We can anguish over inequality all we want. The fact is the disparity between haves and have-nots can be widened by expanding either end of the spectrum. When you do things that put you at a disadvantage or impede your opportunities, you will suffer.
Look at the numbers by racial and ethnic background. Then look at education statistics like graduation rates for the same groups and tell me whether or not individual behavior has anything to do with how far you go in life.
A few days after I wrote this, I came across this article on Forbes.com which puts an even more critical eye on the situation.
Taxpayers today are paying the poorest people in America a trillion dollars a year not to work. And so that is what they are doing in response. In 1960, nearly two-thirds of U.S. households in the lowest-income one-fifth of the population were headed by persons who worked. But after the War on Poverty began in 1965, by 1991 this work effort had declined by about 50 percent, with only one-third of household heads in the bottom 20 percent in income working at all, and only 11 percent working full-time, year-round. One central reason for the inequality between the top 20% and the bottom 20% is that according to the Census Bureau families in the top 20% work 16 times as much as families in the bottom 20%….
Bearing children outside of marriage is the second central cause of poverty, in addition to nonwork. The poverty rate for female-headed households with children is 44.5 percent, compared to 7.8 percent for married couples with children. The poverty rate for married black Americans is only 11.4 percent, whereas the rate for black female-headed households is 53.9 percent. As Rector explains in Obama to Spend $10.3 Trillion on Welfare, “If poor women who give birth outside of marriage were married to the fathers of their children, two-thirds would immediately be lifted out of poverty. Roughly 80 percent of all long-term poverty occurs in single-parent homes.”
Teen births
More teens are having babies in the South and Southwest while the fewest are in the Northeast, according to new state-by-state breakdowns of federal data out Wednesday.
Births per 1,000 teenagers (ages 15–19) range from a low of 13.8 in New Hampshire to a high of 47.5 in New Mexico, according to the report from the National Center for Health Statistics based on 2012 data, the most recent available for the states.
In addition to the wide state variations, the same can be said for racial and ethnic breakdowns. Asian or Pacific Islanders had the lowest 2012 rate at 9.7, compared with Hispanic teens who had the highest rate at 46.3. Rates for the other groups are 20.5 for white, 34.9 for American Indian or Alaska Native and 43.9 for black teens.
“Birth rates for Hispanic teens are higher than for other groups,” says demographer Stephanie Ventura, the report’s co-author. “Right now, even though they dropped a tremendous amount, they are still higher than other groups. At one time, rates for blacks were higher but now Hispanics are higher.”The report takes an historical perspective, showing just how much has changed in more than a half-century. The record high for birth rates was in 1957 with 96.3 births per 1,000 teens compared with 2013 preliminary data showing 26.6 births per 1,000 teens. Overall, teen childbearing across the USA has been on the decline except for a few periodic increases.
Teen moms today are typically not married, while their counterparts of the 1950s were largely married women.
“It was a time period when people were getting married, especially young women in their late teens or early 20s. They were moving toward that domestic role at an early age,” says sociologist Kathleen Bogle of La Salle University in Philadelphia. “Now it’s seen as a taboo to get married too young or have kids too young. Having that first child at 17 or 18 is seen as something that’s kind of ruining your life.”
In 2013, 89% of births were to unmarried teens, up from 48% in 1980, 15% in 1960 and 14% in 1940.
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