Introduction
The Stand for Children rally, held in Washington on June 1,
called attention to the plight of the nation's children. However,
the unstated, underlying goal was to defend the continuing growth
of the welfare system and implicitly to criticize those in Congress
who have sought to reform it. Thus, while the Stand for Children
event properly called attention to the disastrous condition of
America's children, it is important to recognize that children are
suffering precisely because of the governmental policies supported
over the last 25 years by the leading organizations promoting the
rally.
The simple fact is that children are suffering because the U.S.
welfare system has failed. Designed as a system to help children,
it has ended up damaging and abusing the very children it was
intended to save. The welfare system has failed because the ideas
upon which it was founded are flawed. The current system is based
on the assumption that higher welfare benefits and expanded welfare
eligibility are good for children. According to this theory,
welfare reduces poverty, and so will increase children's lifetime
well-being and attainment. This is untrue. Higher welfare payments
do not help children; they increase dependence and illegitimacy,
which have a devastating effect on children's development.
Americans often are told that the current welfare system does
not promote long-term dependence. This also is untrue.
- The 4.7 million families currently receiving Aid to Families
with Dependent Children (AFDC) already have spent, on average,
six-and-a-half years on welfare.
- When past and estimated future receipts of AFDC are combined,
the estimated average length of stay on AFDC, among those families
currently receiving benefits, is 13 years.
- Among the 4.7 million families currently receiving AFDC, over
90 percent will spend over two years on the AFDC caseload. More
than 75 percent will spend over five years on AFDC.
It is welfare dependence, not poverty, that has the most
negative effect 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.
Welfare dependency as a child has a negative effect on the
earnings and employment capacity of young men. The more welfare
income received by a boy's family during his childhood, the lower
the boy's earnings will be as an adult, even when compared to boys
in families with identical non-welfare income.
Welfare also plays a powerful role in promoting illegitimacy.
Research by CBO Director O'Neill also shows, for example, that a 50
percent increase in monthly AFDC and food stamp benefit levels will
cause a 43 percent increase in the number of illegitimate births
within a state. Illegitimacy, in turn, has an enormous negative
effect on children's development and on their behavior as adults.
Being born outside of marriage and raised in single parent
homes:
- Triples the level of behavioral and emotional problems among
children;
- Nearly triples the level of teen sexual activity;
- Doubles the probability a young woman will have children out of
wedlock; and,
- Doubles the probability a boy will become a threat to society,
engage in criminal activity, and wind up in jail.
Overall, welfare operates as a form of social toxin. The more of
this toxin received by a child's family, the less successful the
child will be as an adult. If America's children are to be saved,
the current welfare system must be replaced. The automatic and
rapid growth of welfare spending must be curtailed. Welfare should
no longer be a one-way handout; recipients should be required to
work for benefits received. Steps must be taken to reduce future
illegitimacy, beginning with restricting cash welfare to unmarried
teen mothers.
Finally, Americans must help children rise upward out of poverty
and despair by enlisting the support of those institutions that
have a record of real success. The evidence is clear that religious
institutions have enjoyed dramatic success in reducing teen sexual
activity, crime, drug use, and other problems among young people.
In order to help poor children, America must rely on the healing
and guiding force of the churches. This can be done by giving poor
parents government-funded education vouchers which could be used to
send their children to private schools, including religious
schools.
The Failed Liberal Paradigm
The liberal welfare state is founded on faulty logic. This
flawed logic, embedded in nearly all liberal thinking about
welfare, runs something like this:
- Premise #1: Children in families with higher income seem
to do better in life.
- Premise #2: Welfare can easily raise family income.
- Conclusion: Welfare is good for kids.
From this logic has sprung a relentless 30-year effort to raise
welfare benefits, expand welfare eligibility, create new welfare
programs, and increase welfare spending. The recent reform
legislation passed by Congress sought to slow the automatic growth
of welfare spending. Thus, it violated the cardinal tenets of the
liberal welfare system, leading to cries of alarm from the welfare
establishment and a prompt veto by President Bill Clinton.
In fact, each of the 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 increasing numbers of
young Americans. It is useful to examine each of these cardinal
liberal tenets individually.
