Transcripts For CSPAN2 Discussion On Working-Class Families 20160801

You here on the hill and in the hill surrounds are interested to come out to hear about what scholarship has to tell us about the dynamics of change in American Families, change in americas socioeconomic class structure, what it all has to do with child well being and whether or not policy can leverage change to our good. Id like to thank the annie e. Casey foundation, particularly the director of policy reform for being such great partners to us and making this segment happen. Our sincere gratitude to senator casey and senator scott for their interest in these issues and for being gracious enough to sponsor us here today. As you probably discerned by now, we were in the middle of a little bit of an audiovisual challenge, so i had to show you a very gracious taped greeting from senator tim scott. I could play it from my laptop with the volume turned the whole way up facing you, but i think that would be foolish at this point, so i wont. But i will ask jared from senator caseys office to come up and say just a word or two to. Hell be briefer because i know you do not want to hear from me, and im a sorry replace9 for senator casey, but i want to pass along greetings and say thank you. I dont think the issue of family and child well being could be more paramount in the senators mindset. Is so i handle education policy for the senator and just wanted to say thank you all for coming and being here for this Important Panel and thank you all for making the trip down to washington and, hopefully, this will be worth your while. Thank you. [applause] thanks, jared. So the way this should have been running is more you to see a really quite compelling and beautiful set of slides projected behind me, but that, apparently, is not going to happen. So its pretty, and our speakers are going to be working from that, from this podium. What im encouraging you to do is if you want a copy of this slide deck is to email me or my colleague, jessica. Ive got lots of business cards, and we have Contact Information out there. So if you want any more information about whats going down here this morning, all you need to do is reach out, and i apologize for that. Now, i wont talk any more. On to our moderator, michael gerson, who probably needs little introduction to all of you because you know his work so well already. Ill keep it briefly telling you mike is a syndicated columnist whose insights on politics and society appear regularly in in e washington post. Hes also a former adviser and head peach writer to george wes. Bush and has played a public role in helping us make sense of ourselves through his deeply informed writing. Michael gerson, thanks very much for being here and agreeing to shepherd this panel. Thank you, sir. Appreciate that. Good morning. Thank you all for being here. Its fitting, even necessary, to start a discussion on family, marriage and children with a reference to senator Daniel Patrick moynihan. In 1965 in the moynihan report, he warned that a rising fraction of africanamerican children were growing up in households headed by unmarried mothers, and he worried that this form of disadvantage would compromise the ability of africanamericans to take advantage of new rights and opportunities, and he was rewarded with considerable controversy. From that time to this, in the 70s til today, we have seen a vast change in social norms and practice in families not limited to any race. Marriage rates are designed, nonmarital births have increased, cohabitation has increased, children see a greater variety of less Stable Family arrangements, and well hear about all of that. All of these change in numbers are actually a change in the way people express their love, define their deepest commitments and care for their young. These are the most important things about our own lives, so it is not surprising that they represent some of the most important issues in sociology and Public Policy. It would be hard to design a better panel to realize and discuss these issues. They have literally written the book on family analysis and policy, authored the studies, submitted the papers that define this academic field. If anything were to happen to this panel without being observed and categorized by this group, im not sure that people would even procreate and form families anymore. [laughter] thats a bit of an exaggeration but not much. And weve given them a particular disadvantage because all of them had powerpoint today, and you know the old saying that power corrupts and powerpoint corrupts absolutely. [laughter] so we will do without that. So ill make just a couple of short, unnecessary introductions. Andy cherlin is the griswold professor of sociology at Johns Hopkins university. Hes extensively studied marriage and divorce and the effects of welfare reform. Sawr rah mcland hand is a legend in this field, the william s. Todd professor of sociology and Public Affairs at princeton, Principal Investigator on Fragile Families and child well being study and editorinchief of the journal, the future of children. Bob putnam is the peter and Isabelle Malkin professor of Public Policy at harvard, the we were of countless psychological roarly a scholarly awards and honors and the mall content behind our kids, American Dream in crisis. Ron haskins, a renowned expert on preschool, foster care and poverty and an influential white house and congressional adviser. We will hear their presentations in that recorder, then i will have a few questions to start a discussion and then, hopefully, well have some questions given time from all of you. So be thinking in those terms. Andy, thank you for getting us started. Good morning. Thank you for giving me the prejudice of speaking to the privilege of peeking to you this morning. I want to talk about the american working class and family change, and im going to define the working class as people with a High School Degree but not a Fouryear College degree. 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. Large group thats worthy of more attention than we have given it. If i gave this lecture 75 years ago and talked about marriage, i would say everyone is married. Poor people are married, working class people are married, middle class people are married. That was true in the mid 20th century. But today theres a huge gap in marriage according to ones education or social class position. If you look, for example, at the percentage of americans in their late 40s, early 50s who are currently married, you find twice as many are currently married among College Grads as among people without a high school education. And people in the middle, the High School Grads, are much less likely to be married than they were in the past. Marriage much less dominant especially among people without a College Degree. And so let me talk with you a bit about whats happened as marriage has. Com play a smaller role in the lives of many of the working class adults and children were concerned about. You probably know that a large proportion of all births are to unmarried mothers. Around 40 of all births are to unmarried mothers. But this word unmarried, turns out it has a kind of special meaning that people dont recognize unless theyre government statisticians. Im married to the Census Bureau or the National Center for Health Statistics can mean two things; either youre single, that is unpartnerred living by yourself or your mom but not with the father of your child, or cohabitating with the father. Now, the first meaning, single, is the way weve always thought about births to unmarried parents. The image is of a young, unmarried woman living on her own or with mom. A teenager, perhaps. Thats been the stereotypical image of the unmarried mother. But theres another image, and that image is of a woman in her 20s with a High School Degree, living with but not married to the father of her children at the time of the birth. Almost all of the increase in births to unmarried mothers over last few decades has come because of births to cohabitating mothers. Theres very little change in the share of all births to unpartnerred single mothers. Very little change. Theres huge change in the births to the cohabiting mothers as i will call them. Thats what has been driving this increase since about 1980. Very surprising to us who followed this at first when we saw this rise. My first point to you is that, yes, theres been a sharp rise in unmarried mothers, but when we think about it, we