Projected behind me. That apparently is not going to happen. Thats pretty. Speakers are going to work from that from this podium. If you want a copy of this slide deck, email me or my colleague, jessica. Got lots of business cards and we have Contact Information out there. So if you want to if you want anymore information about whats morning, here this reach out. I apologize for that. Now, i wont talk anymore, on to our moderator, Michael Gerson a little ly needs introduction to all of you because you know his work so already. Hes a syndicated columnist whose insights on politics, society appear regularly in the washington post. Hes also a former advisor and writer to george w. Bush and has for years now a very compelling and helping us make sense of ourselves through decisive, earnest, and deeply informed writing. Michael gerson, thank you for being here and agreeing to talk to this panel. Thank you, sir. Good morning, thank you all for being here. Fitting, even necessary to start a discussion on family children with a reference to senator Daniel Patrick moynihan. 1965 in the moynihan report, he warned that a rising fraction of africanamerican children were growing up in house holds mothers and arried he worried this form of would compromise africanamericans to take advantage of rights and opportunities and he was with considerable controversy. From that time to this, from the s to today, we have seen a vast change in social norms and practice in families not limited to any race. Marriage rates have declined. Nonmarital births have increased. Cohabitation has increased. Children see a greater variety f less Stable Family arrangements and well hear about all of that. Changes in numbers are a change in the way people define their love, deepest commitments, and care for their young. Hese are the most important things about our own lives. So it is not surprising that of the most t some important issues in sociology and Public Policy. Design a e hard to better panel to raise and discuss these issues. Literally written the ook on family analysis and policy, authored the studies, submitted the papers, that define this academic field. If anything were to happen to being nel without observed and categorized by this roup, im not sure that people would even procreate and form families anymore. An exaggeration. But not much. But weve given them a disadvantage because all of them had a power point today. You know the idea that powerpoint orrupts, corrupts absolutely. So we will do without that. Of short ke a couple unnecessary introductions. Turland, the benjamin h. Psychologyofessor of and sociology at johns hopkins. Divorced married, child well being and the effects of welfare reform. A legends in n, this field, the william s. Todd and ssor of sociology Public Affairs at princeton, Principal Investigator on the and child well being and studied and the chief of the journal and future of children. Bob putnam is the peter and mall con professor of Public Policy at heartland, the awards and untless honors and the crusader of malcontent on our kids for the American Dream in crisis. Center for of children and families. And the expert influential white house and congressional advisor. Well hear their presentations in that order. Then i will have a few questions discussion. Then hopefully well have some questions given time from all of you. Thinking in those terms and thank you for getting us started. Thank you for giving me the of speaking to you this morning. I want to talk to you about the american working class and change. And im going to define the working class as people with a but not a degree degree. Ar college i do it that way because those are the ones that have been most impacted by the changes in our economy over the last few decades. Its a very large group. A large group thats worthy of more attention than we have given it. If i gave this lecture 75 years degree. Talked about i do it that way because those are the ones that have been most impacted by the changes in our economy over the last few decades. Marriage, i would say everybody is married. Poor people mar rid, working class, middle class people are married. That is true in the mid 20th century. But today theres a huge gap in marriage according to ones ducation or social class position. If you look for example at the percentage of americans in their who are and early 50s currently married, you find currently ny are married among College Grads as among people without a high education. People in the middle, the High School Grads are much less likely to be married than they the past. Marriage is much less dominant, especially among people without degree. E and so let me talk with you a bit about whats happened as play a has come to smaller role in the lives of working class. The children that were concerned about. You probably know that a large proportion of all births are to unmarried mothers. Around 40 of all births are unmarried mothers. Word, unmarried, turns out it has a kind of special people dont recognize unless theyre government statisticians. Unmarried, to the Census Bureau for the National Center of be two tatistics can things, even if you are singled, living by yourself or but not with the partner of cohabitating with the father. Single is how we thought about to unmarried s parents. We have an image of a young woman living on her own or with mom, a teenager, perhaps. Stereotypical image of an unmarried mother. Theres another image. That woman in her 20s with a living with egree but not married to the guy thats the father of her children at the time of the birth. Almost all of the increase in to unmarried mothers over the last few decades has come births to cohabiting mothers. Theres little change in the to e of all births unpartnered single mothers. Very little change. Theres huge change in the births to the cohabiting them. Rs as i will call thats whats been driving the increase since about 1980. Followrprising to us who this at first when we saw this rise. You is irst point to that yes, theres been a sharp rise in unmarried mothers. About it, we ink should think about the large group of people in their 20s a moderate amount of education living together who seem to be driving these changes. So, where has all of this births, ng mother cohabiting partner births come from . The biggest that increase in births do habiting id say, have come among the moderately educated call this the working class. That is people with a high School Degree. Maybe some college. Maybe have an a. A. Degree, but not a fouryear degree. You look at the stats for the births they have, in 1980, it as very unusual for any of those people to have a birth while cohabiting but not married. Didnt happen very much. Today its 25 to 30 of all moderate people with a amount of education. Or to people who are cohabiting. Its the case that of all american births now are to cohabiting couples. No one tends to pay much attention to that. But its an important fact. We want a ests if typical picture in our head, the typical picture now is somebody teenager, but a 20something and whos not but living with a together at the time of birth. So thats what i want to tell you. A bit more o talk about the collegeeducated people. The people with the Fouryear College degree. Theres been very little change them. People with the College Degree who ill call today the collegeeducated middle class, postpone their marriage a lot but theyre and ed in large numbers crucially they dont have kids until after they marry. Children to College Grads occur within marriage and their marriages are more stable used to be. The divorce rate has actually been going down for collegeeducated couples. Down but not much for everybody else. Social class a divide in this country. If there is a boundary aligned between the classes, with families, that line is between people with a