CLAIM 1: 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 crime, school
failure, low cognitive ability, illegitimacy, low work ethic and
skills, and drug use. Hence, reducing 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 current rate). In the 1920s, roughly half of the
population was poor by today's standard. If the 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 social problems have increased rather than
fallen since these earlier periods.
History and common sense both show that values and abilities
within families, not family 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 that are key to the child's success.
CLAIM 2: It is very easy to raise family income through
welfare. This also is untrue. Because welfare reduces work
effort and promotes illegitimacy 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 dependence but relatively ineffective in
raising incomes and eliminating poverty.
CLAIM 3: Higher welfare benefits and broadened eligibility
will help children and improve their success in later life. In
certain limited cases, such as when it is needed to eliminate
serious malnutrition, welfare can help. But there is no evidence
that enlarging benefits and expanding enrollments in most U.S.
welfare programs will improve children's lives.
The Truth About Welfare
In contrast to the failed premises of welfare liberalism are
the following hard facts about welfare and children:
- Except in very limited cases, such as those involving serious
malnutrition, welfare programs do not yield fewer problems and
better life outcomes for children.
- Welfare programs intended to combat poverty do not help
children but do increase welfare dependence, which in turn is very
harmful to children's well-being.
- Welfare programs intended to raise family incomes do not
benefit children but do significantly increase illegitimacy and
single-parent families, which in turn have decisively negative
effects on children's development.
Overall, the wider and more generous the welfare "safety net,"
the greater the problems of dependence and illegitimacy will
become, and the greater the harm to children.
Examining Welfare's Impact on
Children
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 states, according
to the theory, should have improved cognitive ability when compared
to children without access to more generous welfare. However,
research published in 1994 by now-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 IQs of young children who were
long-term welfare dependents, having spent at least half of their
lives on AFDC. Contrary to the expected theory, they found that the
higher welfare benefit did not improve children's cognitive
performance. The IQs of long-term welfare-dependent children in
low-benefit states were not appreciably different from those in
high-benefit states.1
Moreover, this picture is overly optimistic. In restricting the
sample to long-term dependent children, the analysis ignores the
effects of higher welfare benefits in encouraging welfare
enrollment 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.2
3
Once the effects of increased dependence 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
residence, Hill and O'Neill found that the more years a child spent
on welfare, the lower the child's IQ. 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-a-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 IQ, and other variables
constant. 4
O'Neill and Hill conclude:
Our findings of a negative impact of a welfare
environment are particularly troubling. After controlling for the
effects of a rich array of characteristics, a mother's long-term
welfare participation is associated with a significant reduction in
her child's [IQ] score and this effect is reinforced by the
mother's having grown up in an underclass neighborhood, defined as
one with a 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 not perform
measurably better than their counterparts in low benefit states.
5
More Evidence on Welfare's Negative Impact
A similar study by Mary Corcoran and Roger Gordon of the
University of Michigan shows that receipt of welfare income has
negative effects on the long-term employment and earnings capacity
of young boys. The study shows that, holding constant race,
parental education, family structure, and a range of other social
variables, higher non-welfare income obtained by the family during
a boy's childhood was associated with higher earnings when the boy
became an adult (over age 25). 6 However, welfare income
had the opposite effect: The more welfare income received by a
family while a boy was growing up, the lower the boy's earnings as
an adult.17
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 it is 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 dollar in welfare represents a net increase 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 that the extra welfare income, even though it produced a net
increase in resources available to the family, had a negative
impact on the development 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
suggests that an increase of $1,000 per year in welfare received by
a family decreased a boy's future earnings by as much as 10
percent.8
Other studies have confirmed the negative effects of welfare on
the development of children. For example, young women raised in
families dependent on welfare are two to three times more likely to
drop out and fail to graduate from high school than are young women
of similar race and socioeconomic background not raised on welfare.
9 Similarly, single mothers raised as children in
families receiving welfare remain on AFDC longer as adult parents
than do single mothers not raised in welfare families, even when
all other social and economic variables are held
constant.10
Welfare Promotes
Illegitimacy11
The welfare system does added harm to children by promoting
illegitimacy. The anti-marriage effects of welfare are simple and
profound. The current welfare system may be conceptualized best as
a system that offers each single mother with two children a
"paycheck" of combined benefits worth an average of between $8,500
and $15,000, depending on the state. 12 The mother has a
contract with the government: She will continue to receive her
"paycheck" as long as she does not marry an employed man.