should think about the large group of people in their 20s with a moderate amount of education living together who seem to be driving these changes. So where has all this cohabiting mother births, cohabiting partner births come from . It turns out that the biggest increase in births to cohabiting couples, lets say, have come among the moderately educated folks who im calling this morning the working class. That is people with a High School Degree, maybe some college, might even have an aa degree but not a fouryear degree. If you look at the stats for the births they have, in 980 it was 1980 it was very unusual for any of those people to have a birth while cohabiting but not married. Just didnt happen very much. Today its 2530 of all births to people with a moderate amount of education are to people who are cohabiting. And overall its the case that upwards of 25 of all american births now are to cohabiting couples. No one tends to pay much attention to that, but its important fact. And it suggests that if we want a typical picture in our head, the typical picture is now somebody whos not a teenager, but a 20something and whos not single, but living with, living together at the time of the birth. So thats what i want to tell you. And i want to talk a bit more about the collegeeducated people, the people with a Fouryear College degree. Theres been very little change among them. People with a College Degree who ill call today the collegeeducated middle class still, they postpone marriage a lot, but they still marry in large numbers. And crucially, they dont have kids until after they marry. 90 of all children to College Grads occur within marriage. And their marriages are more stable than they used to be. The divorce rate has actually been going down for collegeeducated couples but not going down or not for everybody else. So if there was a social class divide in this country, if there is a boundary aligned between the classes, with respect to families that line is between people with a Fouryear College degree and everyone else. Certainly in terms of family life, a striking difference in the kinds of almost neotraditional families that College Grads are living with now that are still marriagebased and people with less education than that. Even people who have a couple of years of college but not a degree. So huge differences now between whats happening to the collegeweeducated middle class and whats happening to the people below them who im calling the working class. So why has this occurred . Why have we had an increase in births to cohabiting mothers thats been concentrated among the High School Grads or people with a little bit of college . Be from my point, a very Constructive Development thats happened politically over the last couple of years is that both conservatives and liberals or at least many people from both political persuasions will acknowledge that there are both cultural and economic roots to these changes. Cultural change, the cultural change, to me, thats the most important. Its the greatest receive dance now acceptance now of having a child outside of marriage. It just wasnt done 50 years ago except among the very poor. Now its relatively common and accepted. But theres a very large economic component to this also. I have been studying a survey of about 9,000 young adults followed 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 20s, identify looked at the labor markets that theyre in. And in an article ill publish later this year, ive looked at their labor markets to see how many of those labor markets have a large number of jobs that are accessible to somebody with a High School Degree and that pay above poverty wages. Lets call them good jobs just for the sake of argument, okay . And what i find is that if you are living in an area with more good jobs and you just have a High School Degree or less, youre more likely to marry before you have your first kid than are people who live in areas with less good jobs. Why is that . I believe its because we still have a strong norm that men must have good, steady earnings in order to be good marriage prospects. Its good if the woman does too, but men must. And when they dont, when they dont have job prospects, its the case that if they dont have job prospects, theyre just not seen as good marriage material. Even to themselves. Instead, they start cohabiting relationships, which as youll hear from sarah, are brit and short term with brittle and short term with kids in these relationships. So what is this doing to the psyche of the average working class person . Im sure youve seen the news reports over the last couple of months of rising death rates among middleaged whites due to alcohol or drug abuse. Heres what i think is maybe going on there. When people think about how well their doing theyre doing, they think about relative to what their parents did. When the White Working Class looks back a generation, they find theyre earning less than their parents, and they have less job tons and less privilege really than did whites back then. And over the 2000s, the percentage of white respondents who told the general special survey that theyre doing better than their parents is going down and down and down and down. Whereas the percentage of africanamericans and his hispanics has stayed same or even risen because they look back at a time when things werent so great. Weve seen a huge Economic Transformation due to the movement of jobs overseas and computization thats affected family lives of people in the middle, moved them away from marriage and toward a kind of family which is shorter term, less permanent, lots of kids, creating issues which ill turn to sarah mcland hand to talk about now. [applause] so good morning. Nice to be here. I have some beautiful slides for you, but im 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 manager called the Fragile Families study which has been following a cohort of children born between 1998 and 2000. And weve been we started at the hospital. We, when the mother had the baby, we went, we sampled rooms and went to the room and said will you be in our survey . The mother said yes, the father said yes, and then we followed these mothers and fathers and their children, and were actually just finishing collecting data right now, the children have turned age 15. When we started the study, we did it because we had a lot of questions about these, this large increase in nonmarital childbearing, and we wanted the know whats going on. What kind of relationships do these parents have . Are they casual . Are they committed . You know, what does it mean . Do the fathers stay around . Do they end up getting married . So the real purpose of the Fragile Families study was to answer some of the questions that we are dealing with today. So im going to make the following argument, and then im going to give you some data to sort of back up this argument. So the first is that the children born to unmarried parents oh, and i should mention that when we did the study, we way oversampled for births to unmarried parents so wed have a very large sample of those births. So compared to children born to married parents, children born to unmarried parents experience much higher rates of union dissolution, a higher prevalence of new partners coming into and out of the home and a higher prevalence of families complexity which means siblings in the household that have different fathers. And im going to argue that these experiences in themselves lead to more maternal stress. Its harder to run one of these households. If youre trying to collect Child Support from one man and arrange visitation with one man, thats not easy. But try doing it with three different fathers and try scheduling visitation with three different fathers. You can just imagine its a fulltime job. So this leads to a lot more ma american stress, this kind of complex, unStable Family life. It leads to less commitment from the biological fathers because when they move out, theyre less likely to contribute to the child. Theyre not quite sure how the mothers going to spend the money that they send. And then if another man is in the household and if theres another mans child in the household, that biological father is even more concerned about how his moneys going to be spent, is so he contributes less. Theres also less commitment to the children from these new partners because theyre not the biological child of that man. In fact, that man may have a biological child in another household