and year College Degree everyone else. Certainly in terms of family lives, theres a striking distance in the kinds of neotraditional families that College Grads are living with now that are still marriagebased and people with less education than that. Even people of a couple of years a degree. But not so a huge difference now between hats happening to the College Educated middle class, and whats happening to the people calling the o im working class. So why has this occurred . Hy have we had an increase in births to cohabiting mothers thats been concentrated among the High School Grads or the little bit of college . From my point, a very thats tive development happened politically over the last couple of years is that conservatives and liberals or many people from both political persuasions, will theyre both at cultural and economic routes to these changes. Cultural change, the cultural change to me, thats the most greater thats the acceptance now of having a child outside of marriage. It just wasnt done 50 years poor. Xcept among the very now its relatively common and accepted. Theres a very large economic component to this also. Been studying a survey of about 9,000 young adults nationally for over a decade. Ive been watching them as theyve gone through their 20s. And with the data on them having passed through most of their s, ive looked at the labor markets that theyre in and then publish later this year, i looked at their labor markets to see how many of a large markets have number of jobs that are accessible to somebody with a pay School Degree and that above poverty wages. Lets call them good jobs just argument, okay . Now what i find is if you live in an area with more good jobs have a high School Degree or less, youre more likely to marry before you have first kid. Than people who live in areas with less good jobs . Why is that . We still its because have a strong norm that men must have good steady earnings in marriage e good prospects. Its good if the woman does too, but men must. And when they dont have when hey dont have job prospects, ifaterials the case that they dont have good job prospects, theyre not seen as ood marriage material even to themselves. Instead they start cohabiting youll hear which with the kids in these a great hips causing deal of churning. What is this doing to the psyche working class person . Im sure youve seen the news couple of the last months of rising death rates among middle aged whites due to alcohol or drug abuse. Heres what i think is maybe going on there. We both think about how well theyre doing, they think about how well theyre doing relative well their parents did. When the White Working Class generation, they find theyre earning less than their parents and they have less Job Opportunities and less than did backlly, then. Over the 2000ths, the percentage respondents told the survey that theyre doing better than their parents. Its going down and down. Heres the percentage of africanamericans and hispanics that say theyre doing better than their parents are staying worsened because look back at a time when things werent so great. We see an Economic Transformation due to the movement of jobs overseas and with people zation with family lives, in the working class, and moved down and tore apart a term, lessts shorter perm negligent, creating issues i had some beautiful slides for you. Going to get to where at least i can see them. Okay. So the title of my talk is what do what does family change mean for children . And im the director of the fragile led family study, which has been following a cohort children born between 1998 and 2000. And weve been we started at hospitals. We when the mother had the baby, we sampled rooms and we the room and said will you be in our survey. The mother said yes, the father said yes. Mothers and ed the fathers and their children and ere actually just finishing collecting data right now. The children have turned age 15. We started a study, we did it because we have a lot of this large out increase and child bearing and we wanted to know whats going on . What kind of relationships do these parents have . Are they casual . Are they commit . What does it mean . Do the fathers stay around . Do they end up getting married . So the real purpose of the Fragile Family study was to answer some of the questions we are dealing with today. So im going to make the argument and then im going to give you some data to sort of back up this argument. So, the first is that the hildren born to unmarried parents and i should mention that when we did the study, we births to pled for unmarried parents so wed have a those rge sample of births. So, compared to children born to married parents, children born unmarried parents experience much higher rates of union dissolution, a higher prevalence of new partners coming into and out of the home. Higher prevalence of the familys complexity which means the house hold that have different partners. And im going to argue that experiences in themselves lead to more maternal stress. Run one of these house holds. If youre trying to collect one man and from arrange visitation with one man, thats not easy. With three different fathers. And try scheduling visitation with three different fathers. A full imagine, its time job. This leads to a lot more maternal stress, this kind of family life. Ble it leads to less commitment from he biological fathers because when they move out, theyre less likely to contribute to the child. Theyre not quite sure how the to spend the g money that they send. Man is in the if theres and houser mans child in the hold, that biological father is even more concerned about how his money is going to be spent so he contributes less. Theres also less commitment to the children from these new partners because theyre not the biological child of that man. N fact, that man may have a biological child in another house hold with a woman that he visit and hes support to child that child. So he doesnt feel the same about the biological child that was born to the mother in our study. And this lack of commitment and this instability, i argue, leads quality t and to lower parenting and lower quality parental investment. And thats something that bob is to show and talk about a little bit. And ultimately it leads to lower child health and well being. Out, and as ointed bob will say too, it s the poor people who are getting into this situation, clearly. This is a big part of the problem. But this situation is making things worse for them. I would argue. Birth, when art at we looked at these children in the these were births in found, like , we very similar to what andy is talking about, these are the nmarried births, half of these parents were cohabiting at the time of the birth. These werent casual one night ps or stands. The fathers were around living with the mother. Another 32 of the unmarried in a dating relationship. Some had plans to marry. To thought they were going marry. A large portion said they wanted to marry. Friends, and only 9 had little or no contact with each other. O theres a lot of high hopes at the beginning of this situation and when the baby is born. Five years after the birth, its a very different story. Had data on first birth, i mean first birthday, third just ay, fifth, but ill talk about the fifth birthday. By the time the child is 5 years married kids born to parents only 18 of those parents had broken up. Thats a lot. 18 . Ts still only cohabiting parents, its 50 . And for the single mothers in the dating relationships, its 76 . These cohabiting relationships are more stable relationships but theyre not nearly as stable as marital relationships. So then what happens . The mother is young. For a new partner. So she goes out and has searches for a new partner. Find is that 70 of up have hers who break at least one new relationship. More