I should probably just shutter the blog and redirect it to Ta-Nehisi Coates, but he keeps coming up with neat stuff. This on black illegitimacy. The stunning statistic that 70% of black babies are born out of wedlock is driven, to be sure, by the fact that many poor black women have a lot of children. But it turns out it is also driven by the fact that married black women have fewer children than married white women.
Ta-Nehisi suggests a reason for this that makes sense to me:
I'm effectively--if not legally--married. Been with the mother of my eight year old son for ten years now. More on this later. (I promise!) But basically when he was born I felt that he was the bond between us. In other words, he literally was the marriage ring. We'd both love to have more kids, but we simply can't afford it. Furthermore, we don't have particularly wealthy parents to fall back on. I think that's the situation a lot of married black folks find themselves in. They simply feel that they can't have more kids.
It's well known that the black middle class has a lot less in the way of assets than whites of similar income levels--hardly surprising, given the legacy of generations of discrimination and poverty. But that also means that things that a lot of white middle class people take for granted--like help with a down-payment on a house when you have your first kid--are less available. Middle class black parents have less in the way of a parental safety net than their white equivalents, so they're less likely to have a second kid.
So even though the statistic is basically correct--as Ta-Nehisi says, "Even if married black parents had kids at the rate that white married parents did (or better yet, Hispanic parents), black babies would still make up a disproportionate share of kids borne out of wedlock"--it's still worth interrogating, because the picture is considerably more complex than is generally implied.
Does Ta-Nehisi's analysis hold true for married white couples? In other words, do married white couples from modest backgrounds - no parental $$ for the down payment - have fewer children than those from more affluent backgrounds? My guess is that quite the opposite is true, but perhaps the statistics don't support my belief.
Another problem is the definition of "out of wedlock," which generally is defined to mean that the mother is legally married and not divorced or widowed, not that she lives with her husband. I noticed back in the '70's while working in the welfare system in Philadelphia that many poor urban whites and Hispanics belong to ethnic and religious groups (primarily Roman Catholics) that strongly encourage marriage.
Many women in these groups marry young and when their marriage breaks up do not divorce (their religion discourages it and divorce costs money). When they subsequently bear children as technically married but practically single mothers their children are counted as born "in wedlick" while a never married woman's child is counted as "out of wedlock" even if she lives with the father. Thus the distinction is often meaningless. Being born "in wedlock" does not mean being born to parents who live together.
Geesh, I could talk about the "I'm effectively -- if not legally -- married" bit of grossly fudged logic or summon the specter of marriage rates for Korean-Americans whose immigrant parents don't have big money, but, hey, why be a downer?
Let me instead . . .
1). Welcome Tah-Nehisi to your team of Blogger Super Friends!
2). Further salute Megan! What Babe Ruth was to baseball and Tiger Woods is to golf she is to newtworking! (My God, can this gal network!). I stand in awe!
I have been very happy you introduced me to Ta-Nehisi, I would never have found him otherwise.
As for the stats, I wonder if the correlation has more to do with the delta between parent - child SES. By that I mean, middle class couples with lower class (I hate that term but I don't know a better one off hand, maybe poor) parents, who see themselves moving up have less children. As well, LC couples with LC parents, who don't see a change in SES have more children.
I haven't fully thought that out, but it would explain some of the perpetual generations of expanding LC families, at least those related to me.
"Networking" that should be.
Though, yeah, "newtworking" may represent a nice bit of Joycean wordplay from a failed spellcheck.
"like help with a down-payment on a house when you have your first kid"
Er... which middle class are you talking about, that expects this? I don't think I know anybody who got help from their parents on a home purchase, let alone expected that help. Upper middle, maybe.
It is true that a very high proportion of black out-of-wedlock births are actually births to cohabiting parents. However the downside to this is that (Mr. Coates' example notwithstanding) cohabitation tends to be much more unstable than marriage.
There is currently a major longitudinal study of out-of-wedlock births. You can read about the study and find links to papers based on it here:
http://www.fragilefamilies.princeton.edu/
I'd like to see either you or Ta-nehisi blog about the extent to which the wedding industry's contribution to the decline of marriage. Increasingly I've noticed that the more highly-educated you are, the more likely you are to have a cheap wedding (typically disguised as being "eco-friendly" instead of cheap) while the poor still think you should strive for the over-priced, over-produced "fairy tale" wedding with the $5,000 Cinderella dress and a flotilla of bridesmaids in hideous expensive dresses.