with a woman that he wants to go and visit, and hes contributing Child Support to that child. So he just doesnt feel the same about biological child that was worn born to the mother in our study. This stress and this lack of commitment and this instability, i argue, leads to lower quality parenting and lower quality pregnantal investment. And parental investment. And thats something that bobs going to show and talk about a little bit. And ultimately, it leads to lower child held andwell being. D health and well being. As andy pointed out and as bob will say too, its 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. So just to start at birth, when we looked at these children in the and these were births in large cities we found, like very similar to what andys talking about, these are the unmarried births. Half of these parents were cohabiting at the time of the birth. So these werent casual relationships or onenight stands. The fathers were actually living with the mother. Another 32 of these unmarried parents were in a dating relationship. Some of them had plans to marry. They thought they were going to marry. Very large proportions said they wanted to marry. Only 8 were friends, and only 8 had little or no contact with each other. So there was a lot of high hopes at the beginning of this situation when the babys born. But five years after the birth, its a very different story. I have data on first birthday, third birthday and fifth birthday, but ill just talk about the fifth birthday. By the time childs 5 years old, the kids born to married parents, only 18 of those parents have broken up. Thats a lot, but its still only 18 . For the cohabiting parents, its 50 . And for the single mothers in the dating relationships, its 76 . So this is these cohabiting relationships are more stable than dating relationships, but theyre not nearly as stable as marital relationships. So then what happens . The mother is young. Shes looking for a new partner. So she goes out and has, looks, searches for a new partner. And what we find that is 70 of these mothers who break up have at least one new relationship. 30 of them have two or more relationships by the time the child is age 5. These relationships often result in having a child with the new partner. In the good old days when you got divorced, it was generally youd been married for seven years, you might have had two children with that man. You would repartner, many people did, but most of them didnt have a child with the new partner because they had finished their fertility with that first partner. But that doesnt happen anymore because when you have these 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 with a half sibling. And 23 of those children had three or more half siblings with a different father. So this leads to a great deal of instability in the household and complexity. At the fiveyear survey, we found that 40 of the children had a new half sibling with both a mother and a father. So what does all this mean for the children . So based on the data weve looked at, it seems to be associated with lower scores in their cognitive tests, more Mental Health problems for the children and more physical Health Problems such as asthma and obesity. Almost any outcome that we look at, the children are doing worse than children born to married parents. Now, a big part of that is because the children born to married parents are born to highly educated parents who have a good item, good jobs, and theres a lot of economic stability in those parents. But even if you take account of all of that and you compare children with similar parents background, you do find that there are these negative consequences. So ive recently written a big review article that looks at all these studies that weve amassed in the last 1020 years that try to look at the causal effects of this father absence on children. And, again, theres the democrats and republicans, the liberals and the conservatives sort of disagree about whether this is all about income or whether its also about something about the Family Structure. So i was trying to just look at studies that try to deal with this specific issue of is there causality here x. Heres sort of the bottom line of that study. In terms of cognitive ability, the effects actually of father absence are pretty small, and theyre not consistent across studies. The effects onion cognitive on noncognitive skills, theyre large. Thats where these family instability really hits the kids x. Its especially the results are consistent, and the effects are especially large for boys. So were worried about boys, low income, so this is part of the picture. The Mental Health outcomes in 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. Now, thats sort of a puzzle, because you might think the cognitive effects werent to large, so whats the problem with graduating from high school . When you look closer, it looks like these are not problems with the cognitive ability, its these kids are more likely to skip school, theyre more likely less likely to persist in school. So, again, its the social emotional effects that are also affecting their educational attainment. The labor market effects in adulthood are small, and theyre mixed results. And a large effect is on the nonmarital childbearing in the future generation, and thats the effect on girls is most pronounced. So thats it. Ill let bob talk now. [applause] hi. Thanks very much for coming x i want to express my great pleasure and humility, actually, in being on this panel because although ive written about this issue of kids and families, the other people on the panel are really the giants in this field. The structure of what weve been doing here is a series of concentric circles looking, first of all, at the families and then looking at the effect of that on kids. And im now going to try to step back yet a 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 have been three big changes in American Life over the last 30 or 40 years that are relevant to these kids. The first is the one weve been talking about so far, that is the collapse of the working class family across all racial lines. And weve had a lot of discussion of that, and its really important. A second big change we all know about because now the debate going on on income inequality in america on president ial election, a second big change theres been a big, increasing divide between rich folks and poor folks. Thats going to be the rich end of the room just for the sake of these remarks, and people over there have done really well economically over the last 30, 40 years, but people from about the middle down to the lower end of the income distribution, as we know, havent really had a raise for the last 30 or 40 years. And that effect quite apart from the Family Structure effect plays through on the kids as i will say in a moment. That big macro trend is pretty well known. Less well known but probably more important is americas not become polarized just economically, weve become segregated across class lines. So increasingly, rich folks live with other rich folks in rich enclaves, and poor folks live increasingly in poor enclaves with other poor folks. Increasingly rich kids im using rich kids loosely here. Andys split between people who have a College Degree and a High School Degree raise your hands if you have a College Degree. So every time i say rich, i mean you. [laughter] and poor folks are only mirroring other poor folks if they get married at all. Thats the social logical segregation means were living in separate worlds. Worlds. That has effects on kids. Now i want to step back in a short, im going to try to make, this will be my powerpoint. Can you see my fingers . What we call this is a scissors graph. What it reflects is lots and lots of data showing over the last 30 or 40 years whats happening to kids coming from affluent homes and whats happening to kids coming from impoverished homes. College educated homes and high school educated homes. Theres a graph like that in terms of comedy pairs you have that are still in your life. Rich kids are absolutely just as likely as the abortive maybe a little more likely than the word in the 70s and 80s to have two parents in their lives. Poor folks for the reasons we talked about are quite unlikely. Unlikely, probably twothirds of what im calling for kids dont have two pairs in their lives. There are lots of other measures and im going to go through quickly because time is short by want to give you a