(00:00:00) I'm going to talk about a lot of the sort of broader questions about what we'd like our social welfare policy to do and how it can reinforce the things that we care about the value of the ideas things like self-sufficiency that that were just raised. I'll just start by making some obvious notes things that almost everyone here must know one in four of our children really are are in poverty right at this moment. That's really quite extraordinary but that significantly understates the extent to which families are at risk because it's now the case I think we can reliably say that one half or more of the children born in America today will spend some part of their life in a single-parent family and during that time there are very great risk for being poor over half of the children in single-parent families are poor and they're at very great risk of going on to the welfare system or whatever else what that means is our stereotypic image of a child in America growing up in a stable and prosperous two-parent home just isn't true anymore. It's really a minority situation the vast majority spend time either in a single parent home or or in a poor home or both in commonly growth. That's worrisome. And so the natural question is how does our society respond to that? And right now we have only really one response in any sort of serious way that's that involves income support and that's wealthy. So basically we've got one thing it's called welfare and everyone hates welfare. Okay, everyone hates welfare. I'm sometimes seen as a welfare Defender and I've just given it up. There's no point. People hate welfare for different reasons conservatives hate it because they think it's a waste The Verve and determination the people that already suffering a shortage they think it undermines work and family and they think that it creates dependency liberals hate it for rather different reasons, but they hate it nonetheless. They hate it because it's often humiliating its stigmatizing there is very little dignity. It's invasive. There's all kinds of rules and restrictions that seemingly are just designed to make people's life difficult. The benefits are almost uniformly low. It's virtually impossible. It is said to survive on the kind of money that welfare pays you and it really doesn't give you any sort of really serious long-term help. And the one thing that both sides agree on is that welfare doesn't in its current Incarnation do very much to help people achieve real Independence or to help them gain control of their lives. That's really quite troubling that are number one and really only major sort of source of income support for people at a time when there's a lot of risk of income is something that everyone hates and it's also troubling at this is a system that seems to oscillate wildly in the political winds blowing one way or the other this year the one year, we'll have more work rules and other your rule one expand eligibility. So the first question is, why do people hate it? And I think that it's actually quite easy to understand why welfare is so so much hated. It's not because people are unsympathetic or that it's mostly misunderstood. All those things are certainly true to some degree. I think it's because welfare tends to treat the symptoms and not the causes of poverty. Now, it may seem sort of silly to say the lack of money is not the cause of poverty at some level. Of course it is but really the reason people are pores that they don't have a job or they have dual responsibilities of nurturing and providing for children or their wages are too low our they're disabled or any one of a dozen other reasons and the problem with trying to tackle those diverse sets of problems. With just money in the form of income support and Welfare is that we inevitably bring some of our (00:03:58) most precious values in the conflict (00:04:01) and because of that conflict we create this kind of oscillating and (00:04:05) unhand satisfactory system, which is an urban awkward compromise. Naturally. We want to provide income support and security to people that are poor (00:04:14) at the same time. There's just no question that in so doing we do dampen work incentives both because there's less pressure to work but also because inevitably we have to take away money from you as your income Rises so that your gain for working is less for every dollar you earn we think a certain amount of weight and Welfare and as a result, there's less return and the evidence the academic evidence on this is quite an ambiguous. It does reduce work now not not necessarily a lot, but it does do it. The second thing is we naturally want to help single parent families there. So desperately poor there's so much worse off than than other groups. But at the same time we inevitably have a situation then where the system seems to be promoting the formation of such families. Now the academic evidence doesn't support suggest that this is a really huge problem. But the perception is very strong. If you look at the polls, it's astounding virtually all Americans believe the welfare system is Lara is it has had a major role in The Changing family structure the dramatic changes in family structure that we've seen and I'm particularly concerned about its impetus towards promoting the burst unmarried women. Finally, we naturally want to Target our limited resources. We want to take it and give it mostly to the very poor but in so doing we inevitably seem to isolate and stigmatize a group of people that who's and when our desire comes from our sense of community the more we isolate the more we stigmatize the more we make it look like it's them versus us the more we run into a situation where the political and other kinds of collisions evaporate. And also where people start perceiving that the society regards them as failures and they will May regard themselves that way now the essence of I think the conservative critique in recent years has been that these sorts of dilemmas have overwhelmed us and that is gotten to the point where welfare really does destroy work and family and isolate people. I'm not a great believer in that but I am a believer that welfare still does not fundamentally reinforce the things that we care about and that we all look for ways that treat the causes somewhat more directly if we can to look for non welfare. Turned is that really perhaps can reinforce the values and other things that we care so much about but that requires a much more difficult kind of thing. It means that we really have to try and understand causes in a more systematic and serious way and so what I'd like to do today is to talk about three groups among the poor and look and try and understand their the cause is why I'd like to First say is that I'm not going to talk about situations where people are disabled or elderly. I think the cause there is pretty obvious if you're disabled and you can't work in the problem is is that you can't work and there's an obvious thing