them have two or relationships. By the time the child is age 5. These relationships often result at a child with the new partner. In the good old days, when you it was generally youve been married for seven years, you might have had two that man. Ith you would repartner, many people did repartner. Child t did not have a with the new partner because they finished the fertility with partner. But that doesnt happen anymore have the en you partnerships ending so fast, the mothers only had one child. So now the next partner she might go on to have another. So 60 of children born to unmarried parents are living half sibling. Of those children had three or more half siblings with a different father. So this leads to a great deal of instability in the house hold and complexity. At the fiveyear survey, we that 40 of the children had a new half sibling with both a mother and a father. All of this mean for the children . O based on the data that weve looked at, it seems to be associated with lower scores and more cognitive tests, Mental Health problems for the and more physical Health Problems such as asthma and obesity. Almost any outcome that we look at, the children are doing worse married dren born to parents. Now, a big part of that is the children born to married parents are born to high educated parents who have a good good job. And then theres a lot of economic stability in those parents. To all ou take account children d we compare from similar backgrounds, you do find negative consequences. ve written a big review article that looks at all of the studies that weve amassed in the last 10 to 20 years that try to look at the causal a effects of this father absence on children. And, again, theres the democrats and the republicans or the liberals and the sort of disagree about whether this is all about income or whether its also the familyhing about structure. So trying to just look at studies that try to deal with issue of is there causality here. Bottom s some of the line of that study. In terms of cognitive ability, absence, ts, a father are pretty small. And theyre not consistent across studies. On noncognitive skills, the social and emotional large. Pment, theyre family here these instability hits the kids. The results are consistent and the effects are especially large for boys. Were worried about boy, low income. So this is part of the picture. In Mental Health outcomes adulthood are also large and consistent. Physical Health Effects are small. The effects on education, finishing high school, going to college, turn out to be large. Of a puzzle rt because you might think the cognitive effects werent so large. So whats the problem with graduating from high school. It looks k closer, like these are not problems with the cognitive ability. Its these kids are more likely school. Theyre more likely less likely to persist in school. Emotionale social and effects that are also affecting their educational attainment. Market effects in adulthood are small and theyre mixed results and a large effect on the nonmarital child bearing in the future generation the effect on girls as most pronounced. So, thats it. Ill let bob talk now. [ applause ] hi. Thanks very much for coming. I want to express my pleasure and humility, actually, this panel. Because although ive written about this issue of kids and families, the other people on giants l are really the in this field. The structure of what weve been of g here is a series concentric circles looking first of all at the families and then looking at the effect of that on and im not going to try to tep back yet further level and say, so what else is happening to these families besides the issue of their Family Structure that might have an effect on the kids . There eve been three big changes the last n life over 30 or 40 years that are relevant kids. Ese the first is the one weve been talking about so far. Thats the collapse of the family across all racial lines. Of discussion t with that. Its really important. He second big change, we all know about because now the debate going on on income inequality in america in the president ial election. The second big change is theres been a big increasing divide and poor ch folks folks. This is thats going to be the rich end of the room just remarks. Ake of the and people over there have done really well economically over 40 years. 0 or but the people from the middle own to the lower end of the Income Distribution as we know havent had a raise in the last 30 or 40 years. Effect apart from the Family Structure effect placed through on the kids as i will moment. Macrotrend is well well known. Not that just that america is more polarized economically, segregated sociologically along class lines. Folks live , rich with only other rich folks and live increasingly with poor enclaves and poor folks. Ncreasingly rich kids, using rich in a loose sense here. Andys split between people with a College Degree and people with a high School Degree. Raise your hands if you have a igh school have a College Degree . So every time i say rich, i mean you. So the rich folks, the affluent of america increasing only themselves. Thats true at the bottom. Ich kids are going to schools only with other rich kids and going to good schools and poor are going to poor schools with other poor kids. There is significant racial america. On in but what im talking about is not just about race, its about social class. Growing rammedly even in terms of who we married. Ncreasingly, rich folks are marrying other rich folks and poor marrying poor if they get all. Ed at the sociological segregation means were living in separate worlds. Effects on kids. Now i want to step back a little and in a short im going going to make this is to be my power point. Can you see my fingers . We call this is a scissors graph. Lots andit reflects is lots of data showing over the last 30 or 40 years whats coming from kids affluent homes and whats coming from kids improv riched homes. College educateled homes and high school educated homes. You s a graph of how much have with your parents in your life. Rich kids are likely as they more maybe ve more likely than they were in the 70s and 80s to have two in their lives. Poor folks for the reasons we talked about are quite unlikely. Objectively, unlikely. Calling 2 3 of what im parentss dont have two in their lives. There are lots of other measures. Going to go through quickly, short. But i want to give you a kind of inastiche of all of the ways which lives of rich and poor diverged in america over my adult lifetime. Start when trends inpersonally started to vote. Explanation usible that i somehow caused this problem by moving to adulthood. For s a graph like that test scores. Increasingly rich kids are coring higher on various tests and poor kids are not. So it got like that. Theres a gap like that for what call a Good Night Moon time. That is the amount of time that parents spend interacting with their kids. Graph looks like this. Its gone up for poor kids or little more time with mom. Its mostly mom. Eading to them and so on, reading to the child. But its gone up so much more apidly among collegeeducated americans that my grandchildren, who are all living in what im homes, that is their parents have a College Degree, getting verage using them as an example, 45 momtes a day more time with and dad, interacting with them. We now know in the last 10 years eve learned how important, thats really crucial for Brain Development at an early time. In some sense the Good Night Moon gap is really consequential. Part of the reason for that gap is there are two parents reading to the rich families and only one parent reading to the poor families. Another gap that looks like that is the amount of money that parents spend on whats called developmental activities. Think of it as the amount of money spent on summer