A troubling statistic i discussed in the book is 40 of the sons born to fathers in the lowest quintile of income remain in lowest quintile of income and so demography is often destiny. If you are born to a father who was very polar, theres a very good chance, not overwhelming chance, but a very good chance youre going to be poor as well. To the discussion that poverty relates to blacks and i discuss why that is the case then why much of this discussion can be very misleading. The poverty rate is slightly lower than that of native americans and alaska natives. But more important point is more than 75 of blacks are not poor so the kinds of generalizations and images with warm are unfortunately quite inaccurate, though it is the case that many, too many blacks are born into poverty and will remain in poverty. The most important conclusion that i think analysts of poverty have come through in trying to determine what the trend is is that today, the class gap is even greater than the racial gap. That is to say ms is a most unfortunate deplorable condition. The best predictor of poverty is being born to unmarried mothers and absent fathers. Thats the single best predict her. Its not race. Its not where you live. Its not even unemployment. If the action of birth. There has been some good news in the poverty picture. The 2015 rates declined sharply from all groups. Teenage pregnancies down by 50 since 1991. High School Completion is up to blackwhite job in high School Completion closing, not enough, but now about 85 . Divorce rates have stabilized though of course as we all know a very high level, much too high. I think for the wellbeing of children. Crime has dropped in all communities over the last 20 years or so. So having measured and explain the measures in the adjustment and Statistical Patterns of poverty, i next turned to the causes of poverty. There are many of course. The main proximate cause has been emphasized by brookings and aei scholars is unemployment and underemployment by working age nondisabled family, what causes this underemployment and unemployment . Well, i go to a number of clauses in some detail. First i would say its bad luck. How we define block is of course a question that reasonable people can differ about. But some of it is anything but bad luck, misfortune by any standard. Many poor people are poor because of a Health Problem that they could not anticipate. Some women are poor often because of divorcees. Their standard of living decline 25 in the first year after divorce for men standard of living actually increases by 10 the first year after divorce. Kind of a shocking comparison to me. 72 so that is the path. I have more to say about it on the font to family and community break down which i consider the single most cause the under and unemployment by working age nondisabled family had. 72 of black babies born out of wedlock today, that triples the rate in 1965, triple the rate when Daniel Patrick moynihan famously decried the chaos and craziness of black families in the way for a babies born out of wedlock is now higher than the black rate was when moynihan conducted his analysis in 1965. Its an extraordinarily devastating development. And of course leads to development that we dont seem to know very much about solving your its not for want of study and after. It is a really, really hard problem. A third cause of poverty is socalled disappearing jobs. And here again, i have a lot to say and discuss the analysis and some of the response is to concerns about disappearing jobs. Very interesting finding how low a percentage of working age unemployed men site is the reason for their unemployment, lack of jobs she had some of these people are disabled but when i come to discussion of disability, i will have some more to say about that. A fourth possible cause, almost certainly a causes educational deficits. Bit here, it is important to emphasize what we often forget, which is while we are blaming poor schools, we really ought to realize that in fact the deficits that exist in childrens opportunities and achievement begins well before they start in school. Ill have a bit more to say about that, including something about jim hickmans analysis of the problem. So. But from the finland community break down, education, jobs come if it is isolation. Sociologists have a lot tedious. Many fema be familiar with the famous mount eric sociologists whose certain about the strain of weak ties by which he means the greater opportunities available to people who have a large note work of weak ties in saturday night with strong ties. So its kind of paradox, but its easily explained. Orlando patterson has about the myth of the hood. Just to summarize very quickly with the sociologists have reported is that Like Networks are both smaller and denser and have the smallest percentage of kinsman of any other group. Theres also very little marriage, especially for black women. But that isolation limits opportunities, limits information, then this context is very severe. They fixed possible cause is discrimination. Here i distinguish between or among different types of discrimination, what is intentional and the second is unintentional and 30 statistical lawyers in the audience will certainly be very much aware of that distinction, which is reflected in the doctrine under title vii of the civil rights act. One complication is the discrimination prohibited against people of natural origin, gender and soap are, but not on the basis of poverty. Poverty is not a protect classification, which means it cant be attacked with normal come into the thick discrimination is based on poverty, it cant be attacked in the normal fashion that the low rate the civil rights law employers. A seventh cause of poverty is bad choices. One can easily be accused of believing that the term and it done, but there are a range of choices that we can reasonably care teresa bad that some of them are antisocial behaviors and some of them are just short sighted behaviors. So let me just read one description of this, this phenomenon. Most bad choices are in play short dated. The sacrifice of the possibility of future terror ballgames. Common example is a dropping out of high school, alcohol abuse, gambling, discipline and record tv or video games can access environment spending, one cannot afford or do not know how to care for, cultivating habits including jobs or Training Programs from which one could acquire useful skills or experience. The next cause his incarceration. Theres a lot of outcry about excessive incarceration in the country and there should be. The access is less substantial than one night stand. 