As long as a father and mother remain unmarried, they may obtain
income from two sources: the mother's welfare and the father's
earnings. However, if the parents marry they must rely on the
father's earnings alone. Welfare thus has made marriage
economically irrational for most low-income parents. It has
transformed marriage from a legal institution designed to protect
and nurture children into an institution that financially penalizes
nearly all low-income parents who enter into it.
Similarly, welfare has made it possible to raise a child without
either the father or the mother having to hold a job. Welfare thus
has made a father with low education and skills at best financially
irrelevant -- and at worst a net financial handicap to the mother
and the child. Welfare has worked like an acid, slowly corroding
the social foundation of marriage in low-income communities. All
parties -- the father, the mother, and especially the child -- are
damaged by this.
Largely because of welfare, illegitimacy and single parenthood
have become the conventional "lifestyle option" for raising
children in many low-income communities. As Washington Post
reporter Leon Dash has shown in his book When Children Want
Children, most unwed teen mothers conceive and deliver their babies
deliberately rather than accidentally. 13 While young
women do not bear unwanted children in order to reap "windfall
profits" from welfare, they are very much aware of the role welfare
will play in supporting them once a child is born. Thus, the
availability of welfare plays an important role in influencing a
woman's decision to have a child out of wedlock.
In welfare, as in most things in life, you get what you pay for.
The current welfare system pays for non-work and non-marriage and
has achieved dramatic increases in both. Scientific research
confirms that welfare benefits to single mothers contribute
directly to the rise in illegitimate births. June O'Neill's
research has found that, holding constant a wide range of other
variables such as income, parental education, and urban and
neighborhood setting, a 50 percent increase in the monthly value of
AFDC and food stamp benefits led to a 43 percent increase in the
number of out-of-wedlock births. 14 Other studies
showing the effect of welfare in increasing illegitimacy are listed
in the appendix to this paper.
The Social Consequences of Rising
Illegitimacy
From the very beginning, children born outside of marriage have
life stacked against them. The impact on the child is significant
and can be permanent. Out-of-wedlock birth and growing up in a
single-parent family means the child is more likely to
experience:
The absence of married parents is related to retarded
development in early childhood
Illegitimacy leads to delays in development. A study of black
infants (aged 5 to 6 months) living in households of lower
socioeconomic status in America's inner cities found that male
infants who experienced "minimal interaction with their fathers"
had significantly lower levels of overall mental development and
lower social responsiveness for novel stimuli. 15
Illegitimate children tend to have lessened cognitive development.
16 17 18 Many of these children
have problems in controlling their activity (popularly called
"hyperactivity"). This lack of control usually is an indication of
problems in learning that will arise later in the child's
development. 19 The effect on boys is greater, at least
in the early years. 20 21
Similar findings were enumerated again in the recent 1992
National Institute of Child Health and Development summary,
"Outcomes of Early Childbearing: An Appraisal of Recent Evidence."
22 And such findings are in line with earlier studies.
For instance, Project TALENT, a federal survey commissioned in
1960, which tracked the development of 375,000 high school students
from 1960 through 1971, found that children born outside marriage
were likely to have lower cognitive scores, lower educational
aspirations, and a greater likelihood of becoming teenage parents
themselves. Once again, all of these effects were greater for boys.
23
The absence of married parents risks emotional and behavioral
problems during childhood
The effects of illegitimacy continue to compound through
childhood. The National Health Interview Survey of Child Health
(NHIS-CH) confirms that children born out of wedlock have far more
behavioral 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; breaking things
deliberately; failure to feel sorry after misbehaving;
- Hyperactive behavior -- difficulty concentrating or paying
attention; becoming easily confused; acting without thinking; being
restless or overactive;
- Headstrong behavior -- easily losing one's temper; being
stubborn, irritable, disobedient at home; arguing excessively;
- Peer conflict -- having trouble getting along with others,
being not liked, being withdrawn;
- 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 behavior problems when compared
to children raised by both biological parents. When comparisons are
made between families that are identical in race, income, number of
children, and mother's education, the behavioral differences
between illegitimate and legitimate children actually widen.
Compared to children living with both biological parents in similar
socioeconomic circumstances, children of never-married mothers
exhibit 68 percent more antisocial behavior, 24 percent more
headstrong behavior, 33 percent more hyperactive behavior, 78
percent more peer conflict, and 53 percent more dependency.