camp and lessons moon gap is really consequential. Part of the reason for that gap is there are two parents reading to the rich families and only one parent and hockey shoes and the trips to france and so on. Among parents among kids coming from affluent omes gone to up about 7,000 nearly 7,000 a year on piano and so and summer camp on. Increase at all in the higher hierarchy. Camp . Ares about summer who cares about going to paris or whatever . The fact is the people with the affluence knows what matter and investigating in their kids when the poor parents cant. To useike that trying a lot of examples. A gap like that for family sitting down and its style. Little out of im not sure you know what i mean. Im not talking about thanksgiving. You know what i mean by family dinner . Mom, dad, the kids are sitting down. We know from quite careful analysis that sitting down and dinner with your kids and finding out how did you day go is important. Lifetime lated with income if you have more time, hows your day. Its not that the poor moms dont want to do that. But one of the more actually features in the book just our kids we published for a single black stephanie, shes working so hard. Really really deeply shes working so hard on her own to earn enough money to move her a slightly less dangerous neighborhood and we tarted talking about family dinners. She said honey we aint got time for all of that hows your day stuff. Shes right. Shes making the right decision to protect her children but actually all of that hows your stuff, the absence of that day stuff is going to be a permanent handicap for her kids as they grew up. A gap like that for extracurricular activities, on. , chorus and so my colleagues tease me that i talk that High School Football is a solution to all of americas problems. But the fact of the matter is that we know from hard work, taking earch, i mean, part in extracurricular ctivities actually does increase your soft skills. Your ability to do team work, determination. R my mom used to call sticktoitiveness. And you learn that whether blocking the blocking dummies on the football field. High ed football in school, i was lousy at it. I learned you have to every day go out there on the practice and hit the blocking dummy. Linemans job is to throw your body in front of a big giant coming at you. Lousy. The giant went right by me. Occasionally, i was successfully lock the giants and the cornerback would get all of the glory. And that was a valuable lesson. I mean it was not joy here. It was a really valuable lesson for me to learn that you have to and so often other people or other people on the would get the benefit. Theres a gap like that. Used to be working dlasz kids extracurricular activities. Athletics, chorus, band, all that stuff. Why . Now, because weve started charging kids. This is obscene. We started charging kids to play High School Football. Roughly 1800 a year. High school. In if your annual income is 200,000, 1800 to play sports. Annual income is 18,000, who in their right mind of their o spend 10 Family Income on High School Football . The answer is fewer and fewer people. Not the most important example. We did that. Thats not something that was happening. Decided to charge people after having most of the 20th you were a kid, you got to do those things now you can only do it if your up the money. Te its a lot of other gaps like that. Like that in church attendance. Nvolving in Community Organizations that is middle class kids, upper class kids, College Educated kids are deeply involved in all of the social networks. Poor kids increasingly, the i want to emphasize. Poor kids in america are now alone. Ingly they cant trust anybody. They cant trust their parents of the Fragile Families. They cant trust their neighbors ecause theyre concentrated in poor neighborhoods. They cant trust schools because theyre in poor schools. Their church. St they know it. Theres a gap in terms of trust workingr people because class kids its not that theyre paranoid. In fact in their lives, other people are not trustworthy. This is the way to think about it. Dumb kids, rich kids, black kids, brown kids, poor kids, my kids, do dumb things. Dumb fluent kid does things, they get in a problem drugs and alcohol or whatever, air bags inflate to it to that kid to allow be a learning experience. If one of my grandchildren got involved with drugs, the first is find the do best lawyer in town and the bestd thing is to find the Rehab Facility in town. Air bags. A poor kid does the exact same bags. No air examples of r big this. I want to end by saying why did this happen . There are a lot of specific happened. Y it but from my point of view, the most important thing is captured by the fact that when my parents in the 1950s and a small town alked about doing things for our kids, we have to have a Swimming Pool for our kids. Swimming ot need a pool in our back yard for my sister and me. They meant lets pay town pay a little bit higher taxes so we can have a high school a Swimming Pool at the high school. Over the past 30 or 40 years, the meaning of our kids shrivelled, has narrowed. So now, including in my hometown, if you talk to in my opinion hometown now. If you talk to people about ou hear the people talk about our kids. Biological eir own kids. The poor kids where once upon a time, you talked to one of the kids about one of the poor kids, theyre not my kids, theyre someone elses kids, let them worry about them. That is a fundamental cultural change that has left our some our kids, poor kids, living nd headed toward a different universe thats unfair. This economically and costly. We have to do something about it. [ applause ] one of my problems would create another. Explains solved, i will i turned out this way i never had an air bag. Let thers philosophy is the little crud swing. So i now understand that. Do better from now on. Michael, you have caused me a problem. This panelds that if that i think the word you used is procreation fall. Would if my wife hears that, im going be in big trouble. Call from my wife, i trust youll explain you were joking. Talk to you to about policy. Reinstate what we learned this morning. I lived long enough to know this was not always accepted. So the first thing it is we had marriage. Lining i have wonderful charts to show you. Age, by imagine them by scs, however, marriage rates of college d decline women and their in marriage stopped in 80s. They get married later. Discovery. Great minds like the ones on this panel to understand that if rates decline, sex does not. Rates declines and sex keeps up in cohabitating cup were going to nonmarital births. 70 of black kids born outside of marriage, 45 of hispanic kids and overall rate is over 30 . Born into are disadvantage. There are three conclusions we can draw from this. Thing is, i never thumbed through a power point before. But here we are. First of all, these trends lead higher poverty rates. The probability of being a overty if you live in a female head of family is five times great great greater than it is in a coupled families. Kids out taking the of the married couple families. Thats the democratic talking about re here. Higher poverty rates. Exacerbates inequality. Not at the top. But creates more people at the bottom. More difficult to deal with income inequality. Most and probably important, nicely and the journal should revert to several can show this e especially a guy named david that ill talk about in the end is diminishled Child Development. Much more Child Development 1,000 articles read through the various types of kids. T on so this is a national crisis. A national crisis. Its affecting our gnp. Its affecting behavior in the schools. Affecting all aspects of American Life shown so well. We ought to have some policies address it. We do. We have i think five policies that