptionally well-received by tens of thousands of students who have had the opportunity
to participate in this innovative, reasoned, sensible approach.

Today, abstinence education is a national debate and organizations, such as Project Reality and
others, ike Teen Aid of Spokane, WA, which have developed true abstinence-centered materials, can
show statistically that it works very well

‘This national debate needs to be expanded and we commend you for taking a leadership role in holding these
hearings

For 25 years, public policy programs and funding have been concentrated under the category, or heading,
of "Teen Pregnancy." Maybeitis ime wereconsider the very conceptof this category. Whenwe speak about
"teen pregnancy,” the perception is that it is a female problem and, in reality, we know that is not accurate.

Pregnancy is not the problem. Becoming sexually involved is the problem. Pregnancy is only one factor
or result of the real problem, Sexual Activity. Promiscuity's three paramount consequences, emotional
trauma, sexually-transmitted diseases, and pregnancy, must each be seriously and adequately addressed.

Since, in most discussions and programs to date, teen pregnancy is the major focus, letus, for just amoment,
deal with the consequence of emotional trauma. I personally became critically aware of this, approximately
three years ago, when I gave a talk to parents in Maryland. At the end of my presentation, several people
approached me including a husky, thirty-something, rather serious man. He waited until everyone had left
I went

and then remarked: "If [had heard what you said tonight 18 years ago, I never would have done
along from peer pressure, but Ihave hated what I did to that girl ever since and I have hated myself. ~
never thought there was anyone who understood what we guys go through." For 18 years this emotional
hurt was bottled up.

The emotional factor is what really gets the attention of the young males. The emotional factor can be
summed up in our slogan: "Condoms don't protect the heart."

This type of physical relationship seldom lasts and it’s often ended by the girl who has found an older guy.
The girls are usually more mature at this age. We know that today many teen pregnancies are fathered by
20 year-old men. However, the rejected young male's hurt is internalized, and he adopts a macho image as
adefense mechanism. We should ask: "Does early emotional hurthave a relationship to verbal abuse, sexual
harassment and domestic abuse so prevalent today?"

‘Theanswerto this question is beautifully expressed by the letters attached from two 8th grade students. They
are representative of thousands of positive comments our teachers receive. One comment eloquently sums
up the 90% positive comments received over the 10 years of evaluations: "I didn't know I didn't have to
doit."


114

Social norms around marriage and childbearing have also
evolved over the past 20 years, that may affect how we interpret
these statistics.

We have delayed marriages, married women who are having
fewer children, timing, and definition of marriages.

We think that all of these factors need to be considered, and we
must recognize that simple solutions do not solve complex
problems.

The National Urban League recommends strategies that we be-
lieve will help curb this problem for individuals living in low-
income communities. In order to create long-term change in the
area of out-of-wedlock births, particularly for low-income families,
we strongly urge that we proceed carefully and incorporate evalua-
tion and research to learn and understand more about the factors
affecting behavior for both men and women.

We may also need to look at who is doing the research, or expand
on people who are doing the research, given the makeup of our pre-
vious panel of research experts.

The National Urban League recommends that we develop strate-
gies that address the increasing span of time between puberty and
marriage. This time period represents the vital stage of transition
from school to adult employment, and career.

It is a time span for which this Nation has been sorely lacking
in public policies related to youth development.

The Urban League recommends expanding, and not retrenching
our investment in school-to-work initiatives underway throughout
this country.

Since we know educational levels play a key role, we need to look
at programs that prevent students from dropping out of school, and
programs that address those students who are already out of
school.

Finally, the relationship between poverty and out-of-wedlock
births requires a national focus on the labor market.

This issue of increasing wage and job opportunities, especially for
women and minorities, must be addressed, as well as the role that
racial and sex discrimination play in denying minorities and
women access to jobs with a livable wage.

I would encourage you, Mr. Chairman, to seriously consider Con-
gressman Rangel’s suggestion to bring together the various Com-
mittees of cognizance in this Congress to develop comprehensive
strategies that are cost effective, and that we believe can truly
make a difference.

(The prepared statement follows:]


116
3. This is not just a race issue.

~ The National Center for Health Statistics and the Census
Bureau show that of all unmarried women who gave birth in 1993,

39.5 percent were white

36.0 percent were black

21.1 percent were Hispanic

3.5 percent were Indian or Asian

4, This is also a man's issue

= The Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies
estimates that $33 billion of child support goes uncollected
each year. This suggests that, for whatever the reasons
non-custodial parents (most of whom are fathers) are not
economically supporting their children.

