Recall that moynihan was complaining primarily about black families and his these is was that because of weakness in black Family Structure, blacks would not be able to seize the opportunities that were coming available to them as a result of the Civil Rights Movement. And i can tell you that what i am going to say to you is moynihans concerns now apply to hispanics and to whites, to the whole country. And here are the numbers. I got these by i recently analyzed the censuses. This is representative of the whole country. Here is what happened with family composition. First, marriage rates declined for every age group and every ethnic group every education group, with one exception thats quite fascinating, declined in 1970 and 1980 for College Educated women, but have been stable and risen a little for College Educated women. I think theres a lesson in that. For every other Group Marriage rates have declined. Now im going to tell you a fact demonstrated by social science. This fact will make it worthwhile that you came here today. Sex did not go out of fashion even though marriage did. And when those two things happen, you have lots of nonmarital births. This was the problem that moynihan focused on the most. Now we have nonmarital birth rate among hispanic and whites higher than when moynihan wrote the report and their level among blacks in 1965. So today 72 black kids are born out of wedlock. 53 of hispanic, 36 of white kids. Overall nonmarital rate in the United States was over 40 . If we put the marriage rates and birth rates together, and lets describe the change in the family constitution of females at 35 nice was to summarize what happened. In the last 40 years, married with children, that category the one i am always most concerned about because we are worried about kids has fallen from 78 to 51 . 35 of decline of women who lived with children and are living with children since 1970. Single with children as you would expect has exploded, more than doubled from 9. 3 of all children to 20. 5 of all children. These figures at any given moment over a period of time figures are even higher. This constitutes a revolution, and the next question to ask that the rest of the panel will answer, so what. So what. The answer is that first of all kids who live in single parent families are five times as likely to be poor as kids in married couple families, and theyre very prone to ups and downs in the economy. Nobody thinks poverty is good for kids. Right there you get a hint of what about the next thing i am going to talk about kay mentioned it, research on single parent families married couple families. Bear in mind, when this research started, they were convinced it made no difference. May have is hetherington, one of the most famous psychologists came to the conclusion the kids will be all right, theyll go on and be fine. We know based on hundreds of studies accumulating all of the time, primarily professors doing this work including wilson sociologist, a famous one sarah mcclanahan. Good memory. Sarah mcclanahan who wrote the original book and has written several things since then including best studies of impacts being causal that kids have a lot of trouble when theyre reared by female headed families. The fact that moynihan was write when he wrote now three times more correct, his conclusions apply to hispanics and whites as well as blacks. We are in for serious trouble. Zblp glenn loury is going to speak next. Unfortunately the facts dont matter that much. That comment you quoted of james q. Wilson, even a so the obviously gist could believe it is indicative of something really important about the state of our political intellectual lives in this country. Facts dont govern, narratives govern. This is about the story we tell, the conflict over control of the narrative has taken precedence over an if you will evidence based, rational implementation of policy. When you throw race into the mix, it just gets tough. I can give many examples not only about family and Family Structure, of course moynihan was write. He was right in 1965 about the condition of the africanamerican family and how it was changing right about the implication that ron haskins mentioned to the effect that the consequence of this social transformation amongst africanamericans would make embrace of newly opened opportunities more difficult. He was right to the extent he insinuated that this was a matter not only of the africanamerican social landscape but a matter of importance to the nation as a whole. Of course he was right about that. Those who had the hunch moynihan was not really a social scientist, but he was very effective policy intellectual with things to say and he had a hunch. Those that had the hunch that the unraveling of the traditional family spelled real trouble for our society have been shown to be right. I just want to make a couple of points about this. So what, it has consequences, but what do we do . Cultural engineering is not an exact science, not something i would want to bet my life on. You can pull the string and unravel the fabric of social institution, but reweaving that another direction is a difficult thing to do. The tools that the state has available are welfare and assistance policies tax policies and so on are very crude. One is pushing against a guide that moved far from the 50s, restoring the traditional family. Saw the title with respect to organizers, i almost laughed because it is such a futile objective. Traditional family . I have a dear friend, david blank enhorn, runs an institution called institute for American Values hes a good man. He wrote a book i dont know 25 years ago or more, called fatherless america, in which he was lamenting denigration of the role of fatherhood within american culture, and david has embraced gay marriage and i dont criticize him for having done so not in the least, my son is a gay man for that matter, but he has done so in part out of the desperate need to find allies in defense of marriage per