AND ANOTHER THING
America stops throwing money at problems — a lesson for us too
PAUL JOHNSON
Resident Clinton's decision to sign the Republican Bill which ends Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) may be a turning-point in United States history. That Mr Clinton did not dare to veto the Bill has profoundly shocked the American liberal establishment. A typical member of it, Roxie Nicholson of the Labor Depart- ment, voiced their disgust: 'I never thought it would come to this under a Democratic president.' It shows the extent to which the Republican majority in Congress now sets the agenda of American politics. Or, rather, it shows how mounting popular anger at the misuse of taxpayers' money has forced both the major parties to respond by slaughtering sacred cows.
If ever there was a case of throwing money at problems, hoping they would go away, it was AFDC. Indeed, it showed how the throwing-money process actually increased and multiplied problems, by attracting new ones anxious to have money thrown at them too. AFDC, in its earliest incarnation, was part of an Act of Congress which became law on 14 August 1935, under Roosevelt. This for the first time established federal social security as an activity separate from existing schemes run by the individual states. The Act created an insurance programme for old-age pensions, an unemployment compensation system and federal funding for the blind, the hand- icapped and poor, dependent children.
This infant federal welfare system took a long time to grow up. Indeed it was not until the 1960s, first under Kennedy and still more under Lyndon Johnson, that the money-throwing really started. In the last 30 years it has continued on an ever- increasing scale and is a prime cause of America's colossal deficit, which now absorbs, in interest payments alone, more than a quarter of all tax receipts. If the problem were entirely financial it would not be so serious. But it is also social and moral. AFDC, conceived as a way of help- ing poor families, has become a powerful financial engine for destroying the family as such. And, in helping to destroy the family, it has actually increased poverty on an enormous scale, in such a way as to make it peculiarly intractable, by causing it to become a hereditary, state-funded occupa- tion. Once it became clear that the Ameri- can welfare system, and AFDC in particu- lar, paid a single girl to move out of gainful employment into motherhood, whether or not she had a husband, then the traditional family system as the norm for working-class families in urban areas was doomed.
It was Daniel Patrick Moynihan who first pointed out, in the 1950s, that the decline of the family, and consequent rise in illegit- imacy, were prime factors in creating poverty. He was writing mainly of family weakness in black society, and of course the absence of a family structure among mil- lions of blacks is the biggest single cause of American poverty today. Illegitimacy is now the norm among American blacks. Even by the end of the 1980s, the illegiti- macy rate among blacks was 65.7 per cent, despite the fact that 37 per cent of black pregnancies ended in abortion. By 1993 the black illegitimacy rate had passed the 70 per cent mark. In parts of Washington, cap- ital of the richest country on earth, it is as high as 90 per cent. But the principle applies to all races. Among whites, the same upward trend has developed. The white illegitimacy rate passed the 25 per cent mark early in 1994 and is rising faster than among blacks. Among Hispanics it is rising faster still. As a result, nearly a third of all children born in the United States are now illegitimate.
America's leading sociologist, Charles Murray, has argued convincingly that the rise in illegitimacy and the rise in endemic and hereditary poverty are closely connect- ed. Among blacks, for instance, the incomes of single-parent families are only one third of those of two-parent families. Poverty is aggravated by the fact that many mothers of illegitimate children are of below-average intelligence. Indeed, over 20 per cent of all children now born in Ameri- ca are not only illegitimate but have moth- ers who fit into this mental category. In his 1994 book, The Bell Curve, Murray noted, 'Incompetent mothers are highly concen- trated among the least intelligent and their numbers are growing.' He added, 'Inade- quate nutrition, physical abuse, emotional
From up here you can see six royal bedrooms.' neglect, lack of intellectual stimulation, a chaotic home environment . .. are very dif- ficult to improve from outside the home when the mother is incompetent.'
Obviously the throwing-money system is not only wrong but positively wicked if, as is now known, it encourages such women to have illegitimate children. The new Con- gressional Act ends AFDC itself; that is, individuals will no longer have a statutory entitlement to cash benefits paid directly by the federal government. Instead, the money will go in the form of a $16.4 billion block grant to the 50 states. The states will now devise, finance and administer welfare schemes of their own, subject to certain federal rules. Thus, federal funds may no longer be spent on mothers under 18 who fail to stay in school or live with an adult. Nor will they be available to non-working householders beyond a period of five years. The new Act not only ends the iniquitous system which makes the breeding of illegiti- mate children profitable, it also introduces the principle of competitive efficiency in the use of welfare funds. Some of the 50 different schemes produced by the states are going to be much more effective than others in reducing poverty — and the most successful will gradually be imitated.
British politicians and anyone involved in the study of poverty here will be watching these developments closely. Here too ille- gitimacy is the prime cause of poverty, and it is rising almost as fast as in the United States. Here too it is on the whole encour- aged by the way we run our welfare state. It says a lot for the mean spirit and lack of enterprise of our present Government that, in default of radical solutions, they are now installing hot-lines to encourage people to inform on their neighbours who are believed to be committing welfare fraud. One great merit of the new American Act is that it decentralises the welfare state and gives local governments and local electorates the chance to show their wit and wisdom. Perhaps we should follow this example, and take income support, housing benefit and other welfare goodies away from central government, and order local councils to devise imaginative schemes of their own for dealing with poor families and single mothers. Social critics have been protesting for years that Britain has become over-centralised. Here is one way we can move in quite the opposite direction.
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