Three Reasons Why the Poor Marry Less

A near-constant refrain among conservative circles is that a significant cause of poverty is the breakdown of the traditional family. They cite as evidence the fact that married couples tend to be better off. Unfortunately, these commentators have confused cause and effect. Single parenthood doesn't lead to poverty. Rather, poor single parents have no incentive to marry. There are three major reasons for this.

First, there are serious financial disincentives for people on public assistance to marry. The Department of Health and Human Services sets poverty guidelines based on family size. These are used to determine eligibility to Head Start, Food Stamp Program, the National School Lunch Program, the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program, and the Children’s Health Insurance Program. They are also inform the guidelines that state and local governments use for access to their programs. Unfortunately, these guidelines make it costly for very poor people to marry. A single working mother with two children counts as a family of 3, which in 2011 would be defined as in poverty at an income level below $18,530. If she were to marry, she would be part of a family of 4, but the poverty level only increases to $22,350. Let's say the that a father is in the picture, and each of the couple can earn $12,000 a year. If the couple marries, they could lose access to public support, decreasing their combined income. If the father wants to contribute to the family income, he will contribute more by supporting his children and their mother financially, but not getting married. The policies built into our safety net are a far bigger "marriage penalty" than anything in our income tax law.

Second, the criminal justice and public benefits systems have become entwined in a way that makes many poor people outcasts from the marriage market. If one has a felony convictions, particularly for drug possession, one is often barred from public housing and other benefits. Drug laws are selectively enforced, and poor people are far more likely to be arrested, tried, and convicted than wealthier people who commit the same crimes. In some urban areas, up to half of all men have been convicted of a drug crime. If these ex-convicts were to marry and move in with their significant others, their whole family could be evicted from their homes.

Third, the poor don't have the same financial incentives to marry as wealthier people do. Traditional marriage law is designed to protect the joint wealth of a couple. If one person should pass away, their health benefits, insurance, and assets are still controlled by the spouse. This financial benefit explains why wealthier people still get married, even when many complain that the tax code penalizes a couple for having two incomes. Poor people often don't have any wealth, insurance, or benefits to pass on to their loved ones. Therefore, there are no financial benefits to overcome the aforementioned penalties.

If conservatives were truly concerned with strengthening families, they would remove obstacles to poor people marrying. They would adjust the eligibility requirements for public benefits to reduce the penalty for adding an income-earner to a household. They also would stop making social outcasts of people who have paid their debt to justice by serving their prison terms.

Alas, I don't think that they will advocate these kinds of changes soon. It serves a conservative narrative to portray the poor as victims of their own moral failings. Doing so justifies the continued prosecution of the War on Drugs, with its attendant financial advantages to police departments, suppliers of military-grade equipment, and private prison contractors. The narrative also justifies eroding the social safety net, which must happen to fund the tax cuts their wealthy supporters have obtained.

No, poverty is not caused by a breakdown in family values. The breakdown in the family is caused by the policies that we inflict on the poor, and these policies are part of a circular effort to justify the policies that we inflict on the poor.

A Thought on the Mission of a University

David Kennedy is quoted in a New Yorker article on Stanford and Silicon Valley:

"The entire Bay Area is enamored with these notions of innovation, creativity, entrepeneurship, megasuccess" he says. It's in the air we breathe out here. It's an atmosphere that can be toxic to the mission of the university as a place of refuge, contemplation, and investigation for its own sake."

I couldn't agree less. Do you know what's really toxic to the mission of a university as a place of refuge and contemplation? $40,000 a year in tuition.

But seriously, contemplative investigation occurs at universities, just not among the students. It's the faculty that use the university to fulfill this noble mission. This quote seems to confuse the mission of the university with the reasons that faculty choose an academic life.

Instead, the reasons that universities have such prominent places in our society are practical. Elite private universities have primarily served to provide a mechanism to identify and cultivate the best and the brightest; to offer a space in which people make connections that serve their later careers; and to provide the means for the children of the privileged (who gain access through legacy admissions) to remain among the elite. Public universities serve to train sectors of the workforce who need broad intellectual skills: government workers, managers, teachers, doctors and nurses. The practical needs for certification and networking far outweigh the mission of a university as a contemplative refuge.

Therefore, I suggest that a university education should be either eminently practical, or dirt cheap. In this regard, I am impressed with Stanford. It does equip its students with practical skills and serve as an incubator for innovation. Moreover, its leadership has found a way to avoid charging tuition to students whose parents make less than $100,000 per year. I wish that more universities saw this as their mission.