62 of prisoners in the united state are violent or offenders. The states are by and large a problem, primarily for fiscal reasons trying to add the present of minor offenders, but that policy, which is a welcomed policy is only going to have a relatively martial effect on the number of people in our prisons. The last cause that he analyzes the culture of poverty. By which i mean widespread entrenched self reinforcing patterns of despair of orientation or self mr. David conn. Again, i discussed that a bit, but i dont want to say more about that now unless you want to raise the q a. And then discuss current progress of the focus on low income people and communities. Its not that we havent that much money for more money in recent years on these recent programs. In 2008, we spent 861 billion at the federal level. That was in 2008. Only seven years later we spent 849 on these programs. I go to the programs i dont want to belabor because there are other things to discuss. Snap, earned income tax credit for these to be called the food stamp program. The earned income tax credit Social Security, medicare, largely successful programs although they have large amounts of fraud, waste and abuse we dont seem to be able to reduce those measures were announced very significantly if at all. Some of these programs raise concerns about working families, particularly in snap and medicaid and Social Security disability. I discussed the evidence on that. Another very Important Program as title i with the polar. It has been enforced for 15 years now. Hurricanes did a report on the effectiveness of title i, just a year and a half ago was quite critical of the effectiveness of the program on a variety of grounds, some of which are quite difficult to rectify a faith. Head start, small program, both the health and Human Services and brooks duchenne has reported a rapid fadeout of the benefits from head start by the third grade or even sooner. Sometimes during the summer. Jim hickman, Nobel Prize Winner in economics in chicago is more optimistic about the longterm effects of head start, but when you are talking about the effects 30 years later, theres so many intervening conditions that it is hard to be really confident in that kind of analysis. It probably has a lot of truth to it. Job Training Programs, little assessment, but assessments showed no effect events. The job core today after it years cost us about 1. 8 a year and every study that has been done of which im aware shows no effect of this whatsoever. Socialist security disability, others have studied this and shown that it contains serious moral hazard in reducing work incentives. The worker to disability recipient, the ratio of workers to disability recipients has declined from 134212161. Some trends say its actually a close to 111. So that is a Shocking Development that we need to take very seriously. Housing, theres the National Bureau of economic research, comprehensive test in 2015 that found little evidence with respect to effect on poor people. Rash idea is to write a dense and very important recent work showing the number is better neighborhood does affect outcome longterm outcomes. So that is sort of encouraging assassin pilot implication that might be implemented. I then talk about policy reforms. The first possibility is to encourage macroeconomic growth are the problem is we dont have to do it without inflation, without novels, International Trade and current effects. If we did, that would be the simplest way to do it. Macroeconomists by contradictions. Second is distribution directly in here we have the example that we dont have any evidence to how its working, universal basic income plan in finland, but its also been proposed by a very prominent conservative, Milton Friedman and charles murray. The design of these matters of course matters a lot. Political prospects for this were analyzed by henry aaron whos the senior fellow at hurricanes and and a leading expert on poverty. He sees most americans as quote commodity egalitarians. Support programs that prevent poor people from living in decrepit housing are going untreated. Only 20 or cash egalitarians to support providing money for those without cash. Dust, and im quoting, far more willingly vote refundable tax credits to pay for health care them at a refundable tax credits for low incomes. Besides travel some administration of the house credit may be, it is childs play next of minutes airing more transfers of cash and i had the past experience support this assessment. Their possibilities which supplements and thats a very good ways to do this or the earned income tax credit does that already. There is widespread bipartisan support for increasing the earned income tax credit and increasing it to groups of people who are not eligible for it. And then wage i think the evidence of the effects of minimum wage on entrylevel employment and bound automation is very is quite negative, which is one of the reasons the new income tax credit is a better way to go to increase affect it aftertax wages and wage insurance which is an proposed by a number of people that has not yet been instituted on a broad scale here. That is a possible remedy. The fourth policy reform is human capital. That is largely done to the Education System or a job training or job retraining and mccarty commented a bit im not that much more to say in the book be the fifth policy requirement to strengthen families. This is the most important and also the most difficult. Brookings scholars have an alliance what they called a success sequence, which is a word, children