- Paternity establishment is very important to children born
out-of-wedlock. According to HHS’s eighteenth report to Congr
on child support enforcement, establishing paternity for such
children and having that parent contribute financial assistance
for the child’s upbringing benefits society and the child (e.g.,
legal access to medical history, Social Security benefits
pension benefits, veterans’ benefits, and other rights of
inheritance).

5. And, it is not necessarily a choice or intended issue.

- The Alan Guttmacher Institute reports that the younger a
sexually experienced teenager is, the more likely she is to have
had involuntary sex. Some 74% of women who had intercourse
before age 14 and 60% of those who had sex before age 15 report
having had sex involuntarily. These. young teens are therefore at
great risk for unintended pregnancies and sexually transmitted
diseases.

- Studies show that this nation has one of the highest rates
of unintended childbearing in the industrialized world: the
proportion of pregnancies that are unwanted or mis-timed ranges
from 40 percent among married women to 88 percent among
never-married women.

FACTORS RELATED TO OUT-OF-WEDLOCK BIRTHS

This profile of out-of-wedlock births implies that a range of
factors affect behavior, many of which may stem from changes in
social and economic structures and not just from individual
choices. For example,

1. Lack of educational opportunities.

- Census Bureau data show that the odds of becoming an
unmarried mother fall sharply as education rises. Almost 50
percent of births to high-school dropouts occur out cf wedlock;
among college graduates, the proportion is just over 6 percent

2. Lack of job and income opportunities.

- A recent New York Times article noted that studies show
most young adults say a man who wants to marry should be able to
support a family and that young women are less likely to marry
in places where young employed men are scarce.

- As noted in a 1994 report on un-wed fathers, published by
Public Private Ventures, the economic condition for young men
has been rapidly deteriorating over the last 20 years -- between
1973 and 1991 average earnings of males fell by nearly 31
percent and by more than 40 percent by males without a high
school diploma.

- Statistical studies published in the National urban Leagu
State of Black America 1993 consistently found a relationship
between male joblessness or low wages on marital dissolutions or
non-marriage. Research published in this journal also note that
the availability of "marriageable black men" is lower due to
high rates of mortality, unemployment, incarceration, and
substance abuse. These are particularly poignant statistics for
African American families.



4

Chairman SHAw. OK. If the meeting will come to order. This
afternoon should be a most interesting hearing. I am looking for-
ward to the witnesses. I will give the opening statement for the
majority and Mrs. Kennelly will follow me and give the opening
statement for the minority.

The rise in births outside marriage is a specter haunting our
Nation. I think we all agree on that. The rates are unacceptably
high and the consequences are severe for both mother and child.

H.R. 4, the congressional welfare reform bill that was vetoed by
President Clinton contains many provisions addressed to out-of-
wedlock births. We have provided a list of these provisions in the
members’ folders and copies have been provided for our guests and
members of the press.

Today’s hearing will explore consequences of this surge in out-of-
wedlock births. The sad truth is that the fastest ticket to poverty
is to have a child without being married.

Too often, out-of-wedlock births, especially for our Nation’s poor,
mean homes in which fathers are absent, mothers struggle, and
children suffer. The data is clear and it is stark. Sixty-four percent
of children born to single parents live in poverty, while only 8 per-
cent of children born to two-parent families live in poverty. That
is why I have reached the conclusion that the best thing we can
do to fight poverty is to encourage marriage and to discourage out-
of-wedlock births.

How do you do that? The first action the government and com-
passionate people must take is to recognize that you do not fight
poverty by spending more money; you fight poverty by changing
values. A primary cause of the trend toward births outside of mar-
riage is the dramatic increase in sexual activity outside marriage
that has afflicted the culture since the sixties.

As shown by survey data, this increase has been especially evi-
dent among adolescents. According to recent research, for example,
the percentage of women who have had intercourse by the age of
18 has more than doubled in the last 30 years. As witnesses on our
first panel will show, those trends have led to disastrous increases
in out-of-wedlock births, an epidemic of sexually transmitted dis-
ease and dire long-range health effects on young girls who are sex-
ually active at an early age.

A decade ago, calls for abstinence were met with derision or
laughter. Now, we have prominent Americans, and even television
commercials urging young people to save themselves for marriage.
Several of today’s witnesses will discuss projects designed to pro-
mote sexual abstinence among adolescents.

For now, I think it is fair to characterize these programs as hope-
ful, but we would be wrong to assume that they produce large im-
mediate impacts on either rates or consequences of birth outside of
marriage. Despite the fact that most Americans abhor both sex
among teenagers and births outside of marriage, Congress never-
theless continues programs that provide billions of dollars in sub-
sidies for precisely these behaviors.

