Studying the obvious

An unpopular truth

[Reprinted from Issues & Views June 3, 2002]

Although common sense could predict it, the official word is in. We learn from the Washington Post that welfare reform has reduced the birth rate among teenage girls, "who are at the greatest risk of going on public assistance," and has "cut their welfare use and lowered their school dropout rate." This information comes from the National Bureau of Economic Research.

As if we didn't know that the degree of existing economic incentives inevitably impacts behavior, the report claims that these girls are now more likely to live at home with a parent or with a spouse "than in the pre-reform era." The Post further claims that "the 1996 act overhauling the welfare system may be doing what parents, government and social agencies have failed to do--change the behaviors of teenagers." Well, it took only 40 to 50 years of undermining the social fabric of the black community to learn the obvious lesson that reformers, for decades, worked to get across.

The research group's lead researchers were economists Robert Kaestner and June O'Neill of New York's Baruch College. According to the Post:

Kaestner and O'Neill were particularly interested in tracking the fortunes of "high risk" girls aged 17 and 19 in the 1979 sample and a group of similarly aged teens in the 1997 survey. Both groups were followed for about three years. High-risk teens were defined as girls who, among other things, lived at age 12 in a family headed by a single female and had a mother with relatively little education.

The authors found that 28 percent of the 19-year-olds in the 1979 study group had given birth, compared with 19 percent in the 1997 group. The dropout rate stood at 26 percent among 19-year-olds in the 1979 sample but at 16 percent in the most recent group. About 10 percent of these teens in the earlier study had received welfare, compared with 5 percent in the post-reform group.

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