kausfiles A mostly political Weblog.
By Mickey Kaus - SLATE
More Big Good News: The left has complained for years when welfare-reform enthusiasts measure success by the sharp (more than 50%) reduction in caseloads since the mid-1990s. I agree--lower caseloads are good but they're not everything. Yet the left's proposed measure of success, income and poverty, is equally flawed. If all the 1996 welfare reform did was take non-working single mothers on welfare and turn them into working single-mothers with exactly the same incomes, it would be a huge success. Voters, who supported reform by huge majorities, thought welfare recipients should work and that good social consequences would follow if work replaced welfare.
That's the real test of success--whether life is actually getting better in America's "underclass" ghettos. Now there is powerful statistical evidence that this is in fact happening. Concentrated poverty (a bad thing, and one of the defining characteristics of the "underclass" as described by sociologist William Julius Wilson) has dropped dramatically in the U.S.--by almost a quarter--after doubling from 1970 to 1990. Robert Pear, citing researcher Paul Jargowsky, reports:
"Concentrated poverty, the share of the poor living in high-poverty neighborhoods, declined among all racial and ethnic groups, especially African-Americans," Mr. Jargowsky said.
In 1990, 30 percent of poor blacks lived in high-poverty neighborhoods. Ten years later, the proportion was 19 percent.
Pear rightly credits welfare reform, in part, with this success. The reasons seem obvious: welfare reform produced a dramatic jump in the participation of single mothers in the labor force. When you work, you not only get richer--you also tend to get out of your neighborhood and discover the rest of your city. Working also breaks down stereotypes of lower income, single mothers--especially African-American single mothers-that may underlie resistance in non-poor areas to having such people as neighbors. Not to mention the gauzier benefits of working, like "role-modeling" and the effect of the disciplined rhythm of work on home life and school performance. ... More: Here's the Minneapolis Star-Tribune report on "a development that normally sober social scientists are calling 'astonishing,' even 'stunning" .... Here's the Brookings Institution event (which starts in a few hours) that will discuss Jargowsky's findings. ... Bonus Raines angle: Hey, didn't Howell Raines' NYT editorial page adamantly oppose the successful 1996 welfare reform? It did! Raines' page called the reform "atrocious," denounced President Clinton for signing it, and predicted "the effect on some cities will be devastating"! ... Raines experts say the NYT executive editor's self-righteous, egomaniacal G.S.W.B. moralism made him as un-blindered in evaluating welfare policy as he was in evaluating Jayson Blair! ... 1:59 A.M.
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