kind of pastiche of all the ways the which lets the rich kids and poor kids have the first in america over my lifetime. All these trends start when i personally first started to vote. I think theres a explanation that i somehow cost of this album are moving into adulthood. Theres a graph like that for test scores. Rich kids are scoring higher on first test and poor kids or not. Theres a gap like that for what we call good night moo moon timo not a da bears spent interacting with the kids. That looks like this. Its got up for poor kids, also getting a little more time with mom, mostly mom, reading to them and so on. Reading to the child, but its gone so much more rapidly among College Educated americans that my grandchildren will live in in what im calling rich homes, that is, their parents have a College Degree, they are on average getting 45 minutes a day more time with mom and dad interacting with them. We now know in the last 10 years we learned how a board. Thats really crucial for Brain Development and early time. In some sense the goodnight moon gap is really consequential. Part of the reason for the goodnight moon gap is that our two parents reading to the rich families and only one parent reading to the poor family. Another gap that looks like that is the amount of money that parents spend on whats called development activities. Think of it is that the god of money spent on summer camp, trips to france and solar. Huge increase among kids coming from affluent homes got up to about 7000 a year on piano lessons and summer camp and so when. No increase at all for people in the lower hierarchy so theyre now about seven or 800 a year. You might think who cares about summer camp, going to paris whatever . The fact is people who have the affluence know that it matters for the kid and they are investing in their kids. The poor parents cant. A gap like that, i gap like that for family dinners, sitting down, family dinners have gone out of style so not sure you know what i mean. Im not talking about thanksgiving. Do you know what i mean by family dinner . Sitting down. We know from quite careful analysis sitting down and having dinner with your kids every night saying how did today go is important. Its correlated with Lifetime Income is you have more time, how should they do its not the poor moms dont want to do that but as one of the more actually our book features in the book called our kids republic of a single black market olympic and we asked her about family dinner. Shes working so hard, thats what i deeply admire her, working so hard to earn enough money so she can move her family were slightly less dangerous neighborhood. We started talking about family dinners and she said we aint got time for all that hows your day stuff. Shes right. Shes making the right decision to protect her children but all that hows your day stuff, the absence of that is going to be a permanent handicap for her kids as they grow. Theres a gap like that for Extracurricular Activities, for band and chorus and High School Football your sometimes my colleagues tease me because i thought as if i taught High School Football and solution to all of americas problems. We know from hard work, Hard Research i mean, taking part in Extracurricular Activities does increase your soft skills, ability to teamwork, work, your grace, your determination to what my mom used to call sticktoitiveness. You will learn that whether youre blocking the blocking does on the football field, i played football in high school and i was lousy at it but i learned you had everyday go out there and just hit the blocking dummy. I wasnt offensive lineman. The job and offensive lineman is basically throw your body in front of a big giant thats coming at you. I was lousy for often the giant just went right by me. Occasions i would successfully blocked the giant and the quarterback would get all the glory. That was a valuable lesson. Im not joking. It was a valuable lesson for me to learn yet to work hard and often other people or other people on the team would get the benefit. Theres a gap like that. We started charging kids. This is obscene. We started charging kids to play High School Football. Roughly 1800 a year. For to get in high school. If youre an income of 200,000, 1800 for kids to play sports, who in their right mind is going to spend 10 of their total Family Income on High School Football . The answer is fewer and fewer poor people. The reason i pick on that example, that the most important but thats not something that was happening. We decided to charge people after having most of the 20th century just if youre a kid you got to do those things. Now you only get to do those things if your parents can ante up the money. Theres lots of these other gaps. I gap like that in church attendance, community organizations. Middleclass kids or upperclass kids, College Educated kids are deeply involved in all the social networks. Lots of informal measures and poor kids decreasing we. This is the point want to emphasize. Poor kids are increasingly, they cant trust anybody. They cant trust their parents often because of the Fragile Families. They cant trust the neighborhoods. They cant trust their schools. They cant trust the church because theyre not in church. They are a look at the note. Theres a gap like that in terms of trust because workingclass kids, its not that they are paranoid. In their lives, institutions and others are not trustworthy. Heres the way to think about it. All kids do dumb things. Rich kids, for kids, black kids, white kids do dumb things. When an affluent child does something, get involved with drugs or drink too much or get in a fight, instantly air bags inflate. To protect the kid from the worst consequences of the dumb mistake. If one of my grandchildren got involved with drugs, the first thing i would do this by the best lawyer in town and the second thing is to find the best Rehab Facility in town. Airbags. But if they poor kid does exactly the same thing, no airbags. There are a lot of other big examples of this. I want to end by saying why did this happen . Theres a lot specific reasons why but from my point of view the most pork thing is captured by the fact that when my parents in the 1950s any small town talk about doing things for our kids, invest money in a sleepover they did not mean a Swimming Pool in our backyard. They meant lets be calm everybody down pay higher taxes so we can have a High School Come a swimming to the high school. Over the last 40 years the meaning of our kids have shriveled, has narrowed. Including in my hometown, if you talk, my hometown now, if you talk to people about, you people talk about our kids, they need their own biological kids. The poor kids were once upon time were one of our kids, you talk to people, they say they are not my kids, so what else is kids, let them worry about it. That is the fundamental cultural change that has left some of our kids, for kids, living and headed toward a different universe, thats unfair, economically costly and we got to do something about it. [applause] is under this session solve one of my problems but created another. The want it so this explains why i turned that this was because i never had an airbag. By fathers philosophy was let the little crowd swings. I now understand that. Better from that one. Michael, youve caused me a problem. Michael holds that if this panel were to croak, that i think the word you used was procreation rates would fall. When my wife hears that a great expert said that about me, im going to be in big trouble, so if you get a call from my wife, i trust you explain your joking. Im supposed to talk to you about policy. Let me restate first about what we learned this morning and i think, ive lived long enough to know that this was not always accepted. These lessons. The first thing is that we have a huge decline in marriage. I have wonderful charts to show you that you can imagine them by age, however you look at it, marriage rates have declined with the exception as bob points out of College Educated women. They are decline in marriage stopped in about 1980. They get married much later that they have very high rates of marriage. Weve made a great discovery, great minds like the one on this panel to understand that if marriage rates decline, sex does not. If marriage rates declined and sex keeps up a special among cohabiting couples who have nonmarital births. We have nonmarital births galore to 70 of black kids are born outside of marriage. 