to do and we do it we use Social Security and a variety of other income supports for those kinds of groups talking about families where the adults or adults are healthy and could conceivably be the hoped to provide some long-term support for the family. Now I'd like to do is talk about three groups. I'd like to talk about two parent families single parent families and if it's Our group that I call the ghetto poor just in terms of numbers. If you just break the poor children into two groups about half are in two-parent families and half are in single-parent families of the poor. Now the poverty rate is much higher among single parent families, but there's so many more two-parent families still that you still get half the poor children are in these two parent families and the ghetto poor of course is spread someone among East but the ghetto poor is I think a group that is very very difficult group. But also badly over played at times partly as a result of the current stereotype of a poor person, which is clearly a seems to be a ghetto minority most likely black often single parent variety of people have tried to look and see what G. Well how big what part of the poor population is this ghetto population? And almost all the estimates given number less than 10% of the poor indeed. If you take the hundred largest Central cities, which turns out to be a fairly sizable fraction of population and you look in the neighborhoods where poverty is 40% or more which is not particularly High frankly because the poverty rate among blacks overall is like 40 is like 30% So just finding neighborhoods where there are 40 percent and on among other minority groups. It's equally hard finding it. That's just 40 percent or more. It turns out that 7% of the poor are found in these high poverty neighborhoods in the relatively large cities a quarter of them are in New York City 15% are in Chicago. So what you see on the television and in the news paper and so forth about Chicago and New York and so forth is frightening and it's real and it's important. Another large fracture in Washington DC. But no matter what you think about those folks is shouldn't use that as your measure of deciding whether or not poverty policy is appropriate or inappropriate. That's a very very small and select group whose problems are very severe but it's something that I think needs to be treated as distinct because what we miss when we do that is we missed the poverty that's caused by low wages. We missed the poverty of people that are looking for work and can't find it. We missed the poverty when families split up and people are trying to get back on their feet. We miss an awful lot of poverty. That's much more understandable. That's much more approachable that we really can do something about and where there's very little danger that our social policies are somehow to blame or behind what's going on. All right, having said all that let me now turn to the to parent poor now again, remember I'm going to just exclude those those families that are disabled or elderly and it turns out about a quarter of the families where we have where the of the to parent poor families. Situations where someone is disabled or oh, okay looking at the rest though. The problem is actually pretty easy to understand it is the problem of the Working Poor to parent poverty is the problem of the Working Poor. Of the people that aren't disabled roughly half are in families or families where someone is already working full year full-time or the equivalent of that when you add together the work of both both the spouses. Okay. These are families where somebody's working all the time and they're still poor. Those aren't families that are dependent or somehow have lost their way in the value value free world or something. These are people that are working awfully hard, but they're just not making it and the rest report that they are unemployed most of them work part of the year, and they are unemployed part of the year. Now, is it really the case that that's what's going on with these folks? Is it really the problem of low wages and unemployment? Well, the evidence on this score is actually quite unambiguous. If you gave me two facts for any year between 1960 and 1980. I want to know the average wage rate in the United States. I want to know the unemployment rate. That's all I will tell you the poverty rate for children in two-parent families within half a percentage point in any single year. Okay, it runs perfectly. Okay, when kinds are good people with that are dependent on low wages and unemployment. Do better when times are bad. They do much worse. Another bit of evidence Massachusetts unemployment rate in Massachusetts right now is 3% You cannot walk through Boston without just being besieged with stores that having fun of them signs that say, you know, employment opportunities within inquire within I was recently in a suburban area and saw a sandwich shop that had a sign that said starting pay up to $6 an hour ask about our tuition tax credit plan. Our tuition credit plan $1 an hour day care allowance, really extraordinary. There is very, it's just anybody that wants a job right now in Massachusetts within reason presumably can get I had one employer tell me we hire anyone that's toilet trained. Well, what happened? Well the to parent poverty rate in Massachusetts is something on the order of 3 or 4% The national poverty rate is 12. We have virtually eliminated in a few years because by the way in 1975, Massachusetts was a disaster. We have virtually eliminated the poverty two-parent families, why because wages are going up and unemployment is going down. So really a strong economy. It would be ideal. It's just what the doctor ordered and indeed I guess if we elect Michael Dukakis president, the entire country will be like Massachusetts we here although we worry about well nevermind. But the problem is the whole country isn't like Massachusetts and it never will be there's always going to be a high unemployment and low unemployment and year to year. You can get fluctuation and during good time. And in those areas where it's not you are going to have people working people that aren't going to be poor. And so the question is what do we do for those folks? How do we help them in the interim? Well for the unemployed we have some programs we have unemployment compensation, but unfortunately for whatever reason the way the rules are written and so forth very few of the the poor two-parent families that are unemployed seem to qualify for much unemployment compensation. Then the other thing we have is a welfare program. It's called afdc, up' unemployed parent which means that these folks who would like to work or unemployed have the opportunity to go on welfare or get food stamps. It's not exactly what they had in mind. It's the one way so our big plan is to put those folks on welfare. But that's better than what we do for the full time working for a full-time Working Poor essentially