What would Romney say? What would Obama say? What would you say?
I noticed that the notion of income inequality and consequences was described outside the box in this article in the NYT. Several ideas struck me about the article. How people can work side by side with such little connection in their lives is instructive. The sense of ‘commons’ is missing from the article could be instructive in high lighting how the two women see their obligations and options, but another follow up could help instruct us. We tend to act on our own perceived stories’ to determine these choices. :
But a friendship that evokes parity by day becomes a study of inequality at night and a testament to the way family structure deepens class divides. Ms. Faulkner is married and living on two paychecks, while Ms. Schairer is raising her children by herself. That gives the Faulkner family a profound advantage in income and nurturing time, and makes their children statistically more likely to finish college, find good jobs and form stable marriages.
The economic storms of recent years have raised concerns about growing inequality and questions about a core national faith, that even Americans of humble backgrounds have a good chance of getting ahead. Most of the discussion has focused on labor market forces like falling blue-collar wages and lavish Wall Street pay.
But striking changes in family structure have also broadened income gaps and posed new barriers to upward mobility.
The advantage of comparing is to personalize and give life to ‘trends’ in our social fabric. The disadvantage of using real examples is that readers may trivialize the significance of a trend by making pronouncements on individual morality and choices and not look at real trends. Often little is offered for the psychological reasons for choices other than “shoulda known better”. Individual choices are of course tremendously important, but fail to explain the much larger trends.
The significant growing necessity of having two paychecks to raise a family is mentioned, and also the type of jobs women tend to get at lower pay compounding the difficulty of making enough money. Also mentioned is Ronald Reagan’s earned income credit to help alleviate what could have been much more severe poverty. There was no mention of medicaid, and no mention of what state the two women lived in. Not mentioned is the profound decrease in the labor participation rate for male ‘blue collar’ workers and subsequent dislocations (lower wages for men were given slight mention).
One important thought is that a significant number of people have dropped out of the ‘middle class’.
also see this article: http://www.alternet.org/story/156260/what_happens_when_you_can%E2%80%99t_afford_your_children?akid=9065.29972.p_hsIr&rd=1&t=6
The circumstances described in the article seem to expound on the obvious. Successfully married couples do better financially and in parenting than single parents? Who knew?
“Also mentioned is Ronald Reagan’s earned income credit”
Ford surely? Started in 1975. Legislation might even have been Nixon.
Based on Milton Friedman’s idea of a negative income tax. And generally accepted to have been Friedman’s idea, whoever was President at the time.
Jack D,
Well, ‘survivors fallacy’ in stats is fine, but explains little about what the pressures are.
Tim,
Ah well, yes “Enacted in 1975, the initially modest EIC has been expanded by tax legislation on a number of occasions, including the widely-publicized Reagan Tax Reform Act of 1986, and was further expanded in 1990, 1993, and 2001, regardless of whether the act in general raised taxes (1990, 1993), lowered taxes (2001), or eliminated other deductions and credits (1986).[6]” wiki
Rdan,
I don’t mean to minimize the pressures but as the article itself points out, marriage can (can, not will) make men (and probably women as well) more marriageable. The old advice to young women from their mothers used to be “why buy the cow when the milk is free?” Beyond one liners though, it seems obvious that marriage is likely to induce a feeling of responsibility in the partners and clearly shared incomes, no matter how small, and family duties help all involved to survive.
Yes…so what drives the flight from greater economic security by millions?
Dan
others have pointed out that the advantages of being married are real. that might suggest to some people that there are advantages to being married.
but it might also be true that the people who can’t manage to stay married might have trouble managing other aspects of their lives.
i don’t want to make too much of this, but on the other hand i don’t want to see others make some kind of case for the underprivileged unmarried needing a special dispensation from, say, Social Security.
not that they might not need welfare… and not that they might not have perfectly good, and tragic, reasons for being unmarried. it’s just that the latest position of the “defenders of Social Security” to destroy Social Security by demanding more benefits for their favorite needy populations has made me a bit bitter about reflexive pity.
as for the flight from greater economic security…
you can blame a lot of that on Paul Volker’s high interest policies of the early eighties, which not only caused a recession in this country, but led to at least some of the outsourcing that is now crippling our economy. high interests here led to an increase in the value of the dollar which gave a competitive advantage to overseas producers. see? it’s not entirely about cheap labor.