This post makes no sense to me:
1. While Mr. Coates may feel married, he isn't, so wouldn't his kid get lumped in as one of the 70% of black children who are illegitimate? In other words, how can Mr. Coates speak for middle-class black marrieds when he isn't one?
2. If poor black women can afford to have lots of kids, then why can't middle class black women afford to have as many or more?
If people in the 1850s or 1950s - times when the standard of living was far lower than it is today - could afford to have lots and lots of kids, people in 2008 can too. Most of us don't want to give our kids a 1950s lifestyle - two changes of clothes, a weekly bath, etc. - and so we tell ourselves that we can't afford more kids. But we could if we wanted them enough.
> I should probably just shutter the blog and
> redirect it to Ta-Nehisi Coates....
......
>> I'm effectively--if not legally--married.
Too bad, for a moment I thought I could hear wedding bells!
Coates, Drezner....really seems all the good ones are taken...
Coates writes, "it's worth remembering that black people have only been full citizens for forty years or so." Okay, then why was the black illegitimacy rate so much lower back before they were full fledged citizens?
Remember this (fantastic) post of yours which touched on the subject? A really, really, really long post about gay marriage that does not, in the end, support one side or the other
Why were you able to say these things then? Why are you unable to say them now?
It sounds like you have a new set of cool friends whom you want to propitiate.
Does economics play a role in child-rearing? Marginally, I'd bet. The highest TFR in the country is not with the wealthy, it's with the religious. A religious POV is that children are a gift from God. Rich people have fewer children because a) they are less religious than poor people or b) they value children less than poor people or c) poor people are too stupid to stop having children.
Money is not the primary driver on this.
And count me as another white, middle-class guy who got jack, financially, from his parents, and has the student loans and mortgage to show for it. If black people think that all whites have this reservoir of genealogical money to draw from, their jealousy is based on a myth.
Though Who's the Boss gave one the impression that CT has common law marriages, it does not:
http://www.infoline.org/InformationLibrary/Documents/CommonLawMarriageConnecticut.asp
And neither does NY, which I gather is his home state:
http://www.nydivorceonline.com/nypages/Alimony/commonlawmarriage.asp
So no, he is not really married. Though if he lived in certain states, like Texas, after 8 or 10 years of cohabitation he would actually be married; like it or not.
As most of the commentators indicate, this is pretty half-assed. I'm afraid actual statistical analysis (e.g., determining the effect of the older generation's income or assets on the childbearing generation's propensity to marry and/or have children) will show that there is no merit to Mr. Coates's theory. And of course longitudinal data certainly doesn't support his theory that black illegitimacy is a problem that will go away with time.
I'm willing to bet that Ms. McArdle doesn't have a white acquaintance with a college degree and an illegitimate child. If writing about black illegitimacy makes you uncomfortable, don't write about it, but nothing is gained by dancing around uncomfortable facts with made-up sociological explanations.
Thanks for linking this Meg. Just want to make a couple of quick clarifications:
1.) The point about wealth doesn't mean that all white middle class couples have parents who are waiting in the wings to help them out financially. It simply means that--on average--a black family, starting out, will have access to less wealth than their parents. I'm not sure what's really controversial about that claim. There certainly is plenty of documentation on the wealth gap.
http://pewhispanic.org/newsroom/releases/release.php?ReleaseID=15
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/304/
I think when people see the argument they think I'm impugning their efforts. I'm certainly not--raising kids is hard whether your parents can afford to help you or not. But it seems a matter of fact, to me, that if you're black your parents are likely to have access to less wealth in order to help you. Again, I'm not sure why that's controversial
2.) We can certainly debate whether the wealth-gap is the real reason married black parents have less children. I submitted one theory, and it's one that's mirrored in the NY Time piece I linked. It doesn't mean it's correct, or even the best theory. It's anecdotal, and thus is subject to all the problems of that methodology. I'd love to hear some other reasons for why black married couples have less kids than white married couples.
3.) It's true that I'm not married. So you can toss me out the mix. I'd only add that my own experience is pretty much mirrored by all the black married couples I know. Of my siblings, five out of seven of us have kids. Four of us are married. I'd say we all came up working to lower middle class--we all had a mom and Dad. Some of us did a stints in public housing. But none of us worried about food or clothing. All of us are, now. safely middle class, with me being the only college dropout. (I know I'm a total screw-up. Won't get married. Won't finish college. I'm only a step removed from bum status.) Despite having a father who had seven kids, only one of us has more than two children. That one is about to get divorced. Take that for whatever it's worth.
y81, that's a bet you'd lose. I know several never-married mothers with college degrees and varying degrees of attachment to the fathers of their children.