qualify for next to nothing. The one the one program they qualify for because you see they're not unemployed. They're working will be food stamps not surprisingly not very many of them. Take us up on that that offer they get nothing in the way of medical protection by and large. They don't qualify for any of the federal sponsored medical programs because they're not unemployed and they're not single parents. They get very little real help indeed the full-time Working Poor after counting in all the government transfers are actually the poorest of the poor. They are poorer than single parents are poorer than unemployed the other poorest of the poor the full-time Working Poor that just seems to me that that's nuts if we're really talking about wanting situation where we were Ward and reinforce and encourage those kinds of activities and the worst thing of all is this Medical Care situation as far as I'm concerned? If you talk to families in the situation or reporters that have spent time over and over you hear people. It just deathly afraid of just getting ill what little savings they have would be wiped out almost instantly. Now, I'm not saying that people don't get treated. They do go to the hospital eventually they get treated and eventually we pay for it. In fact out of uncompensated Care Free care or County hospitals or whatever but they don't really feel it that way because they get better. They go bankrupt. They may be sign on to spend $20 $30 $50 a month to pay off a bill that they'll never repay their so their credit rating is gone. They're terribly afraid about where the next dollar is going to come from to take care of their themselves or their sixth sick child and we end up paying for it. Anyway again, a kind of strange situation when we have a relatively Medicaid Program for others that is still has lots of problems, but doesn't really solve the problem. Okay, that's the diagnosis. Can we do better? And I think the answer is yes, so cure for to apparently I just like to suggest that we ought to we ought to commit ourselves to a simple situation a situation where any family where one person is working full year full time or the equivalent of that with the two parents working with equivalent for your full-time ought to be able to at least achieve the poverty line in this country, which is not that hot it's only about 11 thousand dollars, but you see nowadays. That's not that's not true. The minimum a minimum wage job pays on the order of $7,500. The poverty line for a family of four is 11,000 indeed one-and-a-half minimum wage jobs doesn't even get you to the poverty line for a family of four. So we got to do something about it. And the question is what well I have the first thing you got to do is figure out a way. I don't think you want to put these people on welfare. That's not what they want. That's not smart. And in many ways it will impede their efforts to to help themselves. I think you got to find a way to make work pay and there are ways we can do that. I think one thing we can do is raise the minimum wage a little bit. We've let it fall with inflation since 1979 we can it was at a fairly stable level throughout the 70s and it's following the 80s not clear that that's done a whole lot of good for the groups that we thought it might and it is clear that it's hurt some of the port so that's number one. Number two again. We're trying to solve the symptoms and they solve the causes and to the extent that Lopez private guys. Another thing that academics love to talk about our wage subsidies here. We'll just have the government to give you an extra dollar an hour in effect. And that's a very appealing concept that can be easily targeted and so forth administratively its kind of nightmare. I'm not sure I like the idea, but I'm not convinced worry do it. We do have a very very simple mechanism for helping the Working Poor. We've done it already and we can expand it. We can see the Earned Income Tax Credit. Earn income taxpayer is a very very clever system. It's part of the tax system and for low-income workers for every dollar. They earn right now, they get a 15 cent tax credit 15 cents in effect. They're earning a dollar fifteen for every dollar. They earn now one could imagine expanding that maybe even doubling it so they earned a dollar Thirty for every dollar they earn think about that is opposed to welfare in welfare, the more you earn the less you get. So instead of getting a dollar you lose fifty cents and benefits the only earned 50 cents this way for every dollar you get a dollar Thirty. So we're encouraging work. We're transferring some income to those folks and the best part of all is it's even legal right now for you to take home more and pay than you earned per se because if your tax credits exceed what your tax liabilities are going to be you can have take home your paycheck instead of saying a deduction for taxes. It can actually be a positive a kind of negative income tax, but it isn't the old negative income tax at all. It's a reward for working. Well, I'm not trying to sell any particular plan or particular idea even though I happen to like that one. But the notion is if week are fundamentally about a system that reinforces our values that helps poor folks. One of the things we got to do is make work pay the final piece of that and it's an obvious one is this medical protection business. I am not going to talk about what the various possibilities are lots. There are lots of plans out there, but it just simply can't be the case that we say to our folks. Well, gee we're going to put you can work and that's great. We like it and we're going to put you at much greater risk in others who are not working because of our stinginess or whatever else. I can understand limiting certain kinds of benefits to certain kinds of people. It's very hard for me to understand the medical care one and so my view is that we got to find a way to solve that problem. That would do an enormous good that would solve pretty much the problem for half of the poor two-parent families. If we could find a way to make work pay and deal with medical protection. We still would have this other group that unemployed. And what I would do there is to think about some sort of temporary Transitional Assistance since most of these are situations where people are in temporary difficulty unemployment and so on they don't qualify for UI by and large, but we can imagine something similar. I'd like a transitional assistance one that's time-limited. Perhaps a year or two coupled with all kinds of eligibility for training a variety of other benefits and so on. So the people would have an opportunity to get some some real assistance, but because it's time limited it would not be perceived as and because it's really designed to be transitional. It shouldn't be perceived as a welfare system which typically is time unlimited and goes on forever. Then what do you do with people and be a very small group of people from