we have tried that is just to talk about these and see how well weve done. The tax code a lot of people think the tax code is disincentives of marriage. Fewer nonmarital births we would on poverty. Ct impact on marriage and so forth. Bush ing we tried in the administration, spent over 1 billion on, marriage education. It enhanced marriage education, counseling, all kinds of things for young couples that have had a baby together. Could you help them understand each other better and get along and get married . And then we have the same thing with the communitywide nitiative, working with churches, lots of publicity about how important marriage is to kids and so forth. Finally helping young men. Several panels pointed out how important young men are. Its possible to explain the tax code. The taxs little part of code. But i know i cant i cant do it without a power point. So im going to tell you the point here which is i dont think the tax codes are used properly. Vastly overrated how important the tax codes are. Example. Ve you an sitting here, the great wisdom years ago to pay for a national tudy, National Survey of American Families and a very smart guy and a lady at the you analyzed the tute data for the couples that were cohabiting and living under of poverty. Couples cohabiting, 200 of poverty. Speak, low income or poor. The question is, what would happen if they got married. What would happen when they got married. Showed reful analysis that most of them do not get Public Benefits or do not get temporary system for needy family. Some that do would lose money. But they would more than make it up with the earned income tax tax credit. He child so the tax benefits are so great for hem and the reason is those of you who know the way it 15,000 if o about you earnings up to 15,000, you get more and more money. Money here. Up to way over 4,000 out of the earned income tax credit, 1,000 tax credit. Other taxrelated benefits. Then a flat area and it phases out. If you get married and youre in phaseout, it hurts you, you lose eitc. But so many of the couples have low income that theyre mostly the rate is re increasing. So when you combine your income, you get more money. No not saying theres penalty in the eitc. But for those of you in the finance committee and the ways i wouldnt mmittee, spend too much time troubling yourself with trying to find penalties in the tax code. It would be a good thing to do. Im all for it. But i dont think it will make a big difference. Besides that, the research on hether the penalties have an impact on marriage rates is not encouraging. Suggest they have a big impact. Thats the first thing. Marriage penalties, i dont a big re going to make difference. Reducing is nonmarital births. Were on to something. Its a big difference. Reduce poverty rates, lower rates, lower abortion rates. Studies that are good. Better spacing the babies. Care, less enatal postpartum depression, reduced separation rates, more education for mothers and serious cost savings for the government. Studies showenefit very substantial savings. We have something now. Weve always been able to do this. Weve done it for teenagers. Amazing. Since 1991, teen birthrates have declined every year except two. I wish it was worth studying on. More time. D i would love to go into with you. But it can be done. Control a huge difference. Birth control definitely played role in the reduction of teen pregnancy. Rom the big studies that im referring to about using moon larks. Ogy called acting reversible they the pillay better than or any other method of birth control. Of low income mothers when given a choice prefer larcs. Could control fertility and the couples who decide to control it, they have foolproof method. Take it once, it lasts for years. To take a pill before action cant get in that. E for on a college campus, i bet you could. A large study when it works. Telling you, a big part of the solution. We could have better means to control to people who want it and do it in a professional way that includes counseling. Someone is trying not to force them to have babies. To talk for one second about the bush initiatives. Im involved in them. Highly biassed. They didnt work. It was greatly disappointing to billion, you had these beautiful studies, a lot of credit from the scholarly world hich is unheard of in the republican administration. We did the large scale random assignment, all kinds of wonderful stuff. Casey contributed some money to these. At the end, one site out of eight sites, 5,000 people in this, a big deal. And one site had some impacts pretty impressive. It was Oklahoma City. My theory has always been they anything else to do in Oklahoma City so they went to the why we should be married to get and learned along with each other and fight in a friendly manner. Impacts and e some even those faded except for one exception which gives me encouragement which means they are more likely to be together still after 36 months. That only happened in that one of eight sites. And it will be interesting to go back now and see. Say dont think we can that if we had good marriage education with counseling that could really boost the birthrate among the people and cohabit most of them have a baby together. That, to me is a group that we would like to influence and we how to do i want. So finally, i wanted to say a few words about young men. Several of the speakers have young men. T have sons and i was a young man too. Hard to tell right now. But young men are proud. They have a lot of bad behaviors, rich ones too. A lot. Ink theyre reckless. Are what, women discerning. They know that. They want a man who has a good trustworthy and will be a good father and so forth and a lot of guys are not like that. That at all. Like subversively related to their income. So low income guys are even guys or n middle class at least they dont recover by 22, 24. E theyre but we have a lot of probes. We know a lot about education and training. We can help the young men. Called career academies done in eight sites. Filed for eight years. The guys in career academies Actual Experience in the workforce and entering in high school, they make more money, almost 10,000 a year and confirming the theory, they were and likely to be married more likely to live with their parents and several ways to influence income on males. An area that ts we should make further investments, we should do more research. Possible to be somewhat optimistic that if we did a better job trying to help and go along. N more as we think thats an area where we really should exploit. So two things. First one is my wonderful research on d done the importance of marriage rates and the changes for marriage rates for poverty. We had the same marriage rate today that we had in 1970, spending any additional money, assuming other things are economists always do, our poverty rate would be 25 lower. Run to stay into place in the poverty rates ecause the demographics changes. 