The links that Ta-Nehisi just pasted describe the wealth gap between average white households and average black ones. But we're talking about middle-class households, not average ones, and nobody has provided any data limited to middle-class household wealth. I suspect that upper-class households skew the white average upward.
Even if white middle-class households have more wealth than black middle-class households, that does not prove - does not even come close to proving - that white middle-class grandparents give wealth to their kids and grandkids. For all we know, white middle-class grandparents are less likely to help out their kids and grandkids than are black middle-class grandparents. That would help explain the wealth gap in middle-class households, if there is one.
My own guess is that, as Skullberg suggests above, expectations and aspirations have a lot to do with how many kids one has. Single black women who are poor and expect to remain poor may not mind having additional kids even if doing so ensures that they will remain in poverty - they expect to remain there anyway. But married blacks - who are more likely to be middle-class - may well feel unsure of their middle-class status and decide not to risk it by assuming the costs of childcare. Middle-class whites, on the contrary, likely feel more secure in their middle-class status and are willing to assume those costs.
But again, anyone in 2008 America who claims he can't afford kids is lying to himself. The truth is that he can afford kids - but doesn't want to pay for them.
Curses, y81 is warned already before I could discuss the financial details on the bet.
How many acquaintances did you think the Empress of Networking had? Three?
Since the college-educated unwed mother wager is pretty much blown out of the water, how about a member of the SCA? A female computer game player? A black male vegan? You choose, y81....
"The links that Ta-Nehisi just pasted describe the wealth gap between average white households and average black ones. But we're talking about middle-class households, not average ones, and nobody has provided any data limited to middle-class household wealth. I suspect that upper-class households skew the white average upward."
Fair enough.
Try this:
"For every $1 of white wealth, blacks have 10 cents of wealth. Middle-class black households have just 25 cents of wealth compared to $1 for whites, Shapiro said."
The source is Thomas Shapiro, a professor at Brandeis and author of The Hidden Costs of Being African American: How Wealth Perpetuates Inequality.
Here is the link:
http://www.blackamericaweb.com/site.aspx/bawnews/wealth1108
Or try this:
"This "equity inequity," which has grown in the decades since the civil rights triumphs of the sixties, cannot be explained by income differences alone. That is, while African-Americans do earn less than whites, asset gaps remain large even when we compare black and white families at the same income levels. For instance, at the lower end of the economic spectrum (incomes less than $15,000 per year), the median African-American family has a net worth of zero, while the equivalent white family's net worth is $10,000. Likewise, among the often-heralded new black middle class, the typical white family earning $40,000 per year enjoys a nest egg of around $80,000; its African-American counterpart has less than half that amount. Among the wealthiest Americans, the story is much the same: Oprah Winfrey and Robert L. Johnson (founder of Black Entertainment Television) are the only African-Americans on the Forbes annual list of the 400 richest people in the United States, and they are both on the lower end of the list."
That's taken from a piece by Dalton Conley. Here is the link:
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20010326/conley
Conley, for what it's worth, is a professor at NYU and has written pretty extensively on the wealth gap. I guess one could argue that parents generally don't tend to help out their kids with first homes or the costs of children. But I don't think one could argue whether or not the black middle class and white middle class have the same amount of wealth.
Also not to overdo it, but also check out this report on the wealth gap from the Pew Hispanic Center. Among it's conclusions:
"The relative position of Hispanic and Black households does improve at the higher rungs of the
wealth distribution. The wealthiest five percent of Hispanics households—those in the 95th to 100th
Percentiles—have 45 percent of the level of wealth accumulated by comparable White households.
However, even the wealthiest Black households have less than 30 percent of the level of wealth possessed by the richest five percent of White households. Thus, there is great disparity in the net worth of minority and White households at all points of the wealth distribution. Even the “middle-class” Hispanic and Black households possess less than one-fifth of the wealth owned by White households."
Here's the link:
http://pewhispanic.org/files/reports/34.pdf
Half this argument is caused by the incredibly annoying upper-class social tic of calling themselves "middle class." You guys really shouldn't do that in mixed company.
If your parents still buy you things after you've left their house, you're not in the "middle" of anything. The middle is broke. You're rich. Good for you. Stop lying about it.
So Black middle-class households have fewer children because they can't afford them, unlike poor Black households... that have plenty of money to spend on kids?
If low income/assets is a significant driver for low birthrates in the Black community, wouldn't we expect that effect to manifest most strongly amongst the most disadvantaged group of Black Americans?
