WELFARE REFORM PROPOSAL:

Poor Men Less Eligible For Marriage

You won't catch me poking fun at President Bush for emphasizing marriage as
a way out of poverty for poor women and their children. Not only does
common sense endorse the president's goal, but so do academic studies:
Children growing up in one-parent families are five times as likely to be
poor as those growing up in two-parent homes.

So the problem with Bush's welfare reform proposal is not its goal of
encouraging marriage. That's laudatory. The problem is the strategy:
Neither Bush nor his advisers --- mostly wealthy and well-educated --- have
a clue about the barriers to marriage faced by the poor and working classes.

Here's just one: Since the 1970s, as assembly lines have replaced workers
with robots, as factory jobs have fled overseas and the family farm has all
but disappeared, men without college degrees have seen their earning power
steadily decline. And men without good jobs are not good prospects for
marriage. The president's naive proposals for relationship counseling and
marital enrichment classes will not change that.

Since the beginning of human history, marriage has been largely an economic
institution. Marriage rates have begun to decline in the Western world, not
because of changing sexual mores but because of changing gender roles. As
women, especially college-educated women, have had increased career
opportunities, they have been less likely to marry for money.

But the same technological innovations that have rewarded brains over brawn
allowing college-educated women more economic opportunity --- have
narrowed the workplace options for those without college degrees. For women
with children and few workplace skills, marriage to a stable, responsible
and employed partner remains the best route to economic security. (It is
probably no coincidence that during the last decade of record prosperity,
rates of both divorce and out-of-wedlock births leveled off.) But in this
economy, their male counterparts are less likely to be able to offer that
security.

Men with marginal jobs paying minimum wage are anything but stable. They
tend to drift from one romantic relationship to another. They are
unreliable in paying child support. They are unlikely to be routinely
involved with their children. Worse, they may turn to drugs and petty crime
and end up in prison.

As economic prospects have declined in agricultural areas and factory
towns, drug abuse has increased. Even as the use of crack cocaine has
declined in large cities, rural blacks are falling victim to its crude
appeal. Meanwhile, use of methamphetamine among rural whites has reached
epidemic proportions.

Employers show little enthusiasm for resumes that include an arrest record
or for workers who can't pass a drug test. During the past decade, the need
for labor was so acute that even men with criminal records were hired as
short-order cooks or busboys or construction laborers. But that record
prosperity is over, and those men are now far less likely to find jobs.

So why would any woman --- even a poor woman --- wish to marry such a man?
He'd be more likely to drag his family down than to shore it up. He'd
resent his wife's job, if she finds one; he would tend to be abusive; he
may be tempted to continue his criminal activity.

Don't think for one minute that the poor are so different from you and me
that they don't share our romantic ideals. Researchers conducting a
"Fragile Families Study" of 5,000 children and their unwed parents have
found the following: At the time of the child's birth, three-quarters of
the mothers believed their chances of marrying the fathers were "50-50" or
better. And two-thirds believed marriage would be better for their children.

So what got in the way? Jobs --- or the lack thereof --- were one barrier.
The study found that most of the fathers lacked college degrees and many
had spotty employment records. Nearly 40 percent of the unmarried fathers
had been incarcerated, making their job prospects even less promising.

President Bush wants to set aside $200 million to provide marital
counseling to the poor and to run public service campaigns encouraging
marriage. But until job prospects improve, those programs are unlikely to
cause the sudden crowding of wedding chapels.

Cynthia Tucker is the editorial page editor. Her column appears Sundays and
Wednesdays.