Can Anyone Explain...

In her book "Marriage and Caste in America," Kay Hymowitz documents the growing gap between how different sectors of the United States approach marriage and child rearing. Only 4% of college educated mothers give birth outside of wedlock. In contrast, 16.5% of women without a college education and a staggering 67% of African-American women gave birth outside of wedlock. Interestingly, we also see a large difference between the patterns of divorce. Among college educated women (who married between 1990 - 1994) only 16.5% were divorced, whereas the divorce rate among non-college-educated women was 46%.

Kay Hymowitz does not approach marriage and child-reaching as moral issues; rather, she presents them as behaviors with powerful economic and social repercussions. In particular, she makes a very compelling argument that this rapidly growing "marriage gap" has greatly contributed to America's widening economic inequality. She argues that America is turning into a nation of "separate and unequal families" and that the “marriage gap” is the chief (but not only) source of the country's widening inequality.

She points out how the majority (92%) of children with families earning more than $75,000 a year live with married parents (including step-parents) and at the bottom quartile, only 20% of children live with both parents. She cites Mary Parke from the Center of Law and Social Policy who points out that children living with a single parent are five times as likely to be poor, twice as likely to drop out of high school as those who live with 2 biological parents.

Her clear thesis is that married families accrue greater wealth because of the economy of scale -two individuals combining their wealth, splitting their expenses and investing the surplus. Each spouse's income provides insurance for the other against an unexpected loss of health and / or income. In addition, marriage allows for a division of labor that allows both parents to invest greater amounts of time, energy and wealth in their children's' academic and social development. According to Hymowitz, this helps explain the greater occurrence of academic and social pathology among the children of single parents.

For Hymowitz marriage was both a causation and a major correlation of the propensity to build economic and social capital. Those who plan and invest in the future, those who are educationally and professionally oriented are far less likely to have children out of wedlock and far more likely to improve their economic situation. And those who are committed to providing their future children with the best possible economic and educational opportunities will rarely have children out of wedlock. Overtime this has contributed to the development of two distinct castes in America. Especially troubling is the fact that these castes have distinct ethnic overtones; single parenthood is far more prevalent in African-American and to a lesser extent Latino communities.

So, can anyone explain to me why the majority of "progressives" are so resistant to acknowledging that family structure is a major factor in poverty and inequality?

How can people who claim to be so concerned about the poor ignore a vital factor in poverty?

http://www.amazon.com/Marriage-Caste-America-Separate-Post-Marital/dp/1566637090/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1235363554&sr=8-1