everything? I can go that exhaust that Transitional Assistance. Well, then you got a tough choice. You can either create a long-term welfare system, which puts you sort of back in the same place or I think you can put in some sort of Last Resort jobs, and I'd really prefer that my view is that there would not be very many folks involved because most of this is rather transitional, but if they're do turn out to be lots of folks involved that ought to be a signal to us that we got to fix something or do something or worried about something the problem there. Is that the somehow or other we're not getting enough jobs if people are taking these kinds of jobs. Okay, so make work pay maybe do Transitional Assistance Last Resort jobs, but the kief as far as I'm concerned the most fundamental issue is to somehow find a way to help the Working Poor. Okay, that's that's the two parent For the Working Poor. Next let's go to single parents. They're a little (00:21:42) tough. (00:21:44) Now part of the diagnosis there is clearly the problem of the Working Poor as well women have lower wages traditionally than men the kinds of jobs that they can get are often worse particularly when they have other kinds of constraints at (00:21:58) home. But (00:22:01) and so the lack of jobs the problems of the Working Poor low pay medical protection are clearly a very important part of what's going on a single parents, but it's not the whole story and going back to Massachusetts. Once again is really quite revealing I said, Massachusetts, we practically wiped out to parent poverty. Some of you were here last year of our Innovative programs in the welfare department plus we have this incredible economy. Well, our welfare case load hasn't changed very much over the last few years. It's gone down maybe 10 or 15 percent. We still have a welfare problem in spite of an economy that most places would dream about an economy that could never be sustained at the national level. So jobs and good pay and unemployment and so forth are not the only story and of course, it's not good pay it's it's low pay but it's better than minimum wage in general. So what else is going on? Well, I think there's the second thing is really the most fundamental one and it's one that is in general and not been tackled and that is increasingly we seem to forget that single parents have a dual responsibility. They are providing they have a provider responsibility and they have a nurturing responsibility and that's something that all parents have to deal with all families have to deal with when our two parent family. Those responsibilities can be shared in various ways. It's often some often complain their shared not it not equally or fairly but they are nevertheless. There are two parents to participate in this nurturing and provided the problem for single parents is that they have to do both roles themselves. In fact There is almost no help provided by the absent parent on certainly on the provider side right now. According to the best statistics. We have only a third of all single parents receive any child support payments at all. And the average is around $2,000 for those that are lucky enough to receive it among poor women. It's only twenty percent among the never married women. It's virtually non-existent. Essentially, there is no other source of support but the own woman. And so what we leave women with is a choice. If they want to support themselves and be self-supporting they're going to have to work all the time. We've already seen that for two parent families even full-time work doesn't necessarily guarantee that you're going to be out of poverty and independent for single parents you certain they're going to have to work full year full time. And then hope that you're going to be able to get medical protection and so forth. That's Choice One work all the time or Choice. Do you be on welfare now? You can mix work and Welfare, you can work part-time be on welfare, but you're crazy to do it the welfare system makes your life miserable. It takes away a dollar for every dollar you earn so you got two choices work or be on welfare. Well, it turns out a fair number of people take Choice (00:24:48) One. (00:24:50) But a lot of people take choice, too. But you sort of say what Geo married mothers and wives are working isn't it reasonable to expect single parents to work? Well, it turns out that most married mothers who work work part your or part time only about a quarter to 30 percent of married mothers are working full year full-time. And of course they have a lot more advantages in terms of having other people to provide support someone else to help when the child gets sick someone to take the kid to the doctor whatever they have ways to balance that that single parents don't single parents have more responsibility and colleagues should be asked to do more but nevertheless when you find that only perhaps a quarter of married mothers are working full. If you get for your full time, is it really realistic to expect it? All of our single parents are going to do that? Maybe in 30 years or 40 years if you aren't friends continue, it might make sense. But right now it's crazy and it's not at all clear that for our children. We'd like a situation where we expect all single parents to be working all the time. So but the current set of choices doesn't allow any balancing working part-time and or something else. Yeah that only two (00:25:57) choices (00:25:59) so problem number two. Is this dual responsibility number one was this problem of the Working Poor and then you have the third problem, which is the welfare system itself. There is very little incentive to work when you're on a welfare system. As I said every dollar that you earn after 4 months they take away a dollar welfare. If you work too much, you may get it. You may get off the program lose your medical protection if your work while you're on welfare, it's really a major hassle because see the system is clever. It knows that when you're working. You're much more likely not to report your income quite accurately you're going to show up as a high error-prone case. Your fraud fraud is really a serious problem that fraud as much as Miss. Just somehow things don't get worse herbs. And so the system worries about you. It looks after you it wants to make sure that your you were taking your so you get extra attention if you're working. And furthermore the system until at least until very recently, but I think it's still mostly true has really done very little to really help people help themselves to really get into a position where they can do it and there's been very little pressure. It's a long-term system and indeed the welfare system has always been confused about what its role is is it to provide dignified let you know decent income support on sort of a long-term basis, or is it to provide temporary assistance to help people out and those two are rather different objectives You could argue that if you want just