Out-Of-Wedlock Births Approach 40 Percent

Ken Blackwell alerted me to the latest updates on out-of-wedlock births. The upshot is that the figure approaches 40 percent. And that is a serious problem.

Emile Yoffe of Slate points out that, from 1960 to today, the percent of births to unwed mothers has risen from 5 to 40.

Of course, the mere numbers do not tell the whole story. Some responsible older women choose to have children by themselves. I know several Colorado couples who are "common law" married but who may not show up in the marriage statistics. Some couples, while not technically married, are fully committed to their relationship. (While Yoffe notes that many unmarried couples with children split up, the fact remains that many married couples do the same thing, though at a somewhat lower rate.)

Gay couples typically are legally forbidden from getting married, though they may raise a child in a deeply committed romantic relationship. While many women used to suffer in horrible "shotgun" marriages with abusive spouses, today they are more likely to go it alone -- and they're better off for it. More women (as CNN points out) have a child before getting married, rather than rush a marriage due to pregnancy.

Nevertheless, the dramatic rise in out-of-wedlock births points to deep cultural problems, even if not all out-of-wedlock births are a cause for alarm.

Out-of-wedlock births are largely a phenomenon of lower-class America, where decades of welfare have encouraged promiscuity and dependence on federal handouts. Yoffe points out, "Only 4 percent of college graduates have children out of wedlock."

The National Vital Statistics Report for Births: Final Data for 2006 (January 7, 2009) offers the updates. Here's the relevant passage:

The birth rate for unmarried women increased 7 percent between 2005 and 2006, reaching 50.6 births per 1,000 unmarried women aged 15–44 years. The rate has jumped 16 percent since 2002, the most recent low. The number of nonmarital births in 2006, 1,641,946, was almost 8 percent higher than in 2005 and 20 percent more than in 2002. The proportion of all births to unmarried women reached 38.5 percent of all U.S. births in 2006, up from 36.9 percent in 2005. All of these measures were at record levels for the United States in 2006.

Turn to Table 18 of the report (page 54) for some truly frightening numbers. The "percent of births to unmarried women" for "all ages" breaks down as follows:

All Races: 38.5
White: 33.3
Black: 70.2
Hispanic: 49.9

The welfare state and the social pathologies it engenders are devastating much of black America. And any political leader who refuses to look squarely at the problem is a traitor to the black community.

Obama on Faith-Based Welfare

Recently I discussed Barack Obama's comments about abortion in Christianity Today. Now I want to turn to Obama's comments about faith in general and about the tax funding of religious groups. The article is from Christianity Today, and the interview, "Q&A: Barack Obama," conducted by Sarah Pulliam and Ted Olsen, was published on January 23.

Obama makes clear that he is deeply religious:

I am a Christian, and I am a devout Christian. I believe in the redemptive death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. I believe that that faith gives me a path to be cleansed of sin and have eternal life. But most importantly, I believe in the example that Jesus set by feeding the hungry and healing the sick and always prioritizing the least of these over the powerful. ... Accepting Jesus Christ in my life has been a powerful guide for my conduct and my values and my ideals.

Subscription to the Christian faith is common among U.S. presidents. The problem arises when a Christian politician attempts to impose Christian theology by force of law. Clearly, Obama is restrained by his own party and political beliefs from traveling too far down the path toward faith-based politics. However, he also clearly tries to support the standard Democratic agenda with Christian beliefs.

In the following comment, Obama does not make clear whether he wants to use tax dollars for the programs in question:

I think it is important for us to encourage churches and congregations all across the country to involve themselves in rebuilding communities. One of the things I have consistently argued is that we can structure faith-based programs that prove to be successful -- like substance abuse or prison ministries -- without violating church and state. We should make sure they are rebuilding the lives of people even if they're not members of a particular congregation. That's the kind of involvement that I think many churches are pursuing, including my own.

However, Obama does say that he sees no inherent problem with spending tax dollars on religious groups. Christianity Today asked, "So would you keep the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives open or restructure it?" Obama answers:

You know, what I'd like to do is I'd like to see how it's been operating. One of the things that I think churches have to be mindful of is that if the federal government starts paying the piper, then they get to call the tune. It can, over the long term, be an encroachment on religious freedom. So, I want to see how moneys have been allocated through that office before I make a firm commitment in terms of sustaining practices that may not have worked as well as they should have.

Obama is rightly concerned about political interference in religion, but he does not believe that spending tax dollars on religious groups will necessarily create that problem.

However, Obama completely ignores the other side of the problem: what about the rights of people who do not wish to fund religious organizations? Religious freedom entails the right not to support religious groups against one's choice.

The example of prison ministry has broader implications. I have no problem with Christian ministry in prisons -- so long as it is voluntary for prisoners, prisoners have equal access to secular alternatives, and no tax dollars are involved. Obama talks about Christians "rebuilding the lives of people even if they're not members of a particular congregation." Is this Obama's attitude also with faith-based welfare? But what about people who are not members of any religious congregation? An explicitly religious group that spends tax dollars necessarily promotes a religious message, however subtly. And the religious group itself benefits from the tax dollars. Again, people have the right not to support such things.

What Welfare Encourages

In Atlas Shrugged, Dagny Taggart hears the story of a man who lived through a localized scheme of pure collectivism, in which the doctrine, "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need," was the rule. The man tells her:

It didn't take us long to see how it all worked out. Any man who tried to play straight, had to refuse himself everything. He lost his taste for any pleasure... He felt ashamed of every mouthful of food he swallowed, wondering whose weary nights of overtime had paid for it, knowing that his food was not his by right, miserably wishing to be cheated rather than to cheat... [H]e couldn't marry or bring children into the world, when he could plan nothing, promise nothing, count on nothing. But the shiftless and the irresponsible had a field day of it. They bred babies... they got more sickness than any doctor could disprove, they ruined their clothing, their furniture, their homes -- what the hell, "the family" was paying for it! They found more ways of getting in "need" than the rest of us could ever imagine -- they developed a special skill for it, which was the only ability they showed. (pages 619-20)

Or, in economic terms, "You get more of what you subsidize."

We do not live under pure collectivism; we live under a welfare state, in which a minority of our income is forcibly redistributed to others. But, to the extent that we live under the same principle, do we see the same effects? As I've suggested, we do indeed.

7News Features Food-Stamp Debate

FreeColorado.com Update -- I just posted a new article, "7News Features Food-Stamp Debate, at FreeColorado.com. Here are some quotes:

"Denver's 7News featured a substantive if brief debate over food stamps in a story that aired October 14. My wife and I took the position that food-stamp subsidies should not be increased and that voluntary charity is a better alternative to food stamps. The station also interviewed a woman who takes food stamps and who argues that the payments are not enough. ...

"The main reason that my wife and I have put off consideration of children (and denied my mother the possibility of additional grandchildren) is that we cannot afford them. And the main reason that we cannot afford them is that we are forced to pay considerably over $10,000 per year in federal taxes, most of which goes to subsidize other people. So, while we're sitting with a negative net worth, slowly and painfully paying our way out of debt, pinching pennies for our own food budget, we are forced to pay for other people's children, while we are prevented from responsibly having children of our own."