Civil Rights and Gay Rights are Human Rights

I know that some people aren't comfortable with comparing gay rights to the Civil Rights Movement for people of color. Do you know what? The comparison is SUPPOSED to make you uncomfortable. Civil Rights and Gay Rights are not the same. However, there are enough similarities to make a comparison important.

The differences arise in part because our society's biases against homosexuals and people of color come form very different historical places. The seed of racism appears to spring from our tribal instincts, bit it was blown into horrific proportions in an attempt to justify the institution of slavery. The history of racism has left many blacks with unique disadvantages in educational opportunities, access to the benefits of family wealth, and treatment within the legal system.

The seeds of homophobia seem to be tied up with our fears of sex. We need to procreate for our tribe to survive, and yet those fleeting sexual acts can saddle us (and particularly women) with enormous obligations - babies to bear, feed, and raise - at just the wrong time. The taboos we've synthesized to deal with the danger inherent to sex are intensely personal. So also the battles that one must wage in coming out as gay in our society are uniquely wrenching, disorienting, and isolating.

On a more obvious level, homosexuality manifests itself as actions, where as race becomes evident through appearance. So, it is usually possible to hide being gay. On the other hand, one rarely needs to explain to one's mother that one is black.

However, these differences do not make it easier to be either homosexual or a person of color. The fact that a gay person can hide his identity might make it easier to access more of society, but it does nothing to assuage the deep personal fear of being rejected by his community. The fact that a person's mother still loves him does not erase the insult of being pulled over and searched for driving while black.

Indeed, it is important to realize that there are enormous similarities in the struggles that both gays and blacks face today. First, the "justifications" for both racism and homophobia are equally baseless. Second, the victims of both kinds of hatred suffer similar insults and violence. They have been excluded from jobs. They have been driven out of neighborhoods. They have been denied the right to marry those they love. They have been beaten and killed. Third, neither homosexuals nor people of color are to blame for their treatment. They did not choose the color of their skin, or the gender of those with whom they would fall in love.

I believe that we must acknowledge that the Gay Rights and Civil Rights movements have a lot in common. Doing so brings to light the humanity of those who are oppressed for the way they that their genes interact with their environment. If you are uncomfortable with the comparison, well, that's the point of making it. It is supposed to pose the question, "If you believe that we all have little choice in the color of our skin and whether we are gay or straight, how can you support rights for one group, but not the other?" The comparison is an implicit challenge, a test of where our biases lie.

Both sides are fighting bigotry on their best days, and outright hatred on their worst. I believe that we must understand all of the "others," and work together for their rights.

Getting Big Money out of Politics will Be Hard

Here's why voting for a candidate whose only platform is getting Big Money out of politics is a non-starter for me. In order for a candidate to get elected by opposing Big Money, a plurality of voters would have to abandon the candidates spending the Big Money. If it was possible to win an election without said money, it would mean it wasn't worth spending Big Money on elections. If it wasn't worth it, people wouldn't waste their money on elections. In other words, a candidate only could get elected by promising to take money out of politics if money in politics wasn't a real a problem.

You see, half of the problem with money in politics is that it works. Voters see the ads, and make decisions based on them. If we had an electorate that was willing to do their research and make choices based on the positions the candidates held, and their potential to implement their policies, politicians wouldn't need to buy all the ads.

Take Americans Elect as a case study in this problem. While public supporters of Americans Elect, like Lawrence Lessig, are hoping it will be a bid to elect someone who will get money out of politics, the private donors behind the organization appear to realize this is futile. They want to remain anonymous, because they are concerned about "retribution" if their campaign fails, and their names are known. Now, I don't think the retribution they fear is physical violence, or that the government will confiscate their property. That would be illegal, and completely unprecedented. I will assume the anonymous donors are reasonable. The retribution they fear can only be the revocation of their tax breaks, subsidies, and special access to the legislative process. In other words, the unnamed backers of Americans Elect don't want to lose the political influence that their wealth brings them. This poses an existential problem to running an Americans Elect campaign on a platform of getting the influence of money out of politics.

I think that the only way to get campaign finance reform implemented is by working within the system, despite the fact that it is damaged. A step in the right direction was taken before, with the McCain-Feingold legislation, until the Supreme Court eviscerated it. We need to try again in Congress. However, reform will be challenged, so we also need to make sure that we have a Supreme Court which understands that money in politics is not speech any more than bribery is. In November, please people vote with that in mind.