Overall, children of never-married mothers have behavioral problems
that score nearly three times higher than children raised in
comparable intact families.44 24
Children born out of wedlock have less ability to delay
gratification and poorer impulse control (control over anger and
sexual gratification). They have a weaker sense of conscience or
sense of right and wrong. 25 Adding to all this is the
sad fact that the incidence of child abuse and neglect is higher
among single-parent families. 26
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 born out of wedlock whose mothers marry after the
child's birth appear to be slightly less likely to be sexually
active as teens but are still twice as active, on average, as
legitimate teens of intact married couples. 27
The absence of married parents is related to poor academic
performance during school years. The risks and consequences of
illegitimacy continue through the middle years of childhood and
express themselves in poor academic performance. A 1988 study by
Sheila F. Krein and Andrea H. Beller of the University of Illinois
finds that the longer the time spent in a single-parent family, the
lower the education attained by a child. In general, a boy's
educational attainment was cut by one-tenth of a year for each year
spent as a child in a single-parent home. Controlling for family
income did not reduce the magnitude of the effect noticeably.
28 These findings are confirmed again and again in
studies, conducted in the United States and abroad, which which
demonstrate that illegitimacy is also associated with lower job and
salary attainment. 29 30 31
The absence of married parents leads to intergenerational
illegitimacy. Being born outside of marriage significantly reduces
the chances the child will grow up to have an intact marriage.
32 Children born outside of marriage themselves are
three times more likely to be on welfare when they grow up.
33 Daughters of single mothers are twice as likely to be
single mothers themselves if they are black, and only slightly less
so if they are white. 34 And boys living in a
single-parent family are twice as likely to father a child out of
wedlock as are boys from a two-parent home. 35 The
TALENT study, noted earlier, already had found that children born
to teenage parents are more likely to become teen parents
themselves. 36
Illegitimacy is a major factor in America's crime wave
Lack of married parents, rather than race or poverty, is the
principal factor in the crime rate. It has been known for some time
that high rates of welfare dependency correlate with high crime
rates amo ng young men in a neighborhood. 37 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. Illegitimacy is the key factor. The absence of
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. 38 This is a dramatic
reversal of conventional wisdom.
Research on underclass behavior by Dr. June O'Neill 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 holding constant a wide range of
variables such as family income, urban residence, neighborhood
environment, and parents' education. Growing up in a single-parent
family in a neighborhood with many other single-parent families on
welfare triples the probability that a young black man will engage
in criminal activity. 39
Conclusion
In vetoing the welfare reform legislation passed by the House
and Senate, President Clinton has embraced the central erroneous
tenets of liberal welfarism. The Clinton Administration's report on
welfare, which formed the basis for the President's veto, makes
clear a belief that rapid and automatic increases in welfare
spending are essential to the well-being of children and that any
attempts to slow the growth of future welfare spending will
significantly harm children. 40 The organizers of the
recent Stand for Children rally share a similar view.
The President's veto and the Stand for Children rally are both
founded on the failed hypothesis that combating 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 illegitimacy, which in turn
have devastatingly negative consequences on children. Those truly
concerned with the welfare of children must seek a radical
transformation of the welfare system aimed not at increasing
welfare spending and enrollment, but at reducing dependence and
illegitimacy. That is the core of Congress's reform.
Appendix
Research on Welfare and Illegitimacy
Despite repeated claims to the contrary, the overwhelming
majority of scientific studies conducted in the last decade and a
half show that welfare promotes illegitimacy and discourages
marriage. Many show that welfare has a dramatically positive effect
in increasing the level of illegitimacy in U.S. society. The
following is a list of 19 studies on welfare and illegitimacy; of
these, 14 have found a relationship between higher welfare benefits
and increased illegitimacy.
1. Research by Mikhail Bernstam of the Hoover Institution at
Stanford University shows that childbearing by young unmarried
women may increase by 6 percent in response to a 10 percent
increase in monthly welfare benefits; among blacks, the increase
may be as high as 10 percent. Mikhail S. Bernstam, "Malthus and
Evolution of the Welfare State: An Essay on the Second Invisible
Hand, Parts I and II," working papers E-88-41,42, Hoover
Institution, Palo Alto, Cal., 1988.