temporary assistance. You shouldn't make welfare too attractive on the other hand. If you want to do it with dignity. You should make it a very different kind of thing. And since it can't decide it tries to do both and it tries to do neither. Okay. What are we going to do? (00:27:37) well (00:27:39) currently welfare reform is a big hot topic. That's really I've been heavily involved in this sort of debate. And what is welfare reform typically meant what welfare reform means is we do a little bit more training and we have some more restrictions and rules on people. So we fix one part of part 3 the welfare system. Okay, put a little more pressure on people which I think is reasonable and we have a little more training which I think is desirable. Does it solve the fact that work doesn't pay very well. No, it doesn't does it solve the problem that people don't have medical protection. No, it doesn't does it deal with the Dual responsibility. No, it doesn't and does it really change the incentives in the welfare system not very much. And so these kinds of things which are a step. One we've tried them. We've tried them all over the country. In fact, they do make a difference. They make a small difference and they pay for themselves because they're not very expensive. But you get what you see in Massachusetts, which is really modest changes certainly desirable certainly helpful easy to over sell them. But the main point is you get a small start because you really haven't dealt with these more fundamental problem. How we're going to solve this I'd like to just as I suggested for two-parent family that the equivalent of a full year full-time worker ought to be able to make it. I think if we're really going to solve the problem of single parent families and remember the typical child born in America today is going to spend some time in a single-parent family and that parent is going to have to decide whether to work all the time or be on welfare. We're going to have to figure out a way to balance this nurturing and provide a little better and I'd like to think we could come up with a system whereby a woman might be able to work half or two-thirds time. And have some real Independence real control over her life and not have to go into a welfare system with all its stigma as well as all. It's unfortunate features. But how we're going to do that how we're going to get a situation where people realistically can do it. Well, I think you go back to the cause. Why is it that's so much harder for single parents and the answer is I think there isn't a second source of support the way there isn't a two-parent family and the obvious place to look it seems to me is child support now not all absent parents are working or it can provide support but surely more than 1/3 remembering the typical child in America is involved can do it how we're going to make that happen. We have a disastrous child support system. I'm not going to talk very much about it. But we're starting to make changes in there pretty good. We're trying to take a lesson More from the tax laws say, okay. Let's let's have a much more uniform system where people have to pay a certain percentage of their income when you're absent parents collected automatically like Social Security or some other form of taxes and then sent over to the to the custodial parent for for the money. Well, that's very helpful and that will make a big difference. It turns out Won't be everything because we do know there's quite a few folks. We're particularly early in life. The absent parent is really not working or doesn't have the wherewithal the work and or maybe in just as desperate situation as the other and what do we do there? Well, there have been some very innovative ideas coming out of this and I think one of the most interesting is just next door in Wisconsin. I think what you can do is say okay. This is a situation where the father not the mother the father is failing to provide the kind of minimum provision that we hope what about having something a little bit like unemployment insurance for child support so that we have a guaranteed minimum so that when the father is unemployed or not doing his part and I'm using father and absent parent as synonyms, they pretty closely are but it would certainly apply if the mother was he absent parent. Minimum benefit of say 1500 or 2000 dollars a child per year. So that's the amount of money that no matter what a single parent could count on it would be delivered as part of the regular child support system the same middle class system that collects money from fathers and gives it to mothers the system that many many states are already adopted but just like the social security system has a minimum benefit where people get at the low end get an unusually large amount you could do the same thing in child support and then a woman could count on MM maybe $4,000 a year no matter what that she then could supplement with her earnings and perhaps realistically get in a position where she doesn't have to be in the welfare system. She doesn't have to report earnings to anybody. She doesn't have to deal with the stigma. She's getting child support. She's part of a middle class system that the middle class will fight to protect the welfare. No Stigma no work distance and us and really be in a position where she can realistically do something on her own. The interesting thing about such plans is because to some degree they do offset afdc benefits and because absent fathers really can pay quite a lot more than they're doing if you really went after every father if you really did get a system in place. It actually would save money over the current system partly because you offset afdc benefits in largely because you can collect money from absent fathers really extraordinary. It's something for nothing more flexibility more opportunity no more cost or at least so the proponents claim so that would be a start. Now I think you have to worry about the absent fathers to and this is a natural vehicle for making us nervous about if it turns out we're paying a lot of minimum benefits, which I don't think we would but if we do say gee, you know, what's going on with these fathers. Let's work with the father's Let's Help The Father's let's do something about them. It will naturally focus our attention on this group that we ignore and we periodically have someone got up and say gee it's terrible that we don't worry about the father's but then we never do and we say the mother should be working more and it's a terrible problem. Okay, that's a good start. What else do we do? I think if we have that in place where it's realistic that a mother can work halftime and support her family balancing the nurturing and provide a rule. Then we can go to a system much more like the to parent system. I already described you got to put in these measures to make work pay again and got to deal with the medical care problem number one, but then I think it is realistic to do what