Monday, May 4, 2015

Moynihan Report after 50 years

Moynihan Report after 50 years

What Moynihan discovered has still not been acknowledged by the very people most adversely affected by the problem: Rates of black male unemployment and welfare enrollment – instead of running parallel as they always had – started to diverge in 1962 in a way that would come to be called “Moynihan’s scissors.” In 1965 Moynihan foresaw the coming destruction of the black family because the black out-of-wedlock birth rate was 25 percent. Americans were shocked by that statistic 50 years ago. But today the number is over 72 percent among blacks, more than 53 percent among Hispanics and more than 29 percent among whites. By contrast, in 1965, out-of-wedlock births among white Americans was at 3.1 percent. Not only has the black family been destroyed, as Moynihan predicted, so has the whole of the American family.