25 theres no problem except 25 less marriage. I mentioned david has this the future ticle in of children. Let me read his conclusion to you. For id the advantages marriage in the childrens well being are hard to replicate hrough policy interventions other than those that bolster marriage rates. Were moving in the wrong direction and were having a hard time getting out of it. [ applause ] thank you all. The best possible seminar on the role of family policy. Role of a graduate student to get it started. Here. E ask there seems to be a remarkable unanimity on things that i thought were very controversial. All of you agree that unstable the holds are bad for children. The atomization of community and hanges in Family Structure and social norms. I does everyone agree on this . The debate taking place on academia on this. Knowledge status of here in washington for policies on that issue. Can anyone chime in there . Press the button . Yeah. Okay. Is electives re among progressives to first of all acknowledge the importance and two parents for kids. It started on campuses. It was many years before and i think theres been a evolution among scholars who are progressives that they will explicitly as sarah said and said elegantly in 1994 in the book that i think really started among scholars. And and everyone else on the said the same thing. Theres a Movement Among scholars. I think less so among politicians. It seems to me that especially democrats are really unwilling o say how crucial marriage is, that its a mistake to have babies outside marriage, and married need to get before you have children. If we could send that message by ministers, you know, people in the communities, but above all, politicians, it difference. Big i could be wrong about that. Im sure there are people who at the in fact, beginning about the up politician that i would like to o through the speeches and see how many times he said that, i think thats part of the problem. Bob . As far as the movement of views in the academy, we all gree theres been a growing consensus thats both and, its that ther or, its true some people that is both and be clear theres a broad that marriage is good for kids. Everybody agrees that marriage as declined in thats no debate about the decline in the marriage in the working class. Some disagreement about in much of that is economic the origin and how much is normative in this origin. I think almost everybody everybody here would agree its both and, its not either or. Less agreement about is it mostly conomics or normative change . But thats not crucial here. As i as i talked to people in on both sides of the aisle, i think that consensus is not yet reached political elites. Think its much more either this or that among politicians. And i agree with ron that theres still a lot of politicians who you blaming skeptical about normative change for this for the collapse of the family. But theres another aspect of just what can we do about it . There are large numbers of scholars who think the normative deal. E is a big i think its a big deal. But actually i dont know of any proven or unproven policy suggestions that would change the norms. It it does seem were all in this bipartisan good feeling here on the table. I think we have to admit that there are a lot of people your side, on the republican side of the aisle, who made the changing norm. And then act as if we knew what to do about that. But we dont actually know what to do about that. Please. Youve seen a change over the years, you see them on all of these issues. Think the rub comes between the changing norm. And then i think we all agree about these points. Between can ub is you just get people married . Is that going to be enough . And i like to say if we have the policies that i recommend, we get the women to delay pregnancy and delay wait longer. Man f they dont have a whos there who can bring home bacon, its not going to them. Or you cant ask them not to have children forever. We take them all down and get license. Arriage they wont stay married if they dont have any resources. About men rm too needing to be a good provider. Change that to norm. If we did, maybe there would be ore marriages and all of this instability. So that wouldnt gain us anything. So i think theres a lot of the culture that we do need to say dont have these children. Wedlock. E them out of find the partner. Then there has to be a partner point. For them at some i really like rons idea about the career academies because i know, the ar as program that has shown benefits on earnings and marriage. The example of ongacting reversal of contraceptives that are unmentioned. They can be very effective in reducing fertility. Have to give a lower or oderate income woman a reason to postpone the children to get her to the clinic. You cant just hang up a shingle locks available here. And getting her in, getting her a reason is hard to do as we all say. Can i make a quick point about this . Very quick. That. Dont agree with i think its its true in part, but not completely true. Why . Because these large experiments show that a lot of poor women are willing to who say they are going to have sex within the year maybe they have a normal partner, but theyre willing to take things because they would like to delay birth and they want to do it because heyre finishing education or theyre working into a up in job and so forth and we have placed uge responsibility in our policy terms to too here in washington on single parents. Thats part of the strategy. We better damn well do it fix se were not going to the marriage rate any time soon. A brief response . Response. F the studies im citing are high quality studies. Theyre volunteers, came to the voluntarily. It doesnt prove that the general public is going to be doing this. Of the larks. It. S part of the story. The story. H of its harder to implement and well have more political resistance than we think. I raise two more points that didnt really come up that a lot of people here might be interested in. And particularly in the policy realm. How does all of this affect Early Childhood education. Between interaction parents and the children and the longterm effects on that. Its frightening to me because seems like it creates a durable disadvantage. Its hard to make up for later. How the similar way, toxic stress that youre talking about affects parenting styles also seem to be communicated across generations sort of thats complicates this work. Well those sort of things he point i was trying to make when i talked about the instability and complexity, it stress. S the all of the numbers have talked about is before its 5 years old. All going down, all going down in Early Childhood when the children need the most ttention, they need the mother and the father to be the most stable and secure. This churning,of theres a lot of research that chaos thats bad for kids. The parenting, irregular chedules, disrupting routines, this is what happens when mother finds up she breaks up with one partner. That creates a loss. Thats sad. Then she finds a new partner. Falls in love. Thats a good feeling. But it doesnt its not a good feeling with the child. Then maybe that man is jealous of the time that the mother spends with that child because attention. R its not his child. So all of these competing, think activities ompeting that when you kind of combine the search for a partner with the early parenting. Its just not a good thing to try to put together. Have you seen p, programmatic interventions when it comes to that. Other things that make a difference . Go ahead. Good hink theres pretty evidence that if you provide oaching for parents, its mostly coaching of moms, the principle, could be of dads too. Moms, you coaching of could move the needle. Both at providing childhood l early education, not glorified day care. Early ionally provided childhood education early, not 4,t prek, but birth to 3 or combined with coaching of the parents, of the moms, that that oes move the needle and it certainly has a very high roi investment. Its not cheap. But the payoffs are sufficiently sense to do. Makes i kind of hope that it may be next frontier that people will begin to agree. In an earlier day, neighbors and xtended family would have provided that kind of support to a troubled mom. And now i disappeared think we can begin to think about ways to provide that in a programmatic way. Partnership,family actually. Brookings just formed a group of 16 scholars, eight on the left, eight on the right. We published the report. Disagree with what bob just said. But that child that goes to a a h quality preschool or mother that gets coached, as bob a s it, they still live in very difficult house hold. They live in a very difficult