Washington D.C. – Statistical bombs were dropped on Feb 22 during the panel discussion and program called Black Families Five Decades After the Moynihan Report by Gregory Acs, the director of the Income and Benefit Policy Center in the Urban Institute. Mr. Acs described the intention of the 1965 report saying, “The Moynihan Report focused on the deep root s of Black poverty and argued that the decline of the Black nuclear family would significantly impede progress towards economic and social equality.” He then presented slide after slide exposing the moral and socio-economic state of families