everybody's claiming they want to do. Anyway, go to a much more Transitional Assistance Program one that maybe last two or three years giving people a chance to get on their feet with training with all kinds of assorted services, but that eventually does in so there the system is now clear. The goal is to ultimately get women in position where they can work halftime and be in control their lies outside the sort of welfare system and I would make the system actually come to an end eventually and really that's the way the workfare programs all are supposedly work. You got to work you that you got a wild to get your act together supposedly, and then there's some A mandatory work or something of that sort. And then finally, I'd follow with jobs. And remember all someone has to do is work part of the time. So you'd have three years a chance to make it you'd know. This was a special opportunity. We try and have lots of training and so on. The idea is this we want to put people in a position where they realistically can make it on their own where we reinforce and reward their efforts and yet we really can do a lot more. The alternative is a perpetuation of the current welfare system, which I really find quite disturbing in terms of the way it treats people and the way the society treats it. Okay, a few a few quick minutes on the ghetto pour in the quick Mansoor partly because you've heard more about them and partly because there are very very hard to figure out what to do about. I've already mentioned. It's a small group. I want to mention it again. It's a small group, but it's a very very worrisome group and it's a group of people that really do appear to be coming disenfranchised into society. And why is it what part of it is all the things we've talked about the working problems the Working Poor the Dual role the nature of the welfare system, but it's much more than that. They are victims of what I call the shuns isolation deprivation poor education job out-migration in a variety of things that I can't figure out how to get shuns out of like crime and decaying infrastructure and so on isolation because there's a fair amount of evidence. Now that middle-class blacks have moved out middle-class other minorities have moved out and what's left is a group of people that are highly isolated than limited contact less role models than before surrounded by people like themselves surrounded by deprivation. People grow up in a world where they see only people who are poor where work is unfortunately relatively uncommon they go to a school system that gives truly atrocious education. They see jobs leaving. There's a lot of crime, etc. Etc. Etc. Now I think what you ask yourself is what if you Raising your children in that world. Do you really think you could pull it off? I mean some of you could do something but it would be hard it would be extremely hard and what you would expect is. I think what you get things become very complex and is the world doesn't seem to make very much sense. The rules all seem turned upside down the wrong people seem to be getting ahead. And you get a group of people that would grow up without a real sense of future a real sense of hope a real sense of a chance to make it in the traditional world. Besides are they wouldn't be exposed to because the TV is very very helpful in terms of showing you what what things are like in Dallas but there would be no real sense of a chance to make it. Is there anything we can realistically do? Well, of course, we got to work on all these problems at the same time and that's awfully hard. But I think the plan we've already talked about would be a big help in the sense that people would have an opportunity where you could say gee if you work part-time you're willing to work full-time in a two-parent family. If you're willing to to be a part of things you can make a difference. Okay, you can make it you can at least get out of poverty. That's much more than we're offering now. Second of all, you do look at these you people's gravure examples of the small programs that have made a difference. My favorite example, even though I think it's not very I'm not sure what the lessons are is Eugene Lang in New York City who was asked to speak at a 6th grade graduation and in a very bad section York City and he was all set to say he's an industrialist and gone to the school. So he came in he was all said the speech saying work hard be like me you too can make it dare to be great. And he said this is going to go over like a lead balloon. He's probably right. So instead he said any of you who want to go to college. I'll pay your way. And then he hired someone have time to look after the kids and he spent money to watch after every single one of them to do what he could to provide training and services and so forth. All right, a terrific guy and in a school where the vast majority of kids typically drop out at certainly the majority near as I can tell every single one of the kids that are going to remain perhaps one is going to graduate or did graduate with the one that's uncertain is in prison, but he's getting his GED and he's getting a lot of attention and these kids according to the newspaper reports at least started to feel different. They started feel special their parents said to them. If you blow this one, I'll kill you and our kids start thinking they seem to little hottie okay, and they started hanging out together and they went to see Eugene Lang. You know, what's interesting is in New York City. You can basically go to school for free anyway and by God, if you're a if you're a highly motivated and done well in school and so forth, you can get you can get scholarships and so forth and indeed it didn't end up these that least the scholarship part didn't seems doesn't seem like it's going to cost Eugene Lang very much because most of them did get scholarships some to very very impressive (00:39:50) institutions (00:39:52) what Eugene Lang gave them was hope and attention. He made them important. He made them see that there was a chance a chance to make it now of course conservatives say this is proof that the private sector can do it and they're liberals say this is proof. We need free college tuition that can't be the message. But there is a message there somehow that we can make a difference that we as long as we give people Something to Believe In and the direction to go. Okay, let me serve recap. You're here talking about families at risk and thinking about the future. Well, I think you got to ask yourselves. What kind of future do we want? Do we want a future where the typical child born in America is a very high risk of spending some time on the welfare system. Do we want a situation where children in single-parent homes and families are Force as soon as in when they're in the midst of a very difficult problem either a split up or perhaps the birth of a child have essentially immediately to make this choice between working all the time. Remember the family