se. Part of his motivation is simply theyre for marriage, i am for them. Out looking for allies for marriage, i dont see that many of them around. It would be easy to get ideological, wag my finger at leftwing feminist that wanted to destroy the family and so forth. I dont want to do that i dont want to lose the weight of what i am trying to say about intellectual political difficulty we wandered into amidst partisanship. As soon as i say that, everyone runs to their respective corner and put up their defenses. Pat moynihan was a friend of mine. I knew Daniel Patrick moynihan. I was in the audience in 1985 30 years ago when he came to Kennedy School at harvard, and gave lectures, later published as his book family and nation in which he tried to defend his own intellectual contribution and at the same time defend the Political Program of a democratic party. He took a real shot at it. But it wasnt only family members, defining dfwian see down this was also pat moynihan. The character of our intellectual discourse, our ability to be honest with each other, to call a spade a spade, one might say with trepidation. Look at the discourse going on now in the aftermath of ferguson, baltimore, and so forth. People are writing on oped pages of serious newspapers if there hadnt been a riot there wouldnt have been justice, without any sense of self consciousness or irony. You me thats the way we get justice through riots . Is that justice . People are saying that as has been mentioned here i think jason mentioned it are saying that the very evocation is betrayal of equality in the country. We cant even talk about it. I dont want this to just be a la meant, i am going to conclude with a suggestion. We desperately need leadership here. Someone has got to push against the prevailing tide. Somebody has got to have the courage to Say Something, even though they know that 95 my friend says you try to tell black intellectuals opinion writers lets restore the black family, maybe you get two or three out of 10 to agree, if they write it in the oped theyre snowed under by avalanche of reaction. They have to write it anyway. The president of the United States has to say it anyway. When the president of the United States is the first africanamerican to hold the most powerful office in the land he has to say it anyway. I voted twice for barack obama. I mean him no disrespect, intend him no ill will but i am so deeply disappointed that the events that transpired in the last six months have not called forth from him the kind of counter cultural leadership. When i say counter cultural, against the prevailing that wants to account for these matters in terms of absent opportunity, tacit racism, psychological impairment of Police Officers. Theres absent opportunity, plenty of racism and some police need to be worked on but at the root is a failure now a half century ongoing of africanamerican society to be able to respond effectively to opportunities. Youre not supposed to say this. People get on leaky boats and risk their lives to get here from every continent on the planet and by and large once they get off those boats they do pretty well. I think the system with its flaws is working pretty well. I think it is unavoidable the question, you people whats up. And thats a question that we people should be asking first and foremost of ourselves. Thank you. Robert woodson. I would like to speak to this from the perspective of a social act vis that spends most of my time in low income neighborhoods. I would say 80 of my friends are ex something. But not exfriends. No. Theyre exdrug addicts, exprostitutes, exsomething. And i think that when i was active in the Civil Rights Movement probably one of the few people when dr. King died, i hit the streets with ten neighborhood leaders and interposed ourselves between the National Guard and the police and the rioters. The reason we could prevail is because the people i was with was respected and known by the people, not a single civil rights person not a single pastor was there but they were grass roots leaders and they represented what i Call Community antibodies. The sickest part of the body draws the healthiest antibodies. But we only call or come in in times of crisis. These are the legitimate leaders of low income people. It was after that that i realize that a lot of people who suffered and sacrificed most in the battle for civil rights didnt change. It was about well educated people. Thats why bill raspberry, when he was reporter for the post i think october 31st 1965 a banner headline poor negroes are not benefitting from gains of the Civil Rights Movement, and the same kind of anger that we heard in baltimore was echoed 50 years ago by low income blacks then because the interest and poor blacks according to abate and switch game they use the demographics of those at the bottom, and when the remedies and money arrived it didnt go to them, it went to those that provided services to the poor. So we are in serious need of some self examination inside the black community. Thats why i am calling for a one year moratorium and whining about white folks. Im going to absorb you all for a year. The high council of gave me the authority to absolve all white people for a year. [ laughter ] this gives us an opportunity to add a dress the enemy within the enemy within means that we need to stop pimping poor people that means we have to apply our values, old values to a new vision. Yes, the families are but it wasnt happening if it wasnt racism or poverty. If thats true, during the ten years of depression, wouldnt a black family be disintegrated . It didnt. The marriage rights were higher than it was in the white community, even though the Unemployment Rate was 25 , was 40 for the black come canmunity, we didnt decision grate and i dont want to talk about how the time that happened with others who began to, they wanted to disconnect work from income, and welfare became a right. We become to moral deregulation occurred, and where under