Why Is Crime and Poverty a Family Affair?

Police tape hangs from a barricade in Philadelphia, Pa., on June 5, 2022. Kriston Jae Bethel/AFP via Getty Images

Commentary

Although crime and poverty rates are two issues that are widely discussed within the American political discourse, the needle hasn’t been moved in minimizing either.

Each side of the political duopoly continues to pontificate its perspective on strategies to alleviate poverty and crime, yet both issues have continued to persist and sometimes even worsen. The Democrats argue that lowering poverty rates via government-funded programs will in turn lower crime rates. The Republicans, on the other hand, believe that reducing crime rates through stricter crime enforcement policies will result in lower poverty rates.

The age-old adage of what came first, the chicken or the egg, comes to mind when these topics are discussed; however, the political volleying of empty rhetoric hasn’t served the American public well. In spite of the multitude of platitudes that have been proposed by each side, the solutions that have been presented have yet to produce results. Crime continues to rise in the United States—and a country that’s supposed to set the example for the rest of the world in being a place of freedom and a land of opportunity continues to experience unacceptable poverty levels.

Why might this be occurring in our nation, and what might be the solution? The problem and the solution center on the family unit.

The Importance of the Family

Family has always been the solution to minimizing crime and poverty within a nation. Before we address how family units affect crime and poverty rates, we must first understand how the family dynamic has changed over the course of time.

Since 1965, there have been significant changes in the dynamics of the American family structure in the United States. For example, in 1968, only 11 percent of children in the United States lived in a home with a single mother. By 2014, that number had risen to 24 percent, while tripling among white children to 19 percent from 6 percent.

Furthermore, in 1965, almost 8 percent (pdf) of all children were born to unwed mothers. About 50 years later, more than 40 percent of children (pdf) in the United States were born out of wedlock, with an increase from 4 percent to about 29 percent among white children.

According to analyses by a nonprofit known as Child Trends, the number of children born to unwed mothers continues to increase regardless of the education level of the mother. Marriage rates continue to decrease, with blacks and Hispanics having the most substantial declines among all racial groups.

Since the deterioration of the family unit is occurring across racial lines, it has a substantial effect on society at large, especially with respect to the gradual increases in the levels of crime and poverty in the country.

Policymakers, sociologists, and psychologists have long understood the association between broken family units and the crime rates within a community. Empirical evidence provides a thorough understanding of the root causes of crime. It starts with the breakdown of the family unit.

According to the Heritage Foundation, for more than 30 years, beginning in the 1960s, the rise in violent crime paralleled the rise in single-mother families. High-crime neighborhoods are characterized by a high concentration of single-mother-led families. The Heritage Foundation found that a 10 percent increase in children living in single-parent homes led to a 17 percent increase in juvenile crime. Similar to juvenile crime, violent crime among teenage offenders closely parallels the number of families that are headed by single mothers.

On the contrary, even in the most crime-ridden neighborhoods within the inner city, more than 90 percent of children that come from safe, stable two-parent households don’t become delinquents, while only 10 percent of children who come from unstable and unsafe homes avoid delinquent behavior.

The research supports the correlation between the breakdown of the family unit and crime, but there’s an even stronger correlation between the breakdown of the family unit and poverty.

With respect to poverty rates, the current focus has been on reducing income gaps between racial groups. Much of the discourse that surrounds this initiative has been aimed toward minimizing disparities between racial groups to produce desired equitable outcomes. This approach is over-simplistic and assumes that these disparities exist solely because of racial inequalities while ignoring distinct differences among family structures between racial groups that portray a much clearer understanding as to why such income disparities exist to begin with.

For example, in most cases, families that experience poverty are single-parent families rather than dual-income families. Robert Samuelson wrote in Investor’s Business Daily that in 1970, 38 percent of black births were attributed to unmarried women, and by 2010, that number had nearly doubled to 72 percent. In 1970, 37 percent of Hispanic births were attributed to unmarried women, which increased to 53 percent by 2010. For white women, the percentage of births to unmarried women quintupled from 6 percent in 1970 to a whopping 36 percent by 2010. These figures have continued to increase to this date.

U.S. Census Bureau figures from 2016 provide a general picture of how the breakdown of the family unit has been conducive to poverty rates. According to Samuelson, the poverty line for a family of four (including two children) was approximately $25,000. A total of 40.6 million Americans had incomes below this threshold. Of these 40.6 million, about 5 million were single parents, and almost 9 million children younger than the age of 18 were living in these single-parent homes. This means that nearly 14 million (a third of all people in poverty) were living in single-parent homes.

It’s time for our elected officials to do away with partisan politics and put their party loyalties to the side for the greater good of the nation. The elimination of crime and poverty and the preservation of our children’s future are issues that all Americans can unite under. The policy initiatives set forth by our Democrat and Republican officials do very little to address the growing problem of poverty and crime within our nation. Family has been and will forever be the bedrock for the success of any civilization. As it stands, it’s the antidote to the two societal ills that continue to plague our nation.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.