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Reinforcing Work and Marriage for Working-Class America
Both The New York Times and Washington Post are running series about the economic troubles of the American middle class. Both so far are more about describing the problem than offering solutions. AEI’s Brad Wilcox recently outlined a few policy ideas to consider:
Published in GeneralOn the policy front, the federal government should reinforce work and marriage in at least four ways, all of which would strengthen the economic foundations of marriage and family life in working-class communities:
- It should subsidize wages (through the Earned Income Tax Credit or a new approach not connected to household size) to boost the returns to work for less-educated Americans;
- It should eliminate the marriage penalties embedded in many of our transfer programs;
- It should boost the child-tax credit to $3,000 per child and make it applicable to income and payroll taxes; and
- Along with state governments, it should increase funding for vocational and apprenticeship education—such as Career Academies—that raise adolescents and young adults’ odds of finding good-paying, middle-skilled jobs.
Given the cultural character of the problem, we cannot limit our thinking to government solutions. On the cultural front, civic, religious, and cultural leaders and opinion makers should seek to renew marriage and family life in working-class America in the following three ways:
- Launch a civic campaign—modeled on the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy’s successful effort to reduce teen pregnancy—to encourage working-class young adults to put marriage before parenthood, value fatherhood, and slow down their romantic lives, both for their sake and especially the sake of their children;
- Encourage secular and religious civic organizations—from soccer leagues to churches—to actively engage less-educated Americans, who are now much less likely to be involved in such groups than are college-educated Americans; and
- Forge a new model of masculinity that encompasses not just breadwinning but also fatherhood and civic engagement—e.g., coaching—in ways that are attractive to ordinary men, especially working-class men, and draw them into the lives of their families and communities.
Half of these are counter-productive “policies”, the other half are wishful thinking.
Sprinkled in with populist catch phrases like “working class” and “middle class” yadda yadda yadda.
“Work” and “marriage” aren’t a problem of the “middle class” or the “working class”.
They are a problem of the low-income non-working “families”.
Which means Welfare reform. All this other stuff is pointless.
I agree with AIG. When you find yourself in a hole the best policy is stop digging. If we quit paying the underclass to produce unwanted children as a cash crop a lot of our social problems would work themselves out. Anyone disorganized enough to require subsidy by the taxpayer via food stamps, “disability” payments, etc. should be considered too disorganized to bring more children into the world during their period of trouble, and should be required to use effective birth control. [Male contraceptives are reported to be on the horizon and should be required as well.]
While I would agree in principle, of course “requiring” birth control is not something that is ever going to happen.
The Left would freak out and call it “racism”! (of course), and the social conservatives would freak for obvious reasons.
A more practical solution would be to stop subsidizing them.
Yet all the “policy” prescriptions from “conservatives” seem to be focused on…subsidizing them even more!
Various segments of “conservatism” (of which we have plenty examples of here at Ricochet, from the “reform-cons” people like AEI contributors, to “virtu-cons”…although that moniker seems to have died out, thankfully) have picked up this “insight” that…kids are good and marriage is good.
This fits their world view, so no further examination is often needed. What they haven’t picked up on is that this is really about…causality. Does having more kids…cause…the economy to become more competitive? Does being married…cause…people to be more successful in life?
Or is it the other way around? Does being more successful, in fact, cause you to have a better and longer-lasting marriage?
Because if there’s no causation here, than it makes no sense. I could easily show you that better looking people tend to have better and longer-lasting marriages, and be more economically successful. Does that mean we should subsidize plastic surgeries to make people better looking?
This is where…actual scientific studies…are needed. Not theorizing in pop-culture books and articles. What does the data show? Where is the causality? That’s what matters.
I agree it’s not going to be in the short term, but once we hit the singularity – social security is bankrupt, a few blue states go under, etc. – we might be thinking new thoughts.
It’s not a lost cause. Bad policy should be changed. The cultural suggestions are great, and we should figure out ways to encourage the values articulated in them. It certainly won’t get better if we just sit around and gripe about it…condescendingly.
It certainly could get worst, however. Especially with ideas like increasing subsidies for poor people to have more kids.
Of course, all these “policies” are simply disguised subsidies to the “middle class”. They do nothing to change behavior for the “poor”, where this problem is really evident.
What’s earned income tax credits going to do for people who…don’t work? Vast majority of single-parent households aren’t…working households. They’re on Welfare.
Single households aren’t a feature of the “middle class”. They are a feature of: 1) non-working households and 2) black and hispanic households.
This isn’t sitting around “griping condescendingly”. It’s saying…look at where the problem is.
If you look at single-parent households, their incomes are about 3 times lower than others, even if only compared to other “poor” households. These people aren’t working. They’re on Welfare.