2. Research by the Director of the Congressional Budget Office,
Dr. June O'Neill, has found that, holding constant a wide range of
other variables such as income, parental education, and urban and
neighborhood setting, a 50 percent increase in the monthly value of
AFDC and food stamp benefits led to a 43 percent increase in the
number of out-of-wedlock births. M. Anne Hill and June O'Neill,
"Underclass Behaviors in the United States: Measurement and
Analysis of Determinants," Center for the Study of Business and
Government, Baruch College, February 1992.
3. A recent study of black Americans finds that higher welfare
benefits lead to lower rates of marriage and higher numbers of
children living in single-parent homes. In general, an increase of
roughly $100 in the average monthly AFDC benefit per recipient
child was found to lead to a drop of over 15 percent in births
within wedlock among black women aged 20 to 24. Mark A. Fossett and
K. Jill Kiecolt, "Mate Availability and Family Structure Among
African Americans in U.S. Metropolitan Areas," Journal of
Marriage and Family, Vol. 55 (May 1993), pp. 288-302.
4. Research by Dr. C. R. Winegarden of the University of Toledo
found that half of the increases in black illegitimacy in recent
decades could be attributed to the effects of welfare. C. R.
Winegarden, "AFDC and Illegitimacy Ratios: A Vector-Autoregressive
Model," Applied Economics 20 (1988), pp. 1589-1601.
5. Research by Shelley Lundberg and Robert D. Plotnick of the
University of Washington shows that an increase of roughly $200 per
month in welfare benefits per family causes the teenage
illegitimate birth rate in a state to increase by 150 percent.
Shelley Lundberg and Robert D. Plotnick, "Adolescent Premarital
Child Bearing: Do Opportunity Costs Matter?," discussion paper no.
90-23, University of Washington, Institute for Economic Research,
Seattle, 1990.
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 a 30 percent increase in
out-of-wedlock births to women age 19 and under. Martha N. Ozawa,
"Welfare Policies and Illegitimate Birth Rates Among Adolescents:
Analysis of State-by-State Data," Social Work Research and
Abstracts 14 (1989), pp. 5-11.
7. Recent research presented at a meeting at the National
Academy of Sciences by Mark Rosenzweig of the University of
Pennsylvania showed a reduction in AFDC payments of $130 per month
could lead to a 40 percent drop in out-of-wedlock births among low
income women under age 22. Mark R. Rosenzweig, "Welfare, Marital
Prospects and Nonmarital Childbearing," December 1995.
8. Another recent study finds large effects of welfare on
illegitimacy. 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
because they were not proven to be statistically significant.)
Chong-Bum An, Robert Haveman, and Barbara Wolfe, "Teen
Out-of-Wedlock Births and Welfare Receipt: the Role of Childhood
Events and Economic Circumstance," The Review of Economics and
Statistics, May 1993.
9. A recent study by Charles Murray finds a positive effect of
welfare on illegitimacy. Charles Murray, "Welfare and the Family:
The U.S. Experience," Journal of Labor Economics, Vol. 11,
Pt. 2 (1993), pp. 224-262.
10. Another study by Robert Plotnick finds a positive effect of
welfare on illegitimacy. Robert D. Plotnick, "Welfare and
Out-of-Wedlock Childbearing: Evidence from the 1980's," Journal
of Marriage and the Family, August 1990, pp. 735-46.
11. A study by Paul T. Schultz finds higher welfare benefits
significantly reduce marriage rates. Paul T. Schultz, "Marital
Status and Fertility in the United States," The Journal of Human
Resources, Spring 1994, pp. 637-659.
12. A study by Scott South and Kim Lloyd finds a positive
relationship between welfare and the percentage of births which are
out-of-wedlock. Scott J. South and Kim M. Lloyd, "Marriage Markets
and Non-Marital Fertility in the United States," Demography,
May 1992, pp. 247-264.
13. A recent study by Phillip Robins and Paul Fronton finds that
higher welfare benefits lead to more births among never-married
women. Phillip K Robins and Paul Fronton, "Welfare Benefits and
Family Size Decisions of Never-Married Women," Institute for
Research on Poverty: Discussion Paper, DP #1022-93, September
1993.
