AMERICAN CONSERVATISM IN 2008 AND BEYOND

Thanks for clarifying a bit.

But what has owning a home (instead of renting) and faith to do with wealth?

And do you a source that "the single most prevalent reason for children living in poverty is the lack of a two-parent family"?

I accept that you dislike that Dr. Williams, in his short essay, leaves out qualifiers that he would almost certainly include in a lecture or longer work. But if you can overlook the obvious exceptions and focus on the point he is making, there is little to quarrel with his statement: ".

the single most prevalent reason for children living in poverty is the lack of a two-parent family

* Almost half the world " over 3 billion people " live on less than $2.50 a day.
* The GDP (Gross Domestic Product) of the 41 Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (567 million people) is less than the wealth of the world’s 7 richest people combined.
* Nearly a billion people entered the 21st century unable to read a book or sign their names.
* Less than one per cent of what the world spent every year on weapons was needed to put every child into school by the year 2000 and yet it didn’t happen.
* 1 billion children live in poverty (1 in 2 children in the world). 640 million live without adequate shelter, 400 million have no access to safe water, 270 million have no access to health services. 10.6 million died in 2003 before they reached the age of 5 (or roughly 29,000 children per day).

Introduction
Fishing

Occupations such as fishing can be passed down from generation to generation if education is not an option.

There is no single cause of poverty. Poverty is too complex an issue to be the result of just one problem. There are, however, many interrelated factors that contribute to poverty in developing nations.

* Education: Lack of education keeps children from obtaining jobs that would lift them and their families out of poverty. Often, children are kept from school because they are needed at home to support their family with additional income.


* Health: Poor health decreases the amount of work impoverished individuals can do, lowering their income and driving them deeper into poverty.

Slideshow:
Fishing Slideshow: See what fishing is like in poor, rural areas of Southeast Asia.

The onset of disease, such as HIV/AIDS or malaria, can result in death (which can cut off a major source of income for a family), or high medical costs that many impoverished families cannot afford.


* Economics: The poor often have very limited economic choices � they are often prevented from receiving loans and other financial benefits. This makes it hard for them to establish businesses, increase their income, and break out of poverty.


* Government: The governments of many developing countries are often dysfunctional, unstable, and corrupt. Lack of government infrastructure (public sanitation, schools, social welfare, etc.) can be crippling for the poor.

The major underlying factors producing child poverty in the United States are welfare dependence and single parenthood.

Conservatives do not recognize a difference between causation and correlation. The majority of their economic arguments rely upon this, so they willfully ignore the inconsistencies.

Cycloptichorn

the single most prevalent reason for children living in poverty is the lack of a two-parent family

The major underlying factors producing child poverty in the United States are welfare dependence and single parenthood.

Yes I did. Without the welfare dependence, there would be far less single parenthood, and far less child poverty. Even you are capable of connecting those dots, Parados.

Growth in single-parent families parallels child poverty trend
. . . .The growing number of children living in single-parent families was one reason for the rise in child poverty. Not only are more children living with a single parent, but single-parent families are more likely to be poor than they used to be. Increased poverty among single-parent families may be tied to the growth in childbearing by unmarried women, the report says. . . .
http://www.demography.state.mn.us/resource.html?Id=2272

While the causes of child poverty are myriad, some dynamics are much easier to identify. First, it is well documented that families matter. Census data indicate that child poverty rates differ according to family structure. For example, children in single parent families have higher poverty rates than those in married-couple families.

Comparing all families, the poverty rate for children in families led by single mothers is 42 percent; single fathers 21 percent, compared to 8 percent of children in married-couple families. From these data, children from homes led by single mothers have higher poverty rates, but the challenge for policymakers is to devise effective work supports for these and other single parent families.
http://www.voices.org/pages/page.asp?page_id=22803

An increase in the number of mother-only families was one of the major changes in family composition during the 1970s, continuing in the 1980s and 1990s, but at a much slower pace. More children today can expect to live in a single-parent family at some point in their lives due to both high rates of divorce and increased out-of-wedlock childbearing. Children in mother-only families have a greater chance of being poor than children living with two parents. Nearly 48 percent of nonmetro children in mother-only families were poor in 2000, in contrast to 10 percent of nonmetro children in two-parent families, who were poor in 2000. Single parent families are often at an economic disadvantage because there is only one parent to generate income and that effort may be limited by difficulties in obtaining child care.
http://www.ers.usda.gov/briefing/IncomePovertyWelfare/ChildPoverty/

The Effect of the Decline of Marriage.

As this Report shows, this analysis found that the decline of marriage since the 1960s has been a substantial factor behind the current high levels of child poverty. Specifically, if marriage were restored to 1960s levels:

• The number of children living in single-parent homes would be cut by nearly 60 percent. The number of children living in married couple families would increase by almost 11.5 million, and the number residing in single-parent homes would be reduced by a corresponding amount. These 11.5 million children represent 16.2 percent of all children.

• Among the 11.5 million added children residing in married-couple homes in this scenario, the poverty rate would fall by 80.4 percent. Some 34.2 percent of these children are now poor and live in single-parent homes. If their parents were married to spouses with matching demographic characteristics, only 6.7 percent of these children would remain poor.

• Overall, restoring marriage to 1960 levels would remove more than 3 million children from poverty nationwide. The U.S. child poverty rate would fall by nearly a third, from 15.7 percent to 11.2 percent.

The decline in marriage since the inception of the War on Poverty in the 1960s has clearly contributed to child poverty. Overall, our analysis shows that child poverty would be nearly a third lower today if the traditional two-parent family had not deteriorated over the past three decades.
http://www.heritage.org/research/Family/CDA02-04.cfm

March 2, 2009
Baroness Morgan of Drefelin this week answered a question on why the Government’s policies on reducing child poverty do not include a policy to reduce the number of single-parent families through information, motivation and support for two-parent families.

She stated that the Government’s policies on reducing child poverty cover all children at risk of being in poverty, which includes two-parent as well as single-parent families. As part of this comprehensive approach, we provide targeted support for families who are separating or are at risk of doing so. She also said that the Government announced in December that £5.5million would be available between 2009 and 20011 for new pilots to better coordinate local support for separating parents.
http://nctwatch.wordpress.com/2009/03/02/government-responds-to-question-on-single-parent-families-and-child-poverty/

Cycloptichorn wrote:

Conservatives do not recognize a difference between causation and correlation. The majority of their economic arguments rely upon this, so they willfully ignore the inconsistencies.

Cycloptichorn

Perhaps you would like to reconsider that absurd, self-contradictory and unbounded generalization.

Do you know that all conservatives fail to recognize the difference between causation and correlation? Or is that merely a small sample correlation that you are interpreting as causation??

"single most prevalent reason"

"The major underlying factors?"

One of the links following suggests that the UK is looking at some of the same factors we are though, and it would be interesting to check to see if single parenthood is a factor in child poverty in Germany.

When research was last conducted five years ago, the majority of children in poverty had parents who were unemployed. The new study shows the majority of children living in poverty now have at least one parent in work, but they are earning so little they are unable to drag their family above the poverty line.

The study, published by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, runs counter to the government's message that work is the best route out of poverty.

[...] Half of all lone parent families are in low income compared to one in five couples with children. Two-fifths all the children in low-income households are in lone parent households.
... ... ...
Most of the lone parents in low income are not working. In contrast, most of the couples with children in low income do have someone in paid work. The net result is that most of the children in low-income households are either in couple families where someone is in paid work or in workless lone parent families.
... ... ...