Here is what we do. If a young girl has a baby and keeps it, we
provide her on a guaranteed basis, cash, food stamps, and medical
care. In the median State, this package of benefits is worth $12,000
per year. The traditional view has been that this approach for re-


93

Even the administration, where they keep vetoing the bills, they
keep talking about time-limiting welfare.

I might say to you, Dr. Zill, and to all the others, the Congress
is going to continue to study this subject, after welfare reform, we
are not walking away from it.

To walk away from it would do a horrible injustice. We are going
to have to study the problems in Charlie Rangel’s district further.
We have got to get the jobs. These are descendants of people who
went to New York to find work.

They came from Ireland. They came from the South. They came
from all over the world. For what? To find a job.

There is nothing basically wrong with these people. It is just a
question that they have been paid to stay there, and there are no
jobs, and now you have got a big, big problem.

I think that we owe it, as a Federal Government, to continue to
study the problem and to do what we can to encourage jobs to re-
turn to the inner cities where you have these pockets of poverty
which have to be worked out. We cannot walk away——

Dr. FURSTENBERG. Congressman, as long as there are jobs that
pay a living wage, and a decent wage, I favor your——

Chairman SHAW. What do you call a decent wage, by the way?

Dr. FURSTENBERG. I would say enough for a family, two adults,
to live on. The people that I am studying now typically will say
that you need four jobs to have a decent living.

Chairman SHAW. Give me an amount.

Dr. FURSTENBERG. Why is that?

Chairman SHAW. Give me an amount.

Dr. FURSTENBERG. Because they are paid minimum wage—

Chairman Suaw. What is a decent wage?

Dr. FURSTENBERG [continuing]. Which $4.25, and that is not
enough——

Chairman SHAW. That is why we have the earned income tax
credit, and that is why we have Medicaid, and that is why we have
child care.

Dr. FURSTENBERG. They do not have the benefits—are you talk-
ing about continuous benefits of Medicare and child care they will
have? I understand that the bill will——

Chairman SHAW. Medicaid goes on for 1 year, under existing law,
for someone that goes off of welfare. The child care needs to be
beefed up, there is no question about it.

Dr. FURSTENBERG. Yes. How about the continuation of Medicare?
I mean, I think if you billed the benefits, then I think you are get-
ting real reform.

Chairman SHAW. Well, those are some of the things that we are
going to have to continue to study.

I would like to know if you could give me what you think is a
decent wage, so I will know where you are coming from. A dollar
figure for a single mom.

Dr. FURSTENBERG. For a single mom, what would be a decent
wage? I would say, if—with a child, or without a child?

Chairman SHAW. With a child. We are talking about AFDC.

Dr. FURSTENBERG. Well, poverty would be, what?, about $12,000
for a mother and child, so ‘T would like to see whatever the benefits,
be equal or above——


Looking into the future and [Sa

‘making projections based on “Current Welfare Families:
the historical pattems of AFDC ‘Year Arcody os AFDC

receipt, it is clear that among, Hl
the 4,7 million families cur- mpgs H

reatly on AFDC, over 90 per-
cent will spend over two years
on the AFDC caseload. And our
more than three quarters of cur

rent AFDC families will spend
‘over five years on the AFDC
caseload. sete
Long-term welfare depend- a |
fence is most common among S==="==
women who have out ear = =
of wedlock. Nevers ve Famion

‘mothers, in general, remain on
AFDC twice as long as di- Expected Total Time on AFOC
vorced mothers.

DOES WELFARE BENEFIT oe
CHILDREN? “
‘The current debate over wel-
fare reform involves conflict-
ing visions of society and the
impact of welfare on human be
havior. Real reform will not Be [fe wean
‘achieved until specific core as-
‘sumptions which form the foundation of the modern welfare state have been overturned
and discarded. From its onset, the liberal welfare state has been founded on faulty logic.
‘This flawed logic, embedded in nearly all liberal thinking about welfare, runs something
ike this:
PREMISE #1: Children in families with higher income seem to do better in life.
PREMISE #2: Welfare can easily raise family income.
CONCLUSION: Therefore, welfare is good for kis.

From this logic has sprung a relentless thirty-year effort to raise welfare benefits, ex-
and welfare eligibility, create new welfare programs, and increase welfare spending.
of welfare

‘growth
spending violates these cardinal tenets of the liberal welfare system and thus has led to
ties of alarm from the welfare establishment.

