by F.R. Duplantier
A welfare reform plan proposed by the nation's governors "blithely ignores America's number- one social problem: the catastrophic rise of illegitimacy."
"Nearly a third of American children born last year were born out of wedlock," reports Robert Rector of the Heritage Foundation. "The illegitimate birthrate is now rising one percentage point every year. In the black community the out-of-wedlock birthrate is now 69 percent." At nearly 25 percent, the illegitimate birthrate among whites is hurtling along a similar trajectory. "The white family is now teetering on the same precipice,"says Rector, "heading rapidly toward the same lethal decomposition that devastated black communities in the late 1960s and 1970s."
Why is this trend so frightening? "Family collapse is the root cause of other social problems: poverty, crime, drug abuse, and school failure," explains Rector. "Children born out of wedlock are seven times more likely to be poor than are those born to couples who stay married. Girls raised in single-parent homes on welfare are five times more likely to give birth out of wedlock when compared to girls from intact non-welfare families. And a boy from a single-parent home in the inner city is twice as likely to engage in crime when compared to a similar boy who is poor, but living with a father and a mother."
Rector charges that the nation's governors are ignoring this problem. Their welfare reform plan, he says, calls for "more government-funded day-care, increasing child support payments from absent fathers, and imposing time limits and work requirements . . . on welfare recipients. The rise in illegitimacy and collapse of marriage do not merit even a token comment, let alone aggressive policies, from the governors."
Rector argues that most state governors are "reluctant even to mention the topic. But by refusing to acknowledge or mention the collapse of marriage and the rise of illegitimacy in their plan, the governors are implicitly condoning and . . . ultimately promoting the skyrocketing rise in illegitimacy. They are clearly embarked on a path that will lead, in the near future, to half of all children being born out of wedlock and raised in government day-care centers. This is not reform," says Rector. "It's a national disaster."
The plan does serve the interests of "America's huge welfare bureaucracy -- an industry that thrives on social decay," says Robert Rector. "While the plan will trim the growth rate of welfare spending slightly in the near term, by failing to deal with ballooning rates of illegitimacy it sets the stage for an explosive rise in unavoidable welfare and social-service spending in the future." The governors' plan does nothing, however, to prevent the death of marriage in America. "The governors have prepared not a rescue plan but a coffin," insists Rector. "The simple fact is that 'welfare reform' is nonsense as long as the illegitimate birthrate continues to rise. The silence of the governors is deafening."
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