Yet once in office, the Democrats tallied up the political and economic costs of significant social restructuring and decided they'd been overly bold. If it wasn't the economy, but single mothers all along, there was less need for risky fights over the redistribution of resources, investments, and government programs. For two years, politicians have conjured up ever more lurid images of unwed welfare moms having more and more children, bankrupting hardworking taxpayers, and spending most of their monthly checks on the cocaine trade that leads their fatherless boys to rob, kidnap, and murder decent citizens. Democrats should not have been surprised that the more these images dominated public discussion, the better the Republicans did in the polls. Yes, single-parent families are more likely to be poor, but they are not the only victims of our changing economy.
Poor couples are twice as likely to divorce as more affluent ones.
Jobless individuals are three to four times less likely to marry. And teens who live in areas of high unemployment and inferior school systems are six to seven times more likely to become unwed parents than more fortunate teens. Dozens of research studies show that the most effective deterrent to early childbearing is access to among other things, good schools and steady jobs. Even is we reunited every child in the United States with both biological parents, two-thirds of the children who are poor today would still be poor, according to US Census figures. Persistent poverty during the first five years of life leaves children with an IQ deficit of more than nine points, regardless of family structure.