In fact, each ofthe central tenets of modern welfare is misleading and deeply flawed.
‘Together they become a recipe for a disastrous system of aid which harms rather than

helps, aggressively crushing the hopes and future of an increasing number of young.
‘Americans.



158

Tessie's Child Care Inc.

Philip Mosely

Chief of staff

Committee on Ways and Means

U.S. House of Representatives

1102 Longworth House Office Building
Washington, D.c. 20515

Tessie’s Child Care, Inc.
‘Theresa E. Schneider

3 Phillips Street
Baldwinsville, N.Y. 13027
(315) 635-8237

March 5, 1996

Dear Mr. Moseley:

I have been reading and listening to reports about the
budgeting for child care and low income families. Most of what I
hear and read is a lack of funding due to budget cuts so as to
balance the budget. I agree with making the necessary cuts to meet
the requirements for a balanced budget. On the other hand, I see
a need for child care in our society today and in the future. I'm
sure you are aware of the statistics about how many households have
two working parents or a single parent trying to support their
family. Along with these figures are the families who have one or
both parents who have been laid off and need re-training.Which is
expensive and in many cases will require money the parents don’t
have. What will happen to the children?

I’m sure you have been feeling the pressures and you are well
aware of all the concerns. I am concerned about our future -- our
children. But, I don’t agree with continuing to put the pressure
on the government to support child care with funding from our tax
dollars. I have a proposal that reflects the thinking of John F.
Kennedy - ASK NOT WHAT YOUR COUNTRY CAN DO FOR YOUI ASK WHAT YoU
CAN DO FOR YOUR COUNTRY!

MY PROPOSAL:
+ stop funding child care through the government
* rewrite the tax law pertaining to businesses being able

to get a tax write-off from donations and grants to non-
profits only.

* change that tax law by broadening it to include FOR-
PROFIT CHILD CARE WITH A SLIDING FEE SCALE as well.

* by broadening the tax law, the businesses can help to
support child care in their area and the country.

* it would be up to the child care businesses to write for
grants and take the pressure off the government for
funding the low income families.

* it would be up to the private businesses to set the
criteria that they would require for giving the grants
and gifts-in-kind, with emphasis on high quality.

+ with the tax write-off and larger amounts of money
available, the businesses would be building a
partnership with our future - our Children!!


125

very much of a stigma associated with out-of-wedlock birth, that
has, in a lot of our culture-——

Sister McGEapy. It is not there anymore.

Mr. ENSIGN. Exactly. OK. That is what I am saying. One of the
reasons, perhaps, is that our welfare state has taken away the
absolute need for a father.

Because the welfare state can supplant the father, financially,
not obviously in any other way—but financially.

So, Because of that, can the mentality now be that—the con-
sequences are not as great as they used to be, because I can, at
least, have the father, by way of financial support from the
government?

Sister McGgEaDy. Well, that may be true, but I think what we
are after in public policy is answering the question, what are the
alternatives to that?

Mr. ENSIGN. I agree with you.

Sister McGEapy. How do we turn this around?

When a girl comes to a Covenant House, and says to us, help me
get on welfare. We say to her, we have a better idea. We are going
to help you finish high school, we are going to help with your baby
in day care, we are going to job-train you, we are going to help you
get a decent job. My answer to the question that was asked earlier
is I think a kid has got to make a minimum of $7.50 an hour to
survive.

Mr. ENSIGN. OK.

Sister McGrapy. We find that the way to begin to turn what you
call the welfare mentality around, she comes to us seeing the only
solution as going on welfare, and we say to her, there are better
solutions.

I think that is where this country needs to go with people who
are potential clients on welfare, to say to them, we have a better
way to go. We are going to help you with child care, help you get
a job.

Mr. ENSIGN. Sister, I think we would agree, once that person
gets to that point. There is a tremendous organization that is not
a religious organization, it is called Life-Line, and it is in Las
Vegas. It was founded by a wonderful woman, Ruth McGoardy. She
funded it for the first 25 years based on her inheritance. About 5
years ago she ran out of money, and now is looking for other
sources of funding.

They have had a 98 percent completion rate, getting the girls the
GEDs and doing all the things that you are talking about. I think
that is terrific and should be encouraged.

What I am asking is, can we through public policy discourage
those girls from getting in that situation in the first place? In other
words, if we change our welfare system, will those changes that we
are talking about have fewer and fewer people lead to where they
have to come to see you?

Sister McGEapy. OK. There may be some girls who will not have
a baby or will choose to have an abortion because they cannot get
welfare.