is under enormous stress to begin with because they've just split up all of a sudden the mother gets the choice to grow all the times the children are even more stressed mediately work all the time are going welfare. That's the choice they face. Do we want a situation where the children or children grow up in a ghetto not believing that there is any reason for hope not believing that there is any real opportunity or chance? I think the answer is no at least for me. How do we do that? Well, I don't think we do it by little little welfare reforms here and there although the paper that was mentioned earlier. I says well for the answer of the problem, it's kind of a bad title because I said neither it's not the problem but it's also not the answer conservatives are wrong. I think when they say that welfare is the cause of all evil in the world, but I think Liberals are wrong and not looking for better alternative as well. I think we want to emphasize non. Well for Solutions things that reinforce and reward people who are taking control and want to take control and give people more control over their lives a situation with that a set of primes that integrate people rather than isolate them things that really can make a difference in people's lives and create the notion of a society. Is this out to help and reward as opposed to fill in for other failures. As opposed to a system like welfare where we're going to constantly debate. Well, is it the person's failure of the society's failure, and as a result will never decide and we're inevitably debating the goodness of man. This is not to say that this replaces the Myriad of local and small programs that deal with education to deal with all the other critical problems. This is to say we need something in place that is sort of a backstop are guaranteed that people really can make it. I don't think it would be very expensive to do it. I certainly think that that we ought to be able to do something about it in the long run then we do face this choice, and I think we shouldn't fool ourselves that the current round of welfare reform or minor adjustments is really going to solve these problems. Thank you very much. I guess questions now. Yes, the question was I started by saying that welfare treats the symptoms and not the causes and you want to know what the causes of absent fathers are well, there's there's a biological cause which presumably you understand. It's a very very complex problem. One of the I think that that it varies dramatically with the situation. So let's talk about absent fathers. Is that what you're talking about in general? I mean, there are probably people here that are far better experts that I am and I'm not going to pretend to give you an answer that I'm comfortable with but having said all that I'll probably put my foot in it. I think we got a situation where the nature of the child support system wire. They're absent fathers why I think why is there a divorce wiser separation? Why do children why do women have babies out of wedlock hard question? Probably one wear anything I say isn't going to change it, but why are farmers? There's less connected why do father's not do more and so on? Well, there are a variety of studies some suggest that some have suggested that the lack of interaction makes a difference dual custody apparently makes a difference and so on but I think the real story is in terms of Child Support is easy to understand. We have a system that the worst you just couldn't imagine designing if we collected taxes as way there'd be no taxes imagine a system where you had your mother-in-law in charge of collecting your taxes and she was told to then you went to court and the judge said well, let's consider now what sphere now you hate defense, so you probably shouldn't have to pay so much for the fence on the other hand. You've worked really hard and volunteer activities. So therefore you have more there. So let's assign you a hundred and seventy-five dollars. That's how many Talmadge taxes you pay. Then three years later the incomes have changed and so forth. So what do we do with bring you back to court and we have System and resourcing now. It's going to be four hundred and twelve dollars. So no that's unfair. Okay, well make it 350 then you don't pay and you don't and you don't pin your mother-in-law remembers in charge of collecting? Okay. Now some other in-laws really like you so they just sort of Let It Go by because they want to maintain, you know, good relationship other mother-in-law's really hate you and so they're going to use this to beat you up. Okay, so they pull you back into court but you just refuse to go and so then you know, as a arrest warrant issued and state like Massachusetts. We have one one police officer responsible for finding 10,000 people. And of course, they don't think this is crime in the say no, they got mutters on the street to deal with so we have that system and I think that's just crazy. So in terms of Child Support, I can tell a story pretty well in terms of why fathers aren't doing and doing more and and aren't more involved and so forth. I think that's sort of a sociological and social psychological question that I'm not very comfortable answering so I think I have waited your question. Yes to what extent is party really a function of the new job New Generation coming along with facing less advantages less opportunity and so forth and previous generations have well hard question two different kinds of answers one how much a poverty is a sort of intergenerational really long term underclass kind of thing. There have been a fair amount of study of that and turns out I think most people are surprised by how little we find the sort of one generation of power you prefer to wait another it is certainly the case that if you grew up in a very poor family the odds that you're going to be very poor yourself a much higher still the case. Most poor people did not come from really poor backgrounds. So that's one General issue as to the larger issue as to whether opportunity is changing. I think that's very real. I think when you look and see what's happening the economy the last 15 years has been the only period in our history where wages Haven't changed for for anything more than a few years earnings now full. Your full-time workers are about the same as they were in 1969. That's really extraordinary. Every previous generation could count on learning much more than their fathers. It is no longer the case Sons now earn less than their fathers did and that I think has psychological as well as other kinds of implications that are impossible to really measure you couple that with a changing housing market which makes housing prices more expensive than they were for the fathers and you get I think a really difficult and painful situation now again, I know the best solution for that and that is to run 1960s over again. Okay not real up for the Vietnam War but but, you know have a really strong and growing