New Column: Tackling Intergenerational Poverty, Symptoms First

A number of commentators in education (and beyond) have recently taken it upon themselves to restart a discussion about whether low-income families' reproductive and marital choices are the key variables trapping them in poverty. In a column for TPM today, I offer some explanation for why this is entirely the wrong way to think about poverty, social mobility, and human behavior:

But that's not really how humans make decisions. Working parents with unstable employment, unpredictable work schedules, immiserating child care costs and housing that's segregated both by race and income struggle to stay married. They struggle to remain involved at their kids' schools, which are overwhelmingly likely to be both underfunded and staffed with ineffective teachers. We deny them any reasonable hope for longterm health, stability and success. So when Brooks writes, "It’s not only money and better policy that are missing in these circles; it’s norms," he's being willfully blind. Stable marital norms are difficult to develop, refine and maintain at any income. In the face of extraordinary adversity—consider that approximately half of American students are growing up in low-income families—we should expect what he terms "an anarchy of the intimate life."

Click here to read the whole thing."