14. A recent Rand Corporation study finds higher welfare
benefits increase illegitimate births. Catherine A. Jackson and
Jacob Alex Klerman, "Welfare, Abortion and Teenage Fertility," RAND
research paper, August 1994.
The following five studies found no relationship between higher
welfare benefits and illegitimacy. Significantly, no study has ever
found that welfare has a positive effect in reducing illegitimacy
and promoting marriage.
1. Gregory Acs, "The Impact of AFDC on Young Women's
Childbearing Decisions," Institute for Research on Poverty,
Discussion Paper # 1011-93. This study finds a small relationship
between higher welfare benefits and total births to white women,
but no significant relationship between welfare and illegitimate
births. The study does, however, show that being raised in a
single-parent home doubles the probability that a young woman will
have a child out of wedlock.
2. Greg J. Duncan and Saul D. Hoffman, "Welfare Benefits
Economic Opportunities and Out-of-Wedlock Births Among Black
Teenage Girls," Demography 27 (1990), pp. 519-535. This
study finds no effect of welfare on illegitimacy.
3. David Ellwood and Mary Jo Bane, "The Impact of AFDC on Family
Structure and Living Arrangements," Harvard University, March,
1984. This study finds no effect of welfare on illegitimacy.
4. David E. Keefe, "Governor Reagan, Welfare Reform, and AFDC
Fertility," Social Service Review, June 1983, pp. 235-253.
This study found no link between welfare and illegitimacy.
5. Robert Moffit, "Welfare Effects on Female Headship with Area
Effects," The Journal of Human Resources, Spring 1994, pp.
621-636. This study does not find that higher welfare benefits lead
to higher illegitimacy.
ENDNOTES
- M. Anne Hill and June O'Neill, "Family Endowments and the
Achievement of Young Children With Special Reference to the
Underclass," Journal of Human Resources, Fall 1994, pp.
1090-1091.
- M. Anne Hill and June O'Neill, Underclass Behaviors in the
United States: Measurement and Analysis of Determinants (New
York: City University of New York, Baruch College, August
1993).
- The impact of increasing the lenience and generosity of welfare
in undermining work and prolonging dependence has been confirmed by
controlled scientific experiment. During the late 1960s and early
1970s, social scientists at the Office of Economic Opportunity
(OEO) conducted a series of controlled experiments to examine the
effect of welfare benefits on work effort. The longest running and
most comprehensive of these experiments was conducted between 1971
and 1978 in Seattle and Denver, and became known as the
Seattle/Denver Income Maintenance Experiment, or "SIME/DIME."
Advocates of expanding welfare had hoped that SIME/DIME and similar
experiments 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 welfare
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, and 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. See: Gregory B. Christiansen and Walter E. Williams,
"Welfare Family Cohesiveness and Out of Wedlock Births," in Joseph
Peden and Fred Glahe, The American Family and the State (San
Francisco: Pacific Institute for Public Policy Research, 1986), p.
398.
- Hill and O'Neill, 1994, op. cit.
- Hill and O'Neill, 1994, p. 1094.
- Higher levels of earned family income will tend to be
correlated positively with better parenting practices and higher
parental cognitive abilities. It is likely that these traits,
rather than higher income, lead to improved earnings for sons.
- Mary Corcoran, Roger Gordon, Deborah Loren, and Gary Solon,
"The Association Between Men's Economic Status and Their Family and
Community Origins," Journal of Human Resources, Fall 1992,
pp. 575-601.
- 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-welfare 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 earnings of the boy raised in that
family when he becomes an adult.
- R. Forste and M. Tienda, "Race and Ethnic Variation in the
Schooling Consequences of Female Adolescent Sexual Activity"
Social Science Quarterly, March 1992.
- Mwangi S. Kimeny, "Rational Choice, Culture of Poverty, and the
Intergenerational Transmission of Welfare Dependency," Southern
Economic Journal, April 1991.
- This section relies heavily on Patrick F. Fagan, "Rising
Illegitimacy: America's Social Catastrophe," Heritage Foundation
F.Y.I. No. 19, June 29, 1994.
- This sum equals the value of welfare benefits from different
programs for the average mother on AFDC.
- Leon Dash, When Children Want Children: An Inside Look at
the Crisis of Teenage Parenthood (Penguin Books, 1990).
