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Social programs did harm by making fathers less needed Last Sunday's Star Tribune had another superb editorial in its series of pieces on crime, disorder and vulgarity in Minneapolis. Just inches away, Lori Sturdevant's column discussed an ad placed in the paper by Growth & Justice, a very good "progressive" think tank, which contended that Minnesota is undertaxed, and that if income taxes were raised we'd all be better off. Among those who read the two pieces, many surely concluded that if taxes were raised, Minneapolis streets indeed would grow safer and more civil. Let me suggest a different link. There's never any one root cause of any intricate problem. But evidence is compelling that the largest reason for the radical increase in crime over the last 40 years has been radical changes in family life. The numbers are numbing. For example, the nation's out-of-wedlock birth rate in 1960 was about 5 percent. It's now in the vicinity of 33 percent, with the figure reaching 80 percent and more in inner cities. The United States may have the highest divorce rate in the industrial world. What do data and trends like these have to do with taxes? Scores of welfare, housing, health care and related programs regularly help people in need. They're often lifelines, and when they are, I applaud them. Yet inescapably, many of these same programs, which have grown gigantically in quantity and reach in 40 years, simultaneously have weakened families by making marriage -- and more to the point, husbands -- less financially essential for bringing children into this world. This, in turn, has led to major increases in crime, as many more boys and girls have been forced to grow up without the guidance, discipline and love best provided by mothers and fathers living together and parenting as a team. When it comes to social welfare programs of various kinds, Minnesota is unusually generous -- often to the point, in fact, of encouraging troubled people from less generous states to relocate here. Question: Is it possible, at least partially, that uncommonly persistent crime problems in Minneapolis are an unintended consequence of such comparatively well-funded, tax-supported programs? Another question: Might the same family-eroding dynamics propelling crime also have something to do with achievement and graduation gaps between minority and majority students in Minneapolis that are among the highest in the nation -- even though per-student spending in Minneapolis public schools, at more than $13,000 annually, is already higher than most any other place in the country? This is not an-across-the-board argument for government never spending more money. I see no escape, for example, from spending more on law enforcement in Minneapolis. I also see no escape from expanding mental health programs for young people seriously damaged by breakdowns all around them. And when it comes to more straightforward issues like transportation, the need for improvements is obvious. How difficult is it for government to align incentives and disincentives so that intact, two-parent families are encouraged rather than discouraged? Even attempts to enrich early childhood programs -- a goal that just about every Minnesota leader has come to equate as an unqualified good -- undoubtedly will further embolden some people to believe that "quality" educational programs for 3- and 4-year-olds can substitute for the benefits of marriage. If we've learned anything over the last two generations, it's that "programs" can't substitute nearly well enough for traditional and practiced ways of raising boys and girls, no matter how well-endowed such programs may be. -- Mitch Pearlstein is founder and president of the Center of the American Experiment in Minneapolis. |