Dan,
Seem to have lost a post replying to yours above. Basically, I said that I thought there was a lot of naiveté on the part of couples in believing that they would stay together, married or not, and then having no impediment to splitting when problems arose. There is also an apparent belief that economic security has to be in place before marriage (although apparently not before breeding). That wasn’t always the case. There have been times when couples would marry, betting on the come and those times were not necessarily good economic times.
When 40% of children are born to single mothers, something has radically changed over recent times. It isn’t just bad choices; it’s also irresponsible choices on the part both men and women. Some of it is economics, no doubt but some of it is attitudinal as well. What causes to you ascribe to it?
Jack:
When did marriage ever have much to do with Upward Mobility in America? While it is true married couple and childless have a chance to rise up the ladder. Bearing children and having the same income still left them less than able when compared with those in the upper 10 percent. The costs of living in America have superceded increases in income which is reflected in the Household Median Income and the rise in Poverty. Dr. Wrren does a nice job of detailing this as well as Der Spiegel and other sources which document falling income amongst meales and married males.
Run,
True enough. My point was mostly with respect to women attempting to raise children on their own as opposed to doing so with a spouse or loyal partner. It certainly won’t make either of them rich. Trying to get problematic child support from a biological father really doesn’t compare to combining two (albeit small) incomes in a household and sharing parenting duties. When the parents each go their own way, the woman for sure and perhaps both of them are more impoverished (economically and psychologically) than they would be together in a marriage. Then there is the interest of the child or children and succeeding generations.
Marriage has always been an option based on positive economics. The traditional question asked of a young man seeking a young woman’s hand in marriage was “What are your prospects?” If a man didn’t have any prospects, odds are he didn’t marry and quite likely never did marry. This didn’t mean he never got laid or had children. He just never married.
Since the class war turned against the middle class in the early 80s, fewer and fewer men or women, for that matter, have prospects. The war on unions and wages has been one problem, as has the collapse of support for higher education which leaves millions in debt. (Volkert’s war on inflation didn’t help either since it raised housing prices from 600 to 800 hours a year.)
The marrying class never grows out of nowhere; it needs government policy support. I live in a former logging town. Back in the late 19th century loggers here were young single men who were treated like peons and blew their limited paychecks on whores and liquor whenever they got leave. During WWI, the government took over the business and imposed a labor contract which raised wages and introduced benefits. Loggers were suddenly respectable family men with wives, children, houses and a beer now and then after work. Of course, an awful lot of them voted for Reagan and his ilk, and they and their children are paying for it now.
Kaleberg
i think you are probably right.
but the people who have the hardest time getting ahead are unmarried women with children.
This is appropriate:
FactCheck.org citing a Brookings study:
“Ron Haskins, co-author of the Brookings study, which looked at Census Bureau data on a sample of Americans, wrote that the analysis found that young adults who finished high school, worked full time and got married after age 21 and before having kids “had a 2 percent chance of winding up in poverty and a 74 percent chance of winding up in the middle class (defined as earning roughly $50,000 or more). By contrast, young adults who violated all three norms had a 76 percent chance of winding up in poverty and a 7 percent chance of winding up in the middle class.”
What I’ve said all along and should be taught and re-taught in every grade/middle/high school in America. And its corrallary:
Life is tough, its tougher if your stupid.
Islam will change
Buff
any practical suggestions for preventing what you call stupidity?
i think if you knew any history you’d know that the best preventer of premature pregnancy is “having prospects.”
i think the reason for that is that the biological imperative is too strong to be resisted by nothing more than the pious platitudes of teachers who have nothing realistic to offer.
if you got nothing else to look forward to, sex and drugs at least gets you through the day.
but maybe you could get a job going around to inner city schools and giving chastity lectures to kids whose parents are not “middle class.”
Might be a good idea to teach birth control and present the facts on poverty as opposed to preaching chastity. Many won’t pay any attention but some might.