- M. Anne Hill and June O'Neill, Underclass Behaviors in the
United States: Measurement and Analysis of Determinants (New
York City: City University of New York, Baruch College, August
1993), research funded by Grant No. 88ASPE201A, U.S. Department of
Health and Human Services.
- Frank A. Peterson, Judith L. Rubenstein and Leon J. Yarrow,
"Infant Development in Father-Absent Families" The Journal of
Genetic Psychology, 1979, No. 135, pp. 51-61. The study finds
the differences in development were due to the level of interaction
with the father rather than the number of adults in the household
or the household's socio-economic status.
- Walsh, "Illegitimacy, Child-Abuse and Neglect, and Cognitive
Development," Journal of Genetic Psychology, Vol. 15 (1990),
pp. 279-285.
- J.J. Card, "Long Term Consequences for Children Born to
Adolescent Parents," Final Report to NICHD, American Institutes
for Research, Palo Alto, California, 1977; and also, J.J. Card,
"Long term consequences for children of teenage parents,"
Demography, Vol. 18 (1981), pp. 137-156.
- Wadsworth et al., op. cit..
- J. Brooks-Gunn and Frank Fustenberg Jr., "The Children of
Adolescent Mothers: Physical, Academic and Psychological Outcomes,"
Developmental Review, Vol. 6 (1986), pp. 224-225.
- Card, op. cit.
- Brooks-Gunn et al., op. cit.
- Bachrach, et al., op. cit . .
- Card, op. cit.
- Deborah A. Dawson, "Family Structure and Children's Health and
Well-being: Data from the 1988 National Health Interview Survey on
Child Health," paper presented at the annual meeting of the
Population Association of America, Toronto, May 1990.
- E.M. Hetherington and B. Martin, "Family Interaction," in H.C.
Quay and J.S. Werry (eds.), Psychopathological Disorders of
Childhood (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1979), pp.
247-302.
- A. Walsh, "Illegitimacy, Child-Abuse and Neglect, and Cognitive
Development," Journal of Genetic Psychology, Vol. 15 (1990),
pp. 279-285.
- Research by The Heritage Foundation based on the National
Longitudinal Survey of Youth.
- Sheila F. Krein and Andrea H. Beller, "Educational Attainment
of Children From Single-Parent Families: Differences by Exposure,
Gender and Race," Demography, Vol. 25 (May 1988), p.
228.
- Eric F. Dubow and Tom Lester, "Adjustment of Children Born to
Teenage Mothers: The Contribution of Risk and Protective Factors,"
Journal of Marriage and the Family, Vol. 52 (1990), pp.
393-404.
- Card, op. cit.
- Robert W. Blanchard and Henry B. Biller, "Father Availability
and Academic Performance among Third-Grade Boys," Developmental
Psychology, Vol. 4, No. 3 (1971), pp. 301-305.
- Neil Bennett and David Bloom, "The influence of Non-marital
Childbearing on the Formation of Marital Unions." Paper given at
NICHD conference on "Outcomes of Early Childbearing," May
1992.
- Kristin Moore, "Attainment among Youth from Families That
Received Welfare." Paper for DHHS/ASPE and NICHD, Grant
#HD21537-03.
- Sara S. McLanahan, "Family Structure and Dependency: Early
Transitions to Female Household Headship," Demography, Vol.
5, No. 1 (1988), pp. 1-16.
- William Marsiglio, "Adolescent Fathers in the United States:
Their Initial Living Arrangements, Marital Experience and
Educational Outcomes," Family Planning Perspectives, Vol. 19
(1987), pp. 240-251, reporting a study of 5,500 young men.
- Card, op. cit.
- Arthur B. Elsters et al., "Judicial Involvement and
Conduct Problems of Fathers of Infants Born to Adolescent Mothers,"
Pediatrics, Vol. 79, No. 2 (1987), pp. 230-234.
- Douglas Smith and G.Roger Jarjoura, "Social Structure and
Criminal Victimization," Journal of Research in Crime and
Delinquency, February 1988, pp. 27-52.
- M. Anne Hill and June O'Neill, Underclass Behaviors in the
United States: Measurement and Analysis of Determinants, New
York City, City University of New York, Baruch College March
1990.
- Office of Management and Budget. "Potential Poverty and
Distributional effects of Welfare Reform Bills and Balanced Budget
Plans," November 9, 1995.