At the group level, welfare recipiency is heavily correlated with neighborhood violence. This is bad enough. But, at the individual level, welfare recipiency is also heavily correlated with further welfare recipiency - thus leading to more of the crime problem. In 1995, the 4.7 million families then receiving AFDC had spent, on average, 6.5 years on the program. The generational effects are tragic.
Welfare encourages illegitimacy, which in turn encourages further illegitimacy.
Children from fatherless homes are found to have triple the level of teen sexual activity of children of two-parent families. Relative to their peers in two-parent families, young women raised in fatherless homes are twice as likely themselves to raise fatherless children. And so it goes on. The key is to break the cycle. This is why the Congress and Maryland s welfare bills show promise.