neighborhood. More than likely, the kids go to a lousy school. Our recommendation is we need to eal on all three fronts at one time. We need to talk about families, improve education, including education. We need to do something about work, especially with regard to young men. One more comment and that is i think i know a amount about preschool literature. I find it a little discouraging, that were able to longterm impacts on anything like a broad scale is quite weak. The Boston Preschool Program for example but we dont know nything about the long term there. Head start has shown that it probably does not produce effects or some exception. Well have an argument about it. Ere not putting kids our kids are in average or worse settings generally for preschool now. An immense task to improve the quality of those firms so were not going to get anything like the effects that bob is talking about. Any thoughts . Any further thoughts . Go to questions very shortly. Im going to make one im going to do one more here. Ust sitting in for some conservatives in the audience, in all of this. Place and role of moral judgment . Even when social and economic direction. In one even when people do the right thing. Sacrifices. They stay even in difficult circumstances. How do you count that role of and ethics nviction in this. And more broadly, the role of religion in Family Structure. Relevant, irrelevant, what do you put it . If you mean does the level does becoming more religious make you more likely to have a permanent relationship and to raise your and so on . I read theres actually mixed evidence on that. Read the evidence myself as , really modest effect of what you might describe. Ut most of these poor single moms or the Fragile Families were talking about, most of hem are in areas that are high churched, not low churched. Theyre in communities that are high churched, not low churched. The Africanamerican Community is the most religious community in america. Lots of the problems are there. Rated i do not mean this is a racial problem. That. t think i do think they illustrate that a cureall. Not hostile to being the role of religion on the country. I think the way religious could play a really powerful role is not merely in services to individual poor people, which they do, now. Religious people are nice and are generous. To foster this, i hope its the recipient national consensus. To do something about the poor kids, not just in our private lives but in our public life too. I have said repeatedly, ublicly, the engagement of americas major communities, evangelical, catholic, jewish, others, theyre involvement in this issue is almost a necessary and almost a sufficient condition for forming the National Political will to make the investments that we need to do. I want to mention something that hasnt come up. Government has been doing something thats much worse, the policies. Tion ive been doing studies now, the kids in third grade that are expelled ended and from schools and im sure the kids have social and emotional problems. Theyre acting out and causing trouble. When you take them out of school, they dont learn that day. It goes on and on whats been happening to the teenagers and the young men. Theres a great consensus now, thats my sense, that were going to stop that, that. Ere going to change but i do think that the disproportionate effect of those policies since 1980 on young men are part of this story anyway. Lets go to some questions, please. Say who you are and a short question. Just speak loudly. [ inaudible question ] the question is, are you seeing that level of collegeeducated marrying the same as white women. Thats the main question i have. And then for dr. Hoskins, its nteresting that of your five policy goals you dont mention making college free or ffordable for young people if the research is so strong that correlation y between marriage. First me repeat the question in case people didnt hear it which is theres been ncreasing rates of College Education among black and hispanic women. Are we seeing them marrying . Yes, marriage rates are higher for well educated minorities as well as nonhispanic whites that the problem is finding well educated men. Many are quote unquote marrying down. That is marrying someone with education that they have. Its so hard to find the college partner. I think college is part of the solution. Its for sure. We have billions of dollars that we basically give way for college. We have big federal programs. The problem is that a lot of to college ids go fail or leave for some reason. And then theyre doubly affected because they dont only get the degree, but they have a big bill to pay but they cant get the it. Of job to pay so we have to do something about that. Every ld try to identify single low income kid or minority kid who could go to college, or an average college, and help them do it. And not accumulate debt. We should do that. The second thing is a much low income kids could profit from Community Colleges participation in programs that teach them to be welders and electricians and so forth. They could make 50,000, 60,000 would be a huge improvement and would greatly increase the chances they would fix this whole problem. College is the key. Community college is more important than Fouryear Colleges. Please, please. Poshimportant. Eally data shows that based on test scores and Family Income, dumb rich kids are more likely to graduate college than smart poor kids. Thats wrong. But the data also suggests to me that most of the handicap, poor kids from getting to college, the talented poor kids from getting to well before ns anybody is even thinking about college. This goes deep in to the life things. These and College Tuition is actually, i think, not a big part of the problem. m not saying its not a problem at all. But nothing like as big as all of the earlier stuff weve been about. G and secondly, precollege ducation thats making College Education free to everybody would disproportionately benefit rich folks because they could afford to pay for their kids to to college and that would be a huge im not trying to make a statement about their the campaign, but in a way, i am. I think its enormously wasteful all taxpayers ve pay for bill gates kids to get a College Degree. Next . Lindsay from congressman john larsons office. I have two quick questions. Hat about families that have suffered a loss . Ike they were married but then one of the parents died early on. Effect t show the same in children as parents who dont get married at all . What about different kinds of marriages between like maybe a nd a woman or cohabitation situation sorry, a woman and a woman or a ohabitation situation that is more of a union than just living together. Sara, in her wisdom, has a paper, i think the best paper available, on marriage between gay couples. Males in s primarily studies. Reviewed in future children, its nicely arranged online. Generally the conclusion is, correct me if im wrong, sara, that if there are effects, theyre modest. That we do not have evidence would be a bad idea to have to allow gay couples to kids. I say that because ive been instituting my career in child neglect and i think there the evidence is that if of foster kids out care, and out of bad homes and families, ver stable even if both parents are women and men, the kids are way better off. I dont think theres any evidence to contradict that and a lot of evidence to support it. The issue of parental loss, if a parent dies. We found that kids whose parents die are doing better than kids divorce. Rents why is that . Maybe we know how to hand m parental death. For been doing it centuries. We rally around the family. They have insurance. Arees support systems that not there due to a divorce. It may be that death is more random. Traffic accidents traffic accidents are fairly