Larson, if you're poor enough to qualify for welfare, children are a source of income.
Won't get married.
Er, why? You've been with the mother of your eight-year-old child for ten years. Are you one of those "it's just a piece of paper" types? Or are you afraid marriage is just too formal, too confining...too white?
Poor, stupid people (of any race) have more kids than rich, smart people because they can. They know that others will provide for them, somehow. Middle- and upper-class people usually think before they, um, act.
I guess Ms. McArdle has more downwardly mobile friends than I. Whatever. That doesn't alter the fact that race retains significant explanatory power in explaining any number of behaviors, including illegitimate parenthood, and the statistical effect cannot be made to disappear by controlling for education, income or anything else that I know of. (I admit, however, that I have never seen a study that controlled for grandparental wealth. An actual study would of course be more reliable than either the "talking to an actual black person that I know" method or the "pontificating knowledgeably because I am black" method.)
Allow me to help hijack the thread and chide Ta-Nehisi for not getting married.
If you are indeed with your girlfriend for life, then you have nothing to fear from getting married. However, you do have the potential of problems arising from not being married. For example I give you Ron Crickenberger.
Ron was the executive director, IIRC, of the Libertarian Party. Because of his very anti-state beliefs he and his girlfriend decided that they didn't want the state involved in their relationship and decided to never marry.
Then Ron was struck down with some dread disease that I can't remember and the LP, being sad and poor, basically shut down their office. Though his girlfriend had insurance through her employer, he couldn't use it, since they aren't married, and even if they did marry, he couldn't join because of his pre-existing condition. So the call went out among the Libertarians to donate to help him out, but the dude died anyway at age 48.
So Ta-Nehisi, just get married. Go get the license, have a small ceremony, and be a husband, as well as a father. If you like your spouse, it's actually pretty nice to be married.
For instance, at the lower end of the economic spectrum (incomes less than $15,000 per year), the median African-American family has a net worth of zero, while the equivalent white family's net worth is $10,000.
How is this possible? Families making $15,000 a year have saved/invested 2/3 of their yearly income? I'm not saying there is not a difference in wealth rates; I just don't see how this shakes out.
Also, I think that rates of wedlock are so much higher in urban areas where marraige is an impediment to govt benefits. It may also have to do with decrease rates of access to birth control, or an unwillingness to use it if it is available.
Re: I'd like to see either you or Ta-nehisi blog about the extent to which the wedding industry's contribution to the decline of marriage.
Indeed. And this is not just restricted to the poor. I've known a number of couples of who lived together for years (officially engaged) but put off marriage because they had to save enough for at least a down payment on the wedding.
Re: If people in the 1850s or 1950s - times when the standard of living was far lower than it is today - could afford to have lots and lots of kids, people in 2008 can too.
Um, reread that, please? The first clause points out quite clearly why the second clause is not true. It's precisely because the standard of living was so low (and therefore very cheap) that people could afford to have lots of kids. A high standard of living requires a high income. Of course it's also painfully true that people in the pre-1900 world may have had lots of kids, but generally didn't raise them all since anywhere from 1/3 to 2/3 of them did not make it. For example my great-great-grandparents, the Irwins, had four children in the 1850s, but only two of them made it to age 10.
Re: Okay, then why was the black illegitimacy rate so much lower back before they were full fledged citizens?
Beware statsitics. Once upon a time unwed motherhood was frowned on-- and a lot of women who were in that situation escaped the stigma by claiming to be widows. (And record-keeping was too spotty to disprove such claims).
I saw an anaylsis of the 1890 census wherein there were so many self-professed Black "widows"
that the Black male-female birth ratio would have had to have almost 60-40 in favor of males for those claims to have been true.
Re: A religious POV is that children are a gift from God.
Religions also provide a strong social (including monetary) support. This is especially true of those religions where one finds lots of children are the norm-- Islam and the LDS. One very rarely finds a poor Mormon family, at least not one in good standing with their church. When the usual poverty-creators-- job loss, divorce, illness-- happen to Mormons, their Church rushes in to smooth things over.
Re: If your parents still buy you things after you've left their house, you're not in the "middle" of anything. The middle is broke. You're rich.
Bullshit. Some parents of even modest means will spend themselves to penury to help their kids. My step-mother has blown almost all her (meager) retirement savings "loaning" her my step-brother, who can never manage to stay gainfully employed, money for his child support payments so his vengeful ex doesn't have him tossed in jail.