A headline about changing family structure wouldn’t be effective, however, for two reasons. One, it would make reporters’ eyes glaze over, and two, it does not lay the blame for increased poverty at the door of the current administration and its so-called “tax cuts for the rich.” A third reason is that the problem relates to irresponsible sexual behavior. Much of the poverty problem is related to the growth of single-parent families, a fact that is recognized further down in the Brookings report in the following statement. Three of the most effective ways to reduce poverty are to increase work levels, reverse the growth of single-parent families, and improve educational outcomes.

Note that even liberal social analysts must come to terms with the negative outcomes of dysfunctional sexual behavior. They try to formulate policy proposals to deal with the consequences of non-marital sex in terms compatible with their world view that sees social structures as the sources of problems and government programs as their solutions. So, they seek funding for yet another iteration of government programs rather than acknowledge the root moral-values issues, which, to be fair, are the purview of today’s religious leaders, many of whom have forsaken the true message of their calling.

We know, too, that ever-larger funding for education is not going to change the reality that children who grow up without a father present often turn a classroom into barely controlled chaos where learning is a very difficult proposition. But these realities have not yet penetrated the culture. The downward trend in the marriage rate among unmarried women age 15-44 continues. The marriage rate today is a little less than half of what it was in the mid-1960s. Also the unmarried birthrate of women 20 and older continues to rise year after year.

The charge has long been wielded that the rise in unwed birth rates was the consequence of poverty. Yet, with the advent of the abstinence movement, the rise of the unwed birthrate among American teens miraculously stopped climbing in the early 1990s after rising almost every year since WWII. The unwed teen birthrate has since declined by 25 percent. Funny, after listening to the left incessantly sing the song that youths could not control their raging hormones, yet another myth has been swept into the trash can.

Thus, changes in social values –– the decline in marriage and increase in divorce ––rather than the performance of the economy or the particular economic policies pursued by government account for the increase in the overall poverty rate. This is not to say that some government policies are not better than others. Certainly welfare reform has been a tremendous success, a success however that is waning as liberal bureaucrats have found loopholes that they are using to revert to their old ways. In the end, for the most part, personal choices regarding sexual behavior, not government policy, determine marriage and child bearing, something over which (in our free society) government has only limited influence.

Ordinary people know from their experience trying to deal with cumbersome government bureaucracy that government solutions are inherently inefficient; only dreamers and liberal policy analysts think otherwise. Even the Brookings report noted that the over $580 billion spent by the government on means-tested programs designed to assist the poor (four times that spent in 1968) has failed to address and has even made worse the main causes of poverty. Sometimes in the wake of events like Hurricane Katrina, the citizenry’s frustrations with mismanaged government programs, to say nothing of the deliberate fraud and abuse, make them wonder if the best that can be hoped for from legislatures is that they not levy taxes that discriminate against marriage. These are unpalatable realities for those hopeful researchers and policy advocates with their faith that heaven is possible on earth if we just get the right mix of government policies . . . and, of course, elect politicians of the “left” sort.

Sadly, it’s not politically correct to focus on moral values and responsible sexual behavior but as the public relations folks at Brookings recognize, there is always a good market for yet another press release full of hopeful promises about governmental programs.