Let's Alleviate Human Suffering by Dr. Ronald Mincy, Sr.

Let's Alleviate Human Suffering  | A Plan for Reducing Poverty and Restoring the American Dream

Fathers & Families Coalition of America has long championed to alleviate conditions that reduce opportunities for children, parents, families and building healthy communities. Dr. Ronald B. Mincy, Sr., introduces an opportunity for a bipartisan plan to press the reduction of poverty. Before  you read on consider the following: The average age of a homeless person is 9 years old in America. More than 3.5 million people are homeless every night, and 1.35 million are children. More than 30 percent of homeless families have an open case for child abuse or neglect. Of the 31.1 million people living in poverty, more than 12 million are children. Now is a time for coming together and reduce the devastation of poverty in America

"Twenty five years, I have been convinced that we will never reduce poverty and increase opportunity in America unless we squarely addressed the adverse employment and earning patterns among less educated men. These patterns are associated with high rates of incarceration, low rates of marriage, and high rates of non-marital births. My work on reducing poverty has focused on reversing these trends ever since. Until my most recent book, Failing our Fathers, I was, unapologetically, focused on reducing poverty and increasing economic well-being among African Americans for whom these trends were and remain the most disappointing. Now however, these negative trends have become widespread across the general population. Increasing rates of incarceration, reduced marriage rates, and increasing numbers of non-marital births are becoming commonplace among less educated young Whites as well.  Although these trends and consequences still are most severe among African Americans, some of our nations’ most prominent poverty scholars, policy researchers, and policy makers, now agree: reducing poverty and increasing opportunity in America requires that we address the needs of young, less educated men.

The result of a bipartisan working group convened by American Enterprise Institute and the Brookings Institution work will be released at a press conference at the National Press Club on December 3rd (go here for detailed information). The report highlights the key features of poverty and diminished economic opportunity in America today.

• Declining rates of marriage and increasing non-marital births, especially among those with less education, leave a large number of children to grow up in single-parent households that have lower income and higher rates of poverty.
• The 2007-2009 Recession increased long term unemployment, and substantially worsened the decline in the labor force participation, which was already underway, especially among less-educated men
• During the recession, unemployment rates rose more among men than women, with the greatest increases occurring among black men
• Wages of men in the bottom half of all earners have stagnated or declined since 1979. The situation for women is less dire
• Regardless of whether poverty is measured by income, with or without public benefits, or measured by consumption, poverty rates rose during the 2007-2009 recession and remain stubbornly high
• The economic ladder is frozen: there is little downward mobility for children from families at the top rung and little upward mobility for children from families at the bottom rung

During the 1990s work supports, in the form of cash and in-kind supplements, were established to help single mothers leave welfare for work. Increasing child support payments from nonresident fathers, through improved paternity establishment and tougher child support enforcement, were important parts of this strategy, which otherwise paid little attention to less-educated men. But if the authors of this new report have their way, this will change. Among their most important policy goals the bipartisan panel recommended:

• raising work levels among hard-to-employ men and women, including those with criminal records (mostly men)
• making work pay more for the less educated, by increasing the federal EITC for childless workers, including nonresident fathers
• using the bully-pulpit of leaders at all levels to echo what we know about the importance of two-committed parents, most readily achieved in the US by marriage, to adults of child-bearing age; and
• delaying early non-marital childbirth by increasing the availability contraceptives, and increasing public awareness of differences in the effectiveness of various contraceptive methods

Achieving this bipartisan consensus was no easy task. The report drew upon the expertise of academics, policy makers, and policy analysts who had worked on the causes of and solutions to rising poverty and lagging opportunity. Several members of the group had managed federal and state programs and policies intended to reverse these adverse trends. Finally, all keenly understood and sought to represent the concerns of their respective constituencies. Despite difficulties, the group recognized that lower national unemployment and renewed economic growth creates a fertile environment in which to address the long-standing problems of poverty and lack of economic opportunity in the America. We were committed to the idea that progressives and conservatives could forge a consensus and set priorities designed to take advantage of the opportunity that now exists.

As the only person of color on the panel, I bore an additional burden because the report urges leaders at all levels to encourage reductions in early non-marital births and increased child-rearing in stable two-parent families. In the U.S. this usually means marriage. These goals are particularly difficult for Black and Brown communities to achieve, in part, because earnings have consistently fallen among young, less-educated Black and Brown men over the last 40 years, their incarceration rates have soared over the same period, and our nation continues to increase the number of children raised in single-mother families by deporting fathers who are undocumented workers. While the report addresses policies designed to reduce the first of these barriers to two-parent families, justice and immigration policies were beyond its scope, and therefore, the report merely acknowledges the second barrier and ignores the third.

But this is not all. In many Black and Brown communities, higher rates of marriage and marital childbearing are not viewed as goals at all. Instead, marital and non-marital childrearing are viewed as alternate and equally suitable family arrangements derived from the diverse social, cultural, historical, and economic circumstances of different race and ethnic groups. As a result of their unique experiences, non-marital births have become a norm to which no stigma is attached. Such births and the consequent high rate of mother-headed families are viewed as suitable for raising and nurturing children, especially if adequate supports are available. Having been raised by a remarkable single mother, it is difficult for me to resist this view.  Nevertheless, a quarter century of work on these issues in academia, think-tanks, philanthropy, and government convinces me that racial/ethnic equality and greater economic opportunity for Black and Brown children rests fundamentally upon providing these children with the long-term support of two loving and committed parents. Black and Brown mothers and fathers are needed to secure the human, financial, and social capital their children need to achieve economic opportunity on terms as similar as possible to the resources available to other American children. In the US, marriage is the most common way to achieve such sustained parental-indeed adult-investments in children. To make this feasible, all young adults must complete school, avoid early non-marital childbearing and find work at family sustaining wages. Hence the focus of the report on: work, family, and education.

Only by facing these issues squarely, as this bi-partisan group tried to do, can we identify the right mix of policies required to address rising poverty and lagging economic opportunity in America. While the report does not recommend policy changes in all the relevant areas it’s a very good start. It will be widely circulated, and I hope, widely read and debated, even by those who disagree with some of its recommendations. We’ve ignored these problems for far too long."