Social Forests and Trees

The illegitimacy rate among women with college educations, while it has tripled since 1960, is still only about 8 percent. (The national rate around 1890 was 6%.) 92% of children whose families make over $75,000 per year are living with both parents. On the other end of the income scale, the situation is the obverse. Only about 20 percent of children in families earning under $15,000 live with both parents. There are clearly some statistical irregularities here; one parent presumably makes half of two and the children likely live with the mother who statistically earns less, divorce and separation. But it is interesting that something so obvious to at least superficial evaluation gets so little discussion. Getting a high school degree, not getting pregnant in your teens, delaying marriage are all profound factors, superficially, in success or failure in the culture.

There are problems, of course. Not finishing high school, early pregnancies and the like may be an expression of a problem, not the problem. This population may be stupid, monumentally careless, defiantly self-indulgent or some combination thereof so that treating the fever of the uneducated pregnancy may shortsightedly miss the disease. But these events, so predictive of social and economic failure in both the parents and their children, are pretty striking. And they do not seem to be related to outsourcing, the tax rate of Buffet's secretary or the caloric count of the Big Mac.

Our government has a lot of opinions. It is curious that our leaders offer so few opinions and such little guidance about something so basic.