Mr. ENSIGN. No. I am talking about choosing to think first.


100

authorize, it is astounding to see that for every $1000 the government will provide to essentially
subsidize single parenthood, only $1 is provided to reduce illegitimacy. This is hardly a solution
for the crisis we're facing.

Recommendations: At a minimum, Christian Coalition would advocate the following policy
changes to combat illegitimacy:

+ Restore the requirement to prohibit states from using federal funds to give additional cash
benefits to welfare recipients who have additional children while on welfare, but allow
for vouchers for the care, feeding and material needs of the child.

. Restore the requirement to prohibit states from using federal funds to give additional cash
benefits to unmarried teenage mothers who have children out-of-wedlock, but allow for
vouchers for the care, feeding and material needs of the child.

. Provide reward incentives when welfare mothers marry and exit welfare.
. Require states to devise their own plans to reduce out-of-wedlock births.
. Fix the bonus payment scheme for rewarding states that reduce their illegitimacy ratios by

making the target reductions easier to achieve.

° Increase funding for abstinence education from $75 million to $200 million.
. Require establishment of paternity as a criteria for eligibility of benefits.
. Provide tax credits for contributions to private charities as a way to encourage private

sector and faith-based organizations to step in for the failed welfare bureaucracy. These
organizations can give prompt aid to those who need it most and encourage self
sufficiency and personal responsibility.

In short, what is needed for true welfare reform, are policies which will discourage dependency
and restore a sense of personal responsibility, control costs and reduce the illegitimate birth rates
by promoting stable, two-parent families. Instead of offering more federal money to provide
more social services to the ever expanding dependency population, we must offer policies
designed to save marriages and remove the economic incentives and rewards for single
parenthood.

We commend the Congress and this subcommittee for the tremendous effort it is making in
attempting to “change welfare as we know it.” We encourage you to include policies that will
help people help themselves. If we do not save marriage so children can be raised in two-parent
households, we will have done a great disservice to our children and our society.


41

‘O'Neill and Hill conclude:

‘Our findings of a negative impact of a welfare environment are
particularly troubling. After controlling forthe effects of a rich array of
characteristics, a mother's long-term welfare participation is associated
‘with a significant reduction in her child's (1Q} score and this effect is
reinforced by the mother's having grown up in an underclass
‘neighborhood, defined as one witha high proportion of welfare recipients.
‘Although long-term welfare recipients are generally poor, persistent
poverty does not seem to be the main reason for the poor performance of
these children. Moreover, our analysis suggests that policies that would
raise the income of children on welfare simply by increasing AFDC
benefits are not likely to improve cognitive development. Children on
welfare in high benefit states do npt perform measurably better than their
‘counterparts in low benefit states.

A similar study by Mary Corcoran and Roger Gordon ofthe University of Michigan
shows that receipt of welfare income has negative effects onthe long-term employment

and earings capacity of young boys. The study shows that, holding constant race, paren-
tal education, family structure, anda range of other socal variables, higher non-welfare
income obtained by the family during a boy's childhood was associated with higher ear
ings when the boy became an adult (over age 25)” However, welfare income had the op-
posite effect: The more welfare income recejyed by a family while a boy was growing.

up the lower the boy's earnings as an adult.'?

Typically, liberals would dismiss this finding, arguing that families which receive a lot
‘of welfare payments have lower total incomes than other families in society, and that itis.
the low overall family income, not welfare, which had a negative effect on the young
boys. But the Corcoran and Gordon study compares families whose average non-welfare
incomes were identical. In such cases, each extra doliar in welfare represents a net i
‘crease in overall financial resources available to the family. This extra income, according
to conventional liberal welfare theory. should have positive effects on the well-being of
the children. But the study shows thatthe extra welfare income, even though it produced
‘net increase in resources available to the family, had a negative impact on the develop-
‘ment of young boys within the family. The higher the welfare income received by the
family, the lower the earnings obtained by the boys upon reaching adulthood, The study
soggests an increase of $1,000 per year in welfare received by a family decreased a boy's
future earings by as much a5 10 percent.

Hill and O'Neil, 1994, op. cit
Hill and O'Neil, 1994, p. 1094

Higher levels of eared family income will tend w be coelated positively with bene parenting practices and
higher parental cognitive abies. Iti kel that hese wats, ater than higher income, ead wo improved earings

for sons,

‘Mary Corcoran, Roget Gordon, Deborah Loren, and Gary Solon, “The Associaton Between Men's Economic
‘Status and Theit Family and Community Origins." Journal of Human Resources Fall 1992, pp 575-601