This is just one more manifestation of America's enduring race problem. Until the 1950s, blacks were more, rather than less, likely than whites to be married. Granted, in white America, marriage and two-parent households are more the rule than the exception. Still, the numbers are sobering. But the odds are stacked against them.
Cohabitation appears to be less stable than marriage, even after other factors are accounted for.
Research by the ton finds that children raised in single-parent homes are at greater risk of poverty, school dropout, delinquency, teen pregnancy, and adult joblessness. All those problems disproportionately affect blacks, but before you decide that race, rather than marriage, is the active ingredient in the witch's brew, consider a few other points. First, poverty correlates more strongly with a family's marital status than with its race. In other words, if you are a baby about to be born, your best odds are to choose married black parents over unmarried white ones. Second, recent research finds that, dire though the consequences of single parenthood often are for black children, the consequences tend to be even worse for white children.