Paying the Poor
Heather MacDonald has some comments of Mayor Mike's proposal to pay poor people for doing normal societat things like going to the doctor, sending your kids to school, etc. Ms. McDonald thinks the mayor only got it half right:

The mayor wants to start paying the poor to make the right everyday decisions - showing up for school, free medical appointments or work; studying for exams; using free prenatal nurse services, etc. This pay-for-personal-responsibility program is part of the mayor's newest initiative to cut poverty in the city, announced on Monday.

The insight behind the mayor's proposal is politically incorrect in the extreme. For decades, the one thing one was never ever allowed to say about intergenerational poverty was that it's largely caused by the long-term poor themselves.

A never-ending procession of welfare-rights, housing and homeless advocates told us again and again that poverty is the result of racism and economic injustice. The poor were helpless victims of a system that was stacked against them.

Anyone who dared to point out that such self-destructive decisions as having a baby out of wedlock or dropping out of school were the proximate causes of poverty was lambasted for "blaming the victim."

Ms. MacDonald instead suggests that the mayor focus on promoting family structure:

There is a far more effective action the mayor could take to reduce poverty in New York, one that would require violating the second-most dangerous poverty-industry taboo: promoting marriage.

The mayor's own Commission for Economic Opportunity observes this all-important fact about poverty: It is irrevocably tied to family structure. Forty-one percent of female-headed households in New York fall below the federal poverty line, whereas only 11 percent of married couples do. This fact should have driven the entire agenda of the commission and the mayor. But, instead of acting on its obvious implications, they ignore it and say not a single word more about family formation in a 52-page report on ending poverty.

The most powerful social change that would cut poverty would be to increase the marriage rate among minorities. Rather than hitting up the private sector for bribes for the poor (the mayor's proposed cash awards for good behavior will be privately funded), Bloomberg should call on private industry and ad councils to start a massive educational campaign about marriage. This would tell young girls that the most valuable gift they can give their children is a father. It would tell young boys that siring children that they have no intention of raising is cowardly and unmanly.

I don't know if whether Ms. MacDonald's solution wouldn't just raise the number of married poor. But clearly family stability is an important cause of poverty and this has been known for a long time.
- posted by Base10 @ 9:08 AM