divorce is concentrated in particular kinds of people. But the what we know about suggests toa parent us that its not just the parent being in and out of the home but we deal with the situation that seems to matter. Is. There . He back well, thanks for this. I just want to comment on saras point. I used to work for someone named rostinkowski. When he served time in jail, he letting young black men rot in jail. We need to make more investments n young men, their behaviors, etc. , etc. , and once a union happen s happens and a child is produced, regardless of whether its a or cohabiting, we have the expectation that the male is give support and also ontinue to be involve in the lives of the children. I noe theres an issue of domestic violence. Im a conservative in a sense that i think churches, to gogues, mosques, need talk about respect between the sexes and what marriage is all about. If we make men have a job and and get rid of their bad behaviors, the marriage issue will go away. Do you agree or disagree . I agree. I would nts say so publicly if i didnt. Weve been friends for many years. I dont want to dispute you. But in this case, i dont. The problem is, thats the main point i made, you dont take notes when i talk. This in the past. The problem is we dont know how to do those things. Were just unsuccessful at it. If we could do it, thats whats at stake here. This why were having meeting that we have to figure this out. The area that im the most ptimistic about, though, wendell, is doing something for young men. We do have good programs at work. Were willing to make more investments and focus on young en, it will cause a lot of problem with the womens movement, but if we do that and like t men in programs career academies and many other programs, i think we could have an impact. On the incarceration, i cant resist on the incarceration omment and others, out in california is the biggest criminal justice experiment ongoing in the nation right now the courtmandated lessening of the state prisons by some 33,000. Results of the effect now. At are coming in notably in the journal that i edit. And i will give i will saying later t by this month were going release a couple of studies that show release crime with the of the lowlevel offenders, violent crime, theres no uptick all. Even with recidivism, were seeing mixed results by county. Rates are better depending on how the counties have handled it. Last question, i think. So, i just had one question from this ing from the from the state of highly mething thats valued there is the institution of marriage and its even almost and preached to young young men and young women that you should almost it more than education or job training programs. And i guess after hearing, you about the success of young people who go through this a traditional would want to change . Or discontinue . The ss what im saying is preaching of the institution of marriage is a high value over things like education. My students in the introduction last week and divorce rates and states around country and out west. The high divorce is everywhere. One place called utah. The only religious group in the substantially lowered divorce rates than others is the latter days and saints. Social cohesion, the teachings there, really do seem o create a different sense of family than elsewhere. I admire it greatly. Please . Did, in the family study i these women and men, they want to get married. Its not a matter that they marriage is better for kids. They hope it will happen to them. Then they dont and they get pregnant and they changing. Just i dont think its just preaching. The importance of marriage. A bigger has to be a way that em in youre describing in in utah is what bob is saying about our kids, you know . Its a larger group, weve felt community, which you certainly do in utah. You feel that the those are church. The and, in fact, i have friends, if hey think about getting divorce, the Community Comes in, bigtime. And, you know, counsels them and and helpwork with them them. So its not just the attitude, its all of that other stuff. Since weve were starting a little late. Can i do one more question up in the front row if you want to yeah . Thanks. One other consensus point thats in d. C. That id love for you to weigh in on especially around the irk shoe expandingen, which is so eitc, which has been successful for women and children to those without kids on their tax records and figuring out what kind of effect we think that have on some of the things hat you bring up about marriageability and economic stability and if you can weigh in on that, id love to hear your thoughts. Its a good ink idea. Because it would get more money in to their hands and it would attractive. Re but you know, i think they it would also the returns to work. I think they need to be working. They dont just need money. They need a job. Do you have a for sure. With that part of the theory like your income tax credit that it will labor force. O the and right now were paying 500 if they get a job. Thats not enough. The thinking in new york is 2000. Its a good way to do policy. The big studies. We should be able to pass that. We should do it. Its not that much money, we and do it. It but im worried that we havent done enough tof suck the young men in to the labor force. But lets find out. Afraid our time is up. 90e never seen a topic which minutes is more of an injustice. It deserves more than that. Seen a better panel on this topic. Me in join enter some programs to watch for. The ninth annual savannah book festival. Tracks the factors besides the surge. His book is the rise of fall and body from an american. He is interviewed by john roman senior fellow on the urban institute. Begins to fall in the early 1980s. And i think that happens because thebaby boom generation or Major Players here began to age out. On monday, he does not his book, rescuing certain cultural change. And while he argues technology sometimes solve problems, got a main driver of peoples actual minds and what they actually think and what they think is right which is not. House debate on new sanctions against north korea in. Hillary clinton and Bernie Sanders seeking democratic fundraiser in minnesota. President obama present 2017 20 700 billion. From air force officials on friday about the buzzer plan and its effect on aircraft readiness. Personal grooming and training. This is an hour and 20 minutes. Chairman wittman good morning, i want to call to order the House Armed Services subcommittee. Thank you to our witnesses for joining us. I would like to recognize a number of our great young airman that are here from Langley Air Force base. I want to welcome you to washington. We appreciate all the Langley Air Force association does. We have a great working relationship there. Thank you so much for your leadership. We appreciate that. I know that i have to compete with ms. Bordallo. Is there anybody here from Andersen Air Force base . Is there . Chairman wittman we have a little competition going on. Wherever we go, there is so always somebody from guam. I want to make sure that we have the opportunity to recognize them this morning. Yes. Ms. Bordallo would you kindly stand up, please . Chairman wittman i knew it. [laughter] chairman wittman i knew it, i knew it. Fantastic. She always does, she only does. Good morning. I want to think all of you for being here for the readiness hearing on the 2017 budget requests and readiness posture. This is the first of four hearings, and in december and january the services testified on increase readiness risks. Heg how the air force budget request enables a readiness Recovery Plan and where we continue to take risk. Welcome all of our experts. This morning we have with this general david goldfein, within a general john raymond, then a general Lieutenant General john cooper. Thank