only when they are married, and marriage after 21 and finish high school. The same henry aaron however, the long footnote i have is very skeptical that these approaches to the success sequence with the effect did and hes a strong advocate of remedies for poverty. The six policy reform and discusses opportunity that refers to some extent to work that was done for years and years and most recently done now which identified all sort of occupational impediment to occupational mobility is, licensing requirements that make no sense at all another of that kind. Residential mobility is another approach in the Section Eight Program is our major weapon in that particular war. Again, it is somewhat manic and showed that the people who move to better neighborhood with very mixed. A very recent analysis believe the ones in the younger and therefore spend more time in as better neighborhoods do much better. Let me see how im doing on time here. Okay, i better hassle. A second issue is immigration. I want a much about that although i say a lot of the book about it. Its one of the areas that i did for a long time. I preface this by pointing to the political urgency of immigration reform. And rick olson, warmly of aei has written a very important political analysis, where he recently in which he argues that as a matter of electoral strategy, democrats really have against immigration policy right and that means changing some time honored sessions on immigration. They can still be as i certainly for expanded immigration and for honoring if not cherishing immigrants who come here and succeed. But it does require a different language and analysis. For one thing, for example, there would be no legalization unless and until the public becomes convinced that the border is controlled. In reality, the border will never be controlled, but the public needs to believe the government is doing what it can. So those of us and i suspect many of you join me in being strong at A Catholic Ossetian need to attend to that. That is partly what ever else unless discussing. I discuss a bit immigration reform, agricultural workers. The number of green cards to be issued each year, the categories of the quota and a number of other issues. For now im going to focus on three issues. The first being legalization which i mentioned already. This would be a dreamers and others and strong arguments for this. Even trump has seemed to recognize the strong claims the dreamers have two reasonable policy for prospect of legalization. These programs are hard to design if the conditions on legalization are too stringent, the undocumented will not participate. Theyll take their chances and continuing the shadows as the cliche house. Her real problems of administration in a particularly with a week to end the other immigration these of health and Human Services and there was widespread fraud in the 1986 legalization, especially with regard to be a record to roll legalization program. The second big issue is enforcement. There are two then years that defined the problem versus border enforcement. The second is the interior. Most people dont understand within 50 of Illegal Immigrants enter the legally they entered legally and out of status. And that is very important implications for the way in which the government can hope to enforce the immigration policies that adopts. The detention of immigration cores. Im not going to dwell on those now. There are better technique we can use to improve enforcement. Theres an important issue of employer sanctions which have been kind of a joke often tall now and they can be strengthened though of course there are constraints im not good universal identification card, it is quite weak. It is strongly expressed analytically. The third i discusses integration and try to increase the naturalization rate and perhaps to subsidies of naturalization ease. Englishlanguage subsidies, the government should do much more in assisting and the grand to learn English College after all all is the most important weapon in making it in American Society better english as a second language program. Much of them not only have they failed, but in some ways have made matters worse. Theres a lot of variation in program and i dont want to overgeneralize. The last issue that i will discuss their earthly the executives from secular policies. Here the context is very complex. We have the conjunction of growing religious diversity with a growing secular spirit we have the right culture in which people are encouraged and even in enterprise to claim violation of their right when they feel that their vital interests have been shortchanged we have a judicial enough apology which is being developed as to how to arbitrate these claims between religious freedom and choice on the one hand and the religious freedom operation act which was about it at the federal level and Supreme Court held and led to 20 or more state adopt a date references they are called, which attempt to establish for which these claims can be adjudicated and put a strong stand on the side of religious the religious claimants. There are two key cases that i disguise in this chapter. One is the hobby lobby case, which was applied to accept families a Family Business and also a religious business, same company from the aca requirement to containing this coverage and the real question is whether the courts will limit hobby lobby to a narrow set of facts and its too early to tell about that. The second case is recognized and gay marriage is a constitutional right. Its a huge advance in human rights and equality via lgbt, but its galvanized strong religiousbased opposition demand for exemptions. Its a very complex situation because im one hand we have the state different, which of course constrained than the claims of religious minorities and we have a lot of localities and read state and vice versa. Its a relatively new conflict. We havent quite figured out how we feel about it in any sophisticated way, and we, we need more information about what the true tradeoffs are in these situations. So i offer some principles for resolving thes