But they aren’t going to miraculously get married and lift themselves out of poverty simply because of some marginal tax incentives that mostly don’t even apply to them in their current state in life. Unless you’re prepared to dole out $20-30K a year in subsidies to do that.
But we’ve been down this road before with Bush. This is the same old “compassionate conservative” stuff which is squarely aimed at subsidizing the middle class, in exchange for votes.
This is so 2000s.
I can’t agree with this enough.
But to actually stop digging requires a political party capable of winning an argument that digging should cease and also willing to make that argument.
We do not have that now. Instead we have one party that seeks endless subsidies for dysfunction (because they get the votes of the dysfunctional) and another that refuses to make any changes (because the GOP donor class has been cashing in thanks to the status quo, and fears any change will derail their gravy train).
Newt Gingrich pushed through the welfare reform act of 1996 after multiple Clinton vetos, but the GOP of today let Barry Obama gut that act without comment.
So if you want meaningful reform, tough. We aren’t getting it with the present bunch in charge.
I agree. What is needed is Newt Gingirch style Welfare reform. Nothing short of that.
But it was the GOP which changed its stance when they controlled all the government, with their “compassionate conservatism” stuff which in essence was more subsidies in exchange for votes.
Both parties play the same game. The Dems subsidize the poor in exchange for votes. The GOP subsidizes the “middle class” in exchange for votes.
But this particular problem, is one of the “poor”, not the “middle class”
Nothing is going to be done, until disaster brings the whole rotten structure of American governance down in a bloody chaotic heap.
But I may as well give my opinion on these suggestions by this Brad Wilcox guy, because I’m here and I have time.
1) I oppose subsidizing wages by transfer payments, period.
2) Let’s just just eliminate the transfer programs, as long as were talking about things that aren’t going to happen anyway.
3) I can top that- let’s just stop pretending there’s a difference between money collected by the regime via income taxes and payroll taxes. It goes into the same pot. And sure, let’s raise the child tax credit- but why only to $3000?
4) Why hasn’t this already happened? We spend vast and bottomless sums on “education”- but not on education for jobs that actually exist? Do I have that right? Pitiful.
And I have a suggestion 5) Stop importing endless millions of unskilled foreigners. They drive down wages, and often collect far more in welfare benefits than they’ll ever pay in taxes.
But the political class has fought tooth and nail to prevent that, because that’s how they make their money. Lower wages for employees puts money into the pocket of the GOP donor class, and the votes of welfare recipients puts democrats in office.
So again nothing will be done until the present political class loses power, one way or another.
I’d agree, except I’m not seeing these GOP subsidies for the middle class.
If you could find a way to get females to go back to the no ring no sex idea you might make some progress. There are some things government only makes worse. Being a GOPER you would not understand this.
There is no reason why the causality can’t run both ways. What we do know is that work and marriage are correlated with better social outcomes and anti-correlated will social ills like crime poverty, etc.
The then becomes are there policies that encourage work and marriage and simultaneously encourage the successful behaviors that generally lead people to work and marriage?
In general, long term social welfare programs are very harmful to the social outcomes of the people that receive it. However, limited short term help can be a good social investment preventing people from falling into traps like going on long-term welfare programs.
Causality isn’t proved by saying that there’s no reason there isn’t one. One can think of very good reasons why there isn’t causality the other way.
Either way, it needs to be shown empirically.
You have to show that doing so leads to more “successful behavior”. If they are simply correlated, than the underlying mechanism is the same for both…so encouraging one doesn’t lead to other other, unless you encourage the underlying mechanism.
In Saudi Arabia most people are married, don’t get divorced, and have loads of kids. But that hasn’t created “successful behavior” in that society.
Causality needs to be shown here, because causality is what all this argument hinges on.
There’s lots of studies out there showing that married couples etc. have a premium in economic benefits over non-married individuals.
Yes, but that is not sufficient to say that encouraging marriage…LEADS…to economic premiums.
There’s self-selection going on here. The same qualities that make you an economically successful individual, also make you an attractive and more stable marriage partner.
Unless you encourage those qualities, you don’t get more economic success.
To make the arguments social-conservatives make, you actually have to show through a natural experiment, the causality. These things, of course, are extremely hard to do because there’s extremely few cases where you might have some exogenous change in institutions or laws or practices which allows you to see the effects.
None of those cases are probably in the US, but would have to be done in some other country where such changes actually have happened.
Either way the logic itself here is weak. We all know…that what makes someone good marriage material, and increases the likelihood of how long the marriage will last…is how successful they are in their career.
The first or second question we ask people is: what do you do?
That’s why we ask that question.