Sorry, but this article is politically biased crap.

The assertion of the article that black women had more babies because they could afford to due to welfare is as laughable as it is insulting.

You know how much food assistance families get today? $1.50 per person per meal - when they get food assistance, as there's a variety of factors that prevent getting food assistance. As many as 12.3% of American households are food insecure. Food assistance programs are almost criminally underfunded when you consider the long term costs they have on the youth of the nation and the subsequent impact on the rest of society.

There has been a precipitous decline in "shotgun marriages" over the past 40 years as stigmas about unwed mothers changed, women became more sexually liberated, and men felt less need to raise their offspring. Combine this with a lack of jobs, a lack of access to contraceptives and basic sexual health information, a drug war, and institutionalized racism in housing, transportation, education, the judicial system, etc and you build up impoverished communities where unwed pregnancy is significantly more likely. Welfare did not create the oppression of African Americans, and certainly did not encourage unwed pregnancy in African Americans more than anyone else welfare is applied to.

Another common trope of this subject: "Just as welfare policies discourage marriage and the formation of stable families, they also discourage the development of a healthy work ethic". But many food assistance programs actually _require you to work_ or you get almost no food assistance - which again, exacerbates these problems, as if you could work, you wouldn't need as much food assistance, and many impoverished black communities don't have enough access to jobs.

Yet another ill-advised argument they propose is that some couples stay together and unwed in order to siphon benefits from the government. This is again, ridiculous, as marriage is not a detriment to food assistance. Dozens of states have social welfare programs dedicated solely for two-parent families, and many have programs incentivizing marriage.

We have far more unwed mothers, and they need more assistance than wed mothers, hence they receive more benefits. This is a sticking point for many conservatives because they use this as an example of how the "family unit" is being "attacked", with single parents receiving more benefits than married ones. But it only makes sense, as the single parent has less financial and organizational help in raising a child.

A huge percentage of welfare is dedicated to programs encouraging people to get married, and be abstinent. Who put these provisions in place? Conservatives, concerned about the lack of focus on the family unit. Google around and you will find thousands of websites talking about the "attack on marriage" that welfare has seemingly caused.

I think an excerpt like this sums it up well (from "Blame Welfare, Ignore Poverty and Inequality" (2006)):

The [1996 welfare reform] legislation asserts that public assistance (i.e.
welfare dependency), not poverty, reinforces personal moral failures, which
causes social pathologies. In other words, the consequence has become the cause.
Moreover, there is a subtext underlying the "family values" agenda. It is the
moral condemnation of alternaitve family structures and particularly the
degradation of poor single mothers of color.

"Family values" reinforce the racially motivated stereotypes of "poor ghettos",
which are supposedly charcterized by promiscuity, irresponsible parenthood, an
"epidemic" of teen pregnancies and debilitating welfare dependency. In fact,
poverty, unemployment, low wages, and lack of human and social capital are the
major causes of single parenthood and marital instability, teen pregnancy, and
stunted child development.