- Jobs: The 30-year slow bleed of manufacturing jobs from the American economy devastated low-income families, and disproportionately impacted African Americans, who were overrepresented in those jobs.
- Wages: Stagnant and declining wages since the 1970s have made it harder for men to support families. The same has been increasingly true for women over the last decade.
Marriage doesn’t alter economic reality.
- More than 7 million married adults (below age 65) in the U.S. live below the poverty line.
- Among parents living below the poverty line, half are married.
- Married parents with children are 56 percent more likely to live in poverty than married couples without kids.
Economic realities do impact marriage. A 2012 study by the Brooking Institute showed a strong correlation between income and marriage. The authors noted a steep decline in marriage among low-income Americans, and suggested that labor market changes (like stagnant or declining wages and shortage of good jobs with livable wages) are responsible for the drop in marriage rates — especially among men who have experienced the most adverse economic changes since the 1970s.
Kristi Williams, associate professor of sociology at Ohio State University, agrees. After reviewing research on three decades of government programs designed to encourage marriage among low-income families, Williams concludes, “we found no physical or psychological advantages for the majority of adolescents born to a single mother whose mothers later married.”
Ryan’s tone is one of concern for low-income Americans, but it merely disguises the GOP’s penchant for blaming the poor for their plight. Ryan alternately blames the government for “trapping” Americans in poverty, but behind his rhetoric is the same old conservative worldview, in which worldly success indicates moral strength and virtue, while poverty indicates moral weakness — which is to be punished, not rewarded.
Ryan has become the GOP’s point-man, selling economic pain to the American public, with a smile and a dose of blue-eyed, Midwestern earnestness. Behind that smile, Ryan has authored a budget that would gut programs like Medicare and Medicaid, cut Social Security benefits, and virtually eliminate vital anti-poverty programs. This latest report is a prelude to another “Ryan Budget” that will again “punish the poor” with devastating cuts to anti-poverty programs, and reward the wealthy with even more tax cuts and loopholes.
There are other effective ways to reduce poverty, but conservatives steadfastly oppose them. Wages is one example. Republicans refuse to consider increasing the minimum wage. Raising the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour would lift more than one million people out of poverty almost immediately, and reduce food stamp spending by $46 billion over 10 years. That’s even more than House Republicans proposed cutting from food stamps — because fewer working, low-income families would need food stamps to put food on the table.
In The New York Times, Eduardo Porter writes that, “Stripping moral condemnation out of social policy is essential to help dysfunctional families succeed.” If our goal is to help low-income families succeed and achieve better lives, Porter says that it’s time to stop punishing families for not conforming to some “platonic ideal,” and instead help and improve outcomes for children in all kinds of families. But that’s light-years ahead of Ryan and the GOP.
Ryan rails against government for “trapping” Americans in poverty, but his new report reveals that many of the government programs he targets are quite effective at reducing poverty. Ryan’s real problem with the “War on Poverty” and safety-net programs is that they have worked too well, “rewarding” the poor — with assistance that prevents many from sliding further into poverty, or lifts them out of it — instead of punishing them for being poor in the first place.
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This has been reposted from the Campaign for America’s Future.