Ignoring an Inequality Culprit: Single-Parent Families

Intellectuals fretting about income disparity are oddly silent regarding the decline of the two-parent family.

Click here to read the WSJ. By Robert Maranto And Michael Crouch. Mr. Maranto is a professor in the Department of Education Reform at the University of Arkansas, where Mr. Crouch is a researcher. Excerpts:

"In 1960, more than 76% of African-Americans and nearly 97% of whites were born to married couples. Today the percentage is 30% for blacks and 70% for whites. The out-of-wedlock birthrate for Hispanics surpassed 50% in 2006. This trend, coupled with high divorce rates, means that roughly 25% of American children now live in single-parent homes, twice the percentage in Europe (12%). Roughly a third of American children live apart from their fathers."

"children in high-income households who experienced family breakups don't fare as well emotionally, psychologically, educationally or, in the end, economically as their two-parent-family peers.

Abuse, behavioral problems and psychological issues of all kinds, such as developmental behavior problems or concentration issues, are less common for children of married couples than for cohabiting or single parents,"

"More than 20% of children in single-parent families live in poverty long-term, compared with 2% of those raised in two-parent families,"

"The poverty rate would be 25% lower if today's family structure resembled that of 1970,"

"41% of the economic inequality created between 1976-2000 was the result of changed family structure."

"communities with a high percentage of single-parent families are less likely to experience upward mobility."

"In the past four years, our two academic professional organizations—the American Political Science Association and the American Educational Research Association—have each dedicated annual meetings to inequality, with numerous papers and speeches denouncing free markets, the decline of unions, and "neoliberalism" generally as exacerbating economic inequality. Yet our searches of the groups' conference websites fail to turn up a single paper or panel addressing the effects of family change on inequality."

"family breakup has hit minority communities the hardest."