45 of hispanic kids and the overall rate is over 30 . These kids are born into disadvantage. Especially in saras presentation there are three conclusions we can draw from this. The first thing is, never come d through a powerpoint before but who we are. First of all these trends lead to higher poverty rates. The probability of being in poverty if you live in a femaleheaded family is five times greater than it is if you live in a married couple family. Weve been taking kids out of married couple families and putting them in the situation to which they are five times as likely to be poor. Secondly, exacerbates income equality, not the kind at the top but creates more people at the bottom so it becomes more difficult to do with income inequality. Third and by far the most important, several articles show this, especially about a guy named david im going to talk about right at the end of that is damaged Child Development. We have much worse Child Development in many areas that sara conveniently based probably on 1000 articles read through the various types of impact on kids. So this is a national crisis. Its a national crisis, and its affecting our gnp, affect your behavior schools, affecting all aspects of American Life as bob has shown so well. We thought about some policies to address it and we do. We have i think five policies weve tried that is useful just to talk about these and see how well weve done. The tax code, people think the tax code has disincentives for marriage. Reducing nonmarital births. If we had fewer nonmarital births it would have an effect on poverty, navy on marriage and so forth. Something we tried in the Bush Administration to spend over a billion dollars on which is marriage education. I call it enhanced marriage education because theres counseling and all kinds of things with couples that have had a baby together. Could you help them understand each other better, get along and so forth and eventually get married . And then we have the same thing but with communitywide initiative working with churches, lots of publicity about how important marriage is to get and so forth. Finally, helping young men. Several analysts have pointed out how bored young men are. I dont think its possible to explain the tax code, even this little part of the tax code but i know, i can do it without a powerpoint. Let me tell you the main point which is i dont think its a huge home. I think its vastly overrated how important the tax code and the incentives. Let me give an example, michael had the great wisdom years ago and his colleagues to pay for national study, National Survey American Families and the very smart guy and delight at the urban institute analyzed the data for the couples were cohabiting and living under 200 of poverty. Couples cohabiting, 200 of poverty. Roughly speaking low income or poor. The question is, what would happen if they got married . What would happen if they got married . A careful analysis showed that most of them do not get Public Benefits or di do not get tempoy system for needy family. And those that do would lose some money from tanf. But they would more than make up with the earned income tax credit. And the Child Tax Credit. So the tax benefits are so great for them and the reason for those of you who know the way eitc works come up to about 15,000 if, after earnings of about 15,000 you get more and more money. We are talking series money, wait over 4000 out of the earned income tax credit to another child in Child Tax Credit attacks within benefits. Is reflected in the face of that. If you get married and youre in phaseout, it hurts you because you loose eitc. Summon the couples have low incomes that theyre mostly in way rate is increasing the you combined income they get more money. Im not saying theres no penalty in the eitc but for those of you from the finance committee and the ways and Means Committee i wouldnt spend too much time troubling us up with trying to find these marriage penalties. It would be a good thing to do. Im all for i dont think its going to make a big deal. The research on whether those kind penalties have impact on peoples marriage rates is not encouraging. It doesnt suggest they have a big impact. Thats the first thing. Marriage penalties, i dont think are going to make a big difference. The second is the benefits of reducing nonmarital births. I think this could make a big difference. The rl list to be laid out to reduce poverty rates, lower abortion rates, definite lower abortion rates. Clear in several studies that are good. Letters base in vegas which leads to better Child Development, increase like that of prenatal care, reduce partner separation rate, and a and not t important, serious cost savings for government. Studies have shown very substantial savings. We have something now, which was been able do this. Weve done for teenagers. Since 1991, teen birth rates have declined every year except to. I think its worth starting a. I wished more time but, for can be done. Birth control could make a huge difference in Birth Control has played a role in the reduction of teen pregnancy. From these big studies that im referring to about using new techno geek called larks, long acting reversible contraception, i. E. These or other forms as well. The lead to almost zero pregnancy rate your way better than the bill, way better than any other method and get this, 70 of all low income mothers would do the trick but for larks. So at last we really could control fertility couples who decide to go with have a foolproof method to detect was compelled method to detect was compelled last two years, you dont worry about taking a pill before any action. Neutral work. Cant get in trouble for the. On a College Campus i bet you could. Anyway, so we have a good way to do this. We have large studies that show works. This isnt a part of a solution. If we could have better means to give her the control to people who want it and do it in a professional way that includes counseling and so forth, someone is trying to force them not to have babies. And that i want to talk for one second about the bush news. I was involved with in so im highly biased. They didnt work bush initiative. It was disciplined to spend a billion dollars on this beautiful studies. We got a lot of credit from the scholarly world because we get these big large scale, random assignments. Casey contribute some money to these. And at the end there was one side out of eight sites, 5000 people involved in this, it was a big deal, and one site had to be backs that were pretty impressive. It was Oklahoma City. Mike garrett has always been they didnt have anything else to do in Oklahoma City so they went to the why we should be married of sessions and get along with each other and fight in a friendly manner. That were really impacts but even those they did with one exception which gives me some encouragement which is they were more likely to be together still after 36 months. That only happened in that one out of eight sites. It will be interesting to go back now and see but i dont think we can say that if we have good marriage education with counseling that we could really boost the birth rate among the people that already cohabit most of them and have had a baby together. That to me as the group we would like to influence and we dont have to do. So finally i want to say a few words about young men. Several other speakers have talked about young men. Young men, i 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. They drink a lot. They are reckless. And guess what. Women are discerning. They know that. At the least they want a man who has a good job and will be trustworthy and will be a good father and so forth and a lot of guys are not like that. They are not like that at all and its related to their income. So low income guys are even worse than middleclass guys, or at least they dont recover by the time they are 22, 24. But we have a lot of probes. Im a little optimistic we could do a lot better industry. We know a lot of education and training. We could help these young men. We have one study called career academies that was done in eight sites, followed for eight years. The guys whod been in career academies which involved Actual Experience in a workforce and with mentoring when theyre in junior high and most in high school, sites around the country, they made more money, almost 2000 a year, and confirming that three but imports of money, they were more likely to be married and more likely to live with her children. We have several ways we could influence the income of males. I think thats an area we should make further investments, we should do more research. Its possible to be somewhat optimistic that if we did a better job kind of young men, and we will learn more as we go along, so i think thats an area that we really should exploit. So let me end with two things. The first one is, my wonderful colleague had done research on the importance of marriage rates and the change of marriage rates for poverty. If we have the same marriage rate today that we had in 1970 without spending any additional money, us and other things are equal as economists always do, our poverty rate would be 25 lower. Government has to run just to stay in place in the poverty rates because the demographic changes. There is no problem under program that reduces except marriage. The second thing, i mentioned a because of this wonderful article. Let me reaches conclusion to you. The advantages of marriage for childrens well being are likely to be hard to replicate through policy interventions other than those that bolster marriage rates. We are moving in the wrong direction and we are having a hard time getting out of it. [applause] and thank you, al. That is the best possible graduate seminar on the state of family and family policy. So im going to start by playing the role of a slightly thicker graduate student to get it started. Let me ask, there seems to be a remarkable unanimity of things that i thought were very controversial. All of you seem to agree that unstable, complex households are bad for the raising of children, that its rooted in the decline of the bluecollar economy, the atomization of community and changes in Family Structure and social norms. Does everyone agree on this . Wants the debate thats taking place in academia on this . What did you find the status of knowledge here in washington with policy people on that side of issue . Please, anyone chime in here press the button. Okay. I think that there has been over time a reluctance among progressives to first of all acknowledge the importance of marriage and to parents of kids. It started on campuses. It was many years before and i think theres been a revolution among scholars who are progressives about how does it explicitly as sara has said, and said eloquently in 1994 in the book i think abu started as among scholars, and everybody else on the panel said the same thing. There has been a Movement Among scholars. I think less so among politicians. It seems to me that especially democrats are really unwilling to say a crucial marriage is, that its a mistake to have babies outside marriage and that you need to get married before you have children. If we could send that message i our politicians, ministers, people in communities but above all politicians come and would make a big difference. I could be wrong but im sure there are people, effect, there were comments the beginning about a democratic politician and i would like to go through speeches and see how many times he said this but i think thats part of the problem. As far as the movement of views in the academy, i think we would not all agree there has been a growing consensus that its both and. Its not either or. Its true some people that it is both slashdot and. Theres a broad consensus that theyre just good for kids. Everybody agrees marriage has declined. Theres no debate about the decline in marriage in the workingclass. Theres some disagreement about how much of that is economic in its origin and how much of it is normative in its origin. I think probably almost everybody including everybody here would agree its both and. Its not either or. It would be disagreement about is the most economic but mostly normative change, but thats not crucial here. As i talk to people in washington on both sides of the aisle i think that consensus has not yet reached political elites. I think theres still much more its either this or it is that among politicians. I agree that theres still a lot of democratic politicians who are skeptical about blaming normative change for the collapse of the family. But theres another aspect of this, which is what we do about it . There are large numbers of scholars who think actually the normative change is a big deal. I think its a big deal but actually i dont know of any group in or unproven policy suggestion that would change the norms and, therefore, it does seem, we are all in this bipartisan good feeling on the table but i think we have to but there are a lot of people on your side, on the republican side of the aisle, who make the point about changing norms and act as if we knew what to do about that but we dont know what to do about that. Using a changed over the years i assume on all these issues. I think the rub comes between i think we all agree about these points. I think the rub is between, can you just get people married, is that going to be enough . Id like to say we advise the policy i recommend, we need to get these women to delay pregnancy and delay, wait longer. But if they dont have a man whos there who can bring home some bacon, you know, its not going to work for them. You cant ask them not to have children forever. We have to do something about the condition of the young men that theyre going to be partnered with. If we take all that and get a marriage license they will not stay married if they dont have any resources. Thats the norm, too, about men needing to be a good provider. We dont want to change that norm. I guess if we did and maybe they would be more marriages but then it would be all of this instability. That wouldnt gain us anything. I think theres lots of the culture we do need to say dont have these children late, dont have them out of a block of find a partner but then there has to be a partner there for them at some point. I really like rons idea about the career academies because that is as far as i know the only program that has shown benefits on earnings and marriage. Let me take the example of long acting reversal contraceptives which iran to mention. They can be very effective in reducing fertility. Youve got to give a lower moderate income woman of reason to want to postpone, to get into the click the you cant just hang up a shingle and say larcs available here. Getting her in, giving the reason its hard to do. Can make a quick point . A very quick. I dont agree with that. Its true in part but its not completely true. Why . Because these experiments show a large dash to all of these women who say theyre going to have sex within the next year maybe they have a normal part but theyre willing to take these because they would like to believe for a to want to theyre finishing education are working to new job and so forth. We can place huge responsibility and our policy terms in washington on single parents. Thats part of our strategy and we better damn well do it because wer we are not going tx the marriage rate anytime soon. A brief response. The studies that ron our site our high court deciding whether all volunteer. People who came to the clinic voluntary. It doesnt prove the general public will be doing this. Im in favor of larcs. We just want to be too much of the store because its hard to implement and would have more political resistance that we actually think. Can i raise two more points that didnt come up that a lot of people might be interested in, and particularly in the policy realm. How does all this affect Early Childhood education . The kind of ping pong interaction between parents and children and the longterm effects on that. Its frightening to me because it seems like it creates a durable disadvantage. Thats hard to make up for later. In a similar way, how the toxic stress youre talking about affects parenting styles, which also seemed to be communicated across generations in a way that sort of complicates this work or. Those sort of, the point i was trying to make when i talk about all the instability complexity just increases the stress. Alall the numbers i talked about were before the child, by the time the child is five years old. This is all going down, all going on in Early Childhood when the children need the most attention. They need a mother an and a fatr to be the most stable and secure. So i think that all of his churning, a lot of research that talks about household chaos thats bad for kids, the parenting, irregular schedules, disrupting routines. This is what happens when mother breaks up with one partner, that creates a loss and thats sad, and the she finds a new partnero she falls in love. Thats a good theory but its not a good feeling with the child. And maybe that matt is jealous at the time that the mother spent with a child because he wants her attention. Its not his child. All of these competing, think of that as computing activities when you kind of combine this search for a partner with this early parenting. Its just not a good thing to try to put together. One followup. Have you seen any programmatic interventions when it comes to that, like family partnerships or other things that make a difference . Go ahead. I think actually that bears could be good evidence that if you provide coaching and for parents, its mostly coaching of moms, in principle it could be a dad, too, but mostly coaching of moms. You can actually move the needle. And that providing both professional Early Childhood education, that is, not glorified day care but professionally provided Early Childhood education, early, not just prek but birth to three or four, combined with coaching of the parents, of the moms, that does move the needle. It has a very high roi, return on investment. Its not cheap but the payoffs are sufficiently large that it makes sense to do. I kind of hope that that may be one of the next frontiers to which people will begin to agree. In an earlier day, neighbors and extended government wouldve provided that support to a troubled bomb but that has disappeared and now i think we can begin to think about ways of providing that anymore programmatic way. Like the Nurse Family Partnership actually. Aei and brookings just for a group of 16 scholars and republish report, and we would not disagree i think with what bob just said, but that child that goes for high quality preschool or even a mother who gets coached, they still live in a very difficult household. They live in a very difficult neighborhood. And more than likely, they did go through a lousy school. Our recommendation was we need to deal aggressively on all three fronts at one time. We need to do something about families as we talked about, greatly improve education including preschool, and we definitely need to do something about work on especially with regard to young men. One more, and that is, i think i know a fair amount about preschool literature. I find a little discouraging. The evidence that we are able to produce longterm impacts, anything like a broad scale is quite weak. We have magnificent programs that have produced even recently come across a preschool program, but we dont know anything about the longterm. Head start has shown it probably does not produce longterm effect. There some exceptions. We are not putting kids, our kids are in average or worse settings and generally for preschool now. So we have an immense task to improve the quality of those programs or we will not get anything like the effects that bob is talking about. Any thoughts, any further thoughts . Will go to questions very shortly. Im going to do one more. Just sitting in for some conservatives in the audience in all this, what is the place and role of moral judgment . Even when social and Economic Trends push in one direction. The army people who just do the right thing. They make sacrifices. They stay even in difficult circumstances. How do you count that role of religious conviction and ethics in this . More broadly just the role of religion in Family Structure. Is it relevant, irrelevant, where do you put it . If you mean at the individual level, does becoming more religious make you more likely to be in a permanent relationship and to raise your kids well and so on . There is actually mixed evidence oon the ivory the evidence mysef as theres a modest, really modest, affect of what you might describe. But most of these poor single moms or the Fragile Families were talking about, most of them are in areas that are high church not low church. They are in communities that are high church am not low church. The Africanamerican Community is the most religious command in america and lots of the problems are concentrated there. I did not mean at all this is a racial problem. I think it illustrates religion is not a kind of cureall. You know i am far from being hostile to the role of religion. Im a big fan of religious constitutions but i think the way religious institutions could play a really tall for roll is not merely in providing services to individual poor people, which they do now. Religious people are nice and they are generous. But by helping to foster what hope is a national consensus, weve got to do something about these poor kids and not just their private lives i in our public life. Ive said repeatedly, publicly that i think the engagement of americas major religious committed, evangelical, catholic, protestant, jewish, ma others, theyre involved in this issue, the opportunity gap, is almost Industry Conditions and almost a sufficient condition for form of the National Clinical will to make the investments that we need to do. I did want to mention Something Else thats on a different subject to it just hasnt come up and i think government has been doing something to make things much worse, that is our incarceration policy. Ive been doing studies now, the kids in third grade that are being suspended and expelled from school. Im sure these kids have a social and emotional problems are im sure theyre acting out and causing trouble. When you take them out of school they dont learn that day. And then, of course, it goes on and on and whats been happening to the teenagers and young men. I think theres a great consensus now. Thats my sense that we will stop that. Weve got to change that. But i do think the disproportionate effect of those policies since 1980 own young men are part of this story anyway. Lets go to some questions, please. Right here. Maybe just say who you are and a short question. [inaudible] just speak loudly. [inaudible] the question is, are you seeing that level of College Educated. [inaudible] the same as white women . Thats the main question i have. And for doctor hoskins, its interesting other Foreign Policy goals you dont mention making college free or affordable for young people. Of the research is so strong that that is a primary correlation between marriage. Let me repeat the first question is people to inherit, which is theres been increasing rates of College Graduation among black and hispanic women. Are we seeing them marrying . The edges yes, marriage rates are higher for welleducated minority as well as for nonhispanic whites. The problem for welleducated minority women is finding welleducated men. Many of them are old uncle of marrying again. That is, marrying some with less education they have. Its hard to find a College Graduate partner. I think college is part of the solution, thats for sure we have billions of dollars we basically give away for college. We have big federal programs. The problem is a lot of low income kids that go to college fail only for some reason. And then they are doubly affected because theyd not only didnt get the degree but now many of them have a big deal to be but they cant get the kind of job to pay. Weve got to do something about that. We should try to identify every single income kids, minority kid who could go to college, a good college or average college and help them do it. And not making the debt. We should do that. The second thing and more important is a much larger group of lowincome kids could profit from Community College and participation in programs that teach them to be welders and electricians and so forth. They could make 50, 60,000 figure what to be a huge improvement and would greatly increase the chances they would marry and begin to i think fix this whole problem. College is a key but dont forget i think Community College is even more important than Fouryear Colleges. College is really important, and the data show that based on test scores endowment income, dumb rich kids are more likely to graduate from college than smart poor kids, and thats wrong. The data also suggests that most of the handicap, prevent workers from getting to college, happens well before anybody is even think about college. This goes way back deep into the lifecycle of these things. College tuition is i think not a big part o part part of the pro. Im not saying its not a problem at all but its nothing like as big as all the earlier stuff weve been talking about. Secondly, free college education, that is, making africa everybody would disproportionately benefit which folks because they could afford to pay for the kids to go to college and that would be a huge, im not trying to make a statement about the Election Campaign but in a way i can. I think its wasteful of resources to all taxpayers pay for bill gates kids to get a College Degree. Next, please. Im from congressman joan larsons office. Two quick questions. What about families that have suffered a loss, like they were married but then one of the parents died early on. Does that show the same effects in children as parents who choose to get married at all . Et al. So what about different kinds of marriages between like a man and woman or maybe a cohabitation situation . Sorry, a woman and a woman or a cohabitation situation that is more of a union than just living together. Sara, in her wisdom, has a paper, i think the best paper unavailable, on marriage between gay couples. Its primarily males to play better in in the very studies but is reviewed in future children its a nice arranged online. I would say generally the conclusion is, correct me if im wrong, sara, that is the artifacts they are modest, that we do not have evidence that it would be a bad idea to allow gay couples hav to get. I say that because ive been throughout my career i think the evidence is that if you can get kids out of foster care and out of that homes and into stable families and even if both parents are women or men, the kids are way better off but i dont think theres any evidence to contradict that and a lot of evidence to support it spent let me address the issue of parental loss if a parent dies. We find the kids whose parents die are doing better than kids whose parents divorce. Why is that . It may be because we know how to handle parental death. We have been doing it for centuries. We rally around the family. They have life insurance. There is a support system. Didnt also be that death is more random. Except for traffic accidents. Traffic accidents are fairly random were divorced tent city concert in particular kinds of people. What we know about the loss of a parent suggests not just the. Being in or out of the home but how we deal with the situation that seems to matter. Thanks for this. I just want to comment on saras portrait i used to work for someone named dan rostenkowski, and that they serve time in jail he said we are letting these young black men rot in jail. So my comment is that i think we need to make more investments in young men, their behaviors, et cetera, et cetera. Once a union happens and a child is produced, that regardless of whether there was a marriage or cohabiting, we had the expectation that the mail is going to give support and also continued to be involved in the lives of the children. I know theres an issue of domestic violence. I think, im a conservative in the sense that i think churches, synagogues, mosques need to talk about respect between sexes and what marriage is all about. And that if we make men have a job and investing them and get rid other bad behaviors, the thn marriage issue will go away. Do you agree or disagree . I agree. And if i didnt i wouldnt say so publicly. The problem is we dont know how to do those things. We are just been successful at it. If we could do it thats whats at stake. Thats why we are having this meeting, that we have to figure this out at the very im the most optimistic about is doing something for young men. We do have good programs that work if were willing to make more investments and focus on young men. It will cause a lot of problems with the Womens Movement but if we do that and can get me in programs like career academies and other programs i think we could have an impact. On the incarceration to i cant resist on incarceration comment, and others. Out in california, probably the biggest criminal justice experiment which is the court mandated lessening of the state prisons by some 33,000. The early results of the effects of that are coming in now. Notably in the journal that i added a double foreshadow that by saying w we will release a couple studies that show that Violent Crime with the release of these lowlevel offenders, Violent Crime, doesnt update at all. Even with recidivism we actually seeing mixed results by county and some of them, recidivism rates are better depending on how the counties have handled it. Last question i think. I just have one question, so coming from the state of utah, something thats highly valued there is the institution of marriage. Its even almost more valued and preached two young men and women that you should almost valued at more than education or job training programs. I guess after hearing your studies about the success of young people go to education, is this a traditional norm that we would want to change or discontinue . I guess what im saying is the preaching of the institution of marriage is a highvalue over things like education. I showed my students an introduction to sociology a map last week of divorce rates in states around the country, and out west theres high divorced were except this one place called utah. The only religious group in the u. S. That has substantially lower divorce rates than the others is the latter day saints. The social cohesion, the teachings they are reducing to create a different sense of them could elsewhere, and i admire it greatly. In the family study i did, these women, and men, they want to get married. Its not a matter that they think marriage is better for kids, they hope it will happen to them. But then they dont and then they get pregnant and, so its not just changing the i dont think it is just preaching the importance of marriage. I think there has to be a much bigger support system. What youre describing in utah is kind of what bobs think about our kids. As a larger group we felt sort of more community which you certainly do in utah. You feel, those are kids of the church. And, in fact, i have friends come if they think about getting divorced, the Community Comes in big time. Counsels them and tries to work with him and help within. So it isnt just the attitude. Its all that other stuff. Since were starting a little late can i get one more question up in the front row . Wide a consensus point thats been emerging in d. C. I would love you to weigh in on a special recognition of young men, which is expanding the eitc which is been so successful for women and children, to those without custodial kids either tax records and figure out what kind of effect we think that might have on some of the things you bring up about marriageability and economic stability. And he did what and on that love to hear your thoughts. Speak i think its a good idea because it would get more money into their hands, make them more attractive. I think, and he would also, the returns to work. I think they need to be working. They dont just take money. They need a job. Ron, to give anything speakers i agree with that for sure. Heart of the theory is that its like earned income tax credit, that it will suck people into the labor force. We are paying 500 bucks to that if they get a job so that its not enough. The thinking is around 2000 come experiment in new york i believe is 2000 we are learning a lot from the. Its a good way to do policy, doing these big studies. Both ryan and the president said 2000 we should able to do that. Its not that much money. We should pass it and do it. But im worried it would not be enough to suck enough young men into the labor force, but lets find out. First of all unafraid our time is up. Ive never seen a topic for which 90 minutes was more of an injustice. It deserves more than a and i really never seen a better handle on this topic. So please join me in thanking all of our panelists. [applause] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] for the next three weeks of tv will be on during prime time showing traces of programs touching on different subjects. This evenings topic focuses on energy and its impact on the environment. Politics and the use of fossil fuels. A hearing on the threat of transnational organized crime to u. S. And global security. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee heard from former ambassador william brownfield, the assistant secretary of state for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement affairs. He talked about u. S. Efforts against drug trafficking, Human Trafficking and smuggling of wildlife, weapons and other property. This is about an hour and 20 minutes. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]