economy and there is hope okay. We're starting to see Tire labor markets. There are more Massachusetts. I mean the apples looks you know, there is hope I think so. I think that can make a difference but I think there's no question that's important part of the story, but And I think it was fairly busy accumulating evidence that changing part of the way families have responded to that is by sending two workers in the labor market that in turn sets off a whole other set of Dynamics increasing dependence and other things many have claimed and there's some evidence that in the black community that just the devastation of employment opportunity for black men employment maybe part of the reason that marriage has fallen so dramatically the major reason family structures have changed the black communities that marriages decline not because burst unmarried women as a fraction of the Merit of gone up. In fact, they've gone down the birth rate out of wedlock is really far below. The problem is nobody's mirrored. So even a smaller fraction of people having babies creates a much larger proportion of the overall that are born out of wedlock and others. Nobody's getting married in the ones that are getting married or having fewer many many fewer babies. So you end up with this situation that even though there's in a very real sense fewer babies being born out of wedlock as a Of all the babies they are really much greater. Yes child care costs are very difficult question, of course because they are so much there is so much money and frankly. This is an area where the amount of energy devoted to discussing. It is great. But how much we really know for example, we don't know no state is tried a few states have tried giving really strong and good solid childcare protection. Nobody knows how critical that is versus something else. My view is is got to be an important part is getting more importantly to your you just look at the number of people going to institutional care but conservatives will tell you is that G and as you probably know three times better than I very few people who work use institutional daycare. It's much more common these friends or relatives and so forth. Well that makes sense as long as your relatives aren't working but as more and more of the grandmothers and so forth are working that's less fat less of an option. So my view is that would Another kind of non welfare support that we should play with how much we need and how far we go. I don't know one of the problems with it is if you give it to everybody in other words all the way through the society. We know it costs a fortune now to me I'm perfectly happy to invest in that but I'm not convinced that that is more critical than some of the other changes which I'd like to use simultaneously but I do think that we ought to experiment with vastly improved and expanded childcare. I keep saying child support and child care. My apologies. I'm talking child carrier expand that and in fact you can if you play the game if you if you look at sort of expanding wage subsidies and there are some there is already of course a small tax credit for childcare. You could expand that somewhat you really can put together a package even with some sort of modest average day care costs people can escape it can get out of poverty, but I don't disagree in any way that that's a major issue and I was in a pro. I should have mentioned. I just didn't which is probably pretty typical for, you know, ivy league mail. Okay. The question was Minnesota has done a lot of relatively Progressive things and I won't repeat them all but they involve things like better system of Child Support. Hi ATC benefits and so forth, but everyone complains that what happens is that all the afdc recipients throughout the world are besieging Minnesota. And what's the opportunity? What's the chance? We're doing something. Nationally. Let me just give you two responses to that. First of all. People have studied quite extensively or tried to study the extent to which people seem to move for welfare. Not a lot of evidence. That's a big deal and he had to think about it what it means if you're going to move because of welfare benefits. The only reason to do that is really expect to be on welfare for a long long time because it's very expensive to move. Okay? It's not a trivial thing. You lose your friends, you lose whatever context and so forth. You have most people do not stay on welfare all that long. And if they do they don't have very much money and so it's hard to go. So in fact the evidence supporting that is really quite limited but no doubt. It happens in on some occasions. The second part of the question is more difficult. And that is what are the chances doing something significant the national level. Well, I think the odds are maybe 50/50 that will have a welfare reform Bill a lot of the kinds of things that have been introduced by Moynihan and so forth depending on which day you asked me I go from 3 percent to 65 percent, but it's it's of the form that I already talked about. Mostly training and a little bit of mandatory either work, but it's not really mandatory. It's quasi mandatory something like that. It's a good start and but it's not going to solve the problem. It certainly doesn't equalize benefits or anything else and I'm afraid for a long time. He action is going to be in the state's now I think with a change of administration either Republican or Democrat, there's some hope and again my view you'll find that both liberals and conservatives are converging to some degree on this view. You know, Liberals are more willing to say I'm obviously one that well for just isn't quite the right answer and we want to do something different and conservatives are sort of it's hard to go to a conservative and say listen, I want to plan that makes welfare temporary it has and expect people to work but also gives the Working Poor chance to be better off than the non working poor hard for them to say armed against that that's bad because it really does reinforce some of the values that we all cherish and that's the thing about welfare it. Influences into conflict over things because one person thinks Works more important. The other person thinks family is more important than one person thinks of two-parent families better than or whatever. So I think that there is some hope and in the new welfare reform legislation at least has shown some commonality of Interest how to get beyond that. I just don't know I think the action is going to still be in the states for a long time and frankly most of the interesting innovations that have occurred in the last five years of all been at the state level. I think you got to fight that battle as you see it. But again, I think that my guess is that the most controversial piece is always the FTC welfare benefits. That's what people are coming for. That's what they're here for and I think that's one where I think I think going to non welfare. Alternatives is a big help.