john lindsey, we just and the governments just opened up offices and recruited people on welfare so the biggest spike in welfare was at a time when the black Unemployment Rate for black men in new york was 4 . And so it just went out of control, and they said if we disconnect work from income, families will decisionsinigrate and america will engage in Income Redistribution and thats the answer to poverty. Thats how this family went off the cliff were on. Okay, what are remedies . The remedies are and my criticism of both scholars to the left and right, we talk about the 70 of the black families that are dysfunctioned. That means 30 are functioning. So why dont we do studies of capacities among the 30 to try to find out what is going on in those households that can perhaps give us some idea of what are the coping mechanisms. Thats what the center does. For ten years in Public Housing, right here in the 80s, women and mothers there said that our housing is horrible but we have to change it. So the residents, the mothers got together and began to organize a management of Public Housing. Kimmy gray, she was abandoned at age 21 with five children and divorced. Got off welfare and sent all kids to college and in ten years enable aed 400 other kids to go to college. Teen pregnancy rates were down, almost eliminated and it was on 60 minutes. Everyone came to examine this success except researchers. [ laughter ] except policy makers and there are other examples where there are people taking responsibility who operate mediating institutions. No, were not going to replace them, glenn, but there are alternatives that can help young people coaches are substitute fathers. We have a lot of ex offenders whose lives have been transformed and redeemed who are coaches and surrogate fathers for kids. My point is we need to stop studying failure. You learn nothing from studying failure except how to create failure failure. They read like autopsy reports. We really need to do capacity studies and thats what we do is you have to go into low income communities, find out who is working, how can we begin to take some money that are going into people who are in who are professional Service Providers the that parachute in remedies. Instead, we should take some of that money and give it to people indigenous and come up with innovative approaches. They are social entrepreneurs and in like any entrepreneur, 3 of commercial entrepreneur crowa pa entrepreneur create 70 of the jobs. We need to begin to study success. Thank you. [ applause ] so it strikes me that were having a discussion ive heard before. Although, very eloquently expressed and im wondering i have a feeling all of you feel that same sense of deja vu you referred to when were talking before, glenn, that weve been doing this a long time and hearing the same stuff. So lets push a little bit and think a little bit more about is there, are there any new ideas out there as ron and perhaps both, all three of you know, the Government Programs that started under the Bush Administration for promoting marriage were not successful or very disappointing and certainly when it comes to government initiated programs its not clear what we have, other than some maybe some tinkers with the tax code to reduce the tax disadvantage for married couples, but, you know, im for one very skeptical about that. I want to push more to see what is new out there . More can we think about . Im a little skeptical, too. I admit that. I completely disagree. Im on bobs board for maybe another 20 minutes. Social sciences about looking for successes. We have literally hundreds of important random assignment experiments to find out what works and we found out some things that do work. Now, if youre expecting that were going to launch a program and were going to increase the High School Graduation rate by 80 , thats not going to happen. That may happen over a period of years, but weve got programs like Small Schools of choice in new york city. A huge experiment. Random assignment. Well close to ramndom assignment and the most disadvantaged neighborhoods in new york and bob, thats positive. Thats a positive outcome. Let me interrupt. What about with the family . There are schools that work okay, you want to concentrate just on family. The only thing i think we can say with confidence that we know is we can reduce nonmarchital births. They are controversial. Republicans are likely to the oppose them. There is a huge battle in colorado right now. Explain what youre referring to. I think there is a lot of controversy here and i think its because many of the organizations are involved with Family Planning are involved with abortion and the that raises red flags with republicans but to be concrete about the situation in colorado, one of the people gave the state a lot of money to launch a larc, long acting reversible contraception. It was good social science, and they showed a big reduction, first of all, the mothers themselves, the women themselves, some of whom are mothers choose larc because it doesnt rely on memory. They get a larc, an iud is the most popular kind and it lasts for up to ten years. They dont have to worry about it. Second the thing of course, it also reduces the birthrate and then most interesting of all, it reduced the abortion rate. So you would think republicans would support this but no, the legislation is going to let the program die. They wont support the program. Lets get feedback. What really bothers me is that in a book, was it james c. Scott talks about thinking like a state. He talks the difference in Practical Knowledge and fit your model of understanding how to evaluate things and he describes it like a ship captain steering a ship across an ocean. When the ship captain gets to the port of baltimore, he or she turns that ship over to a harbor master because the harbor master has knowledge how to take the ship out and in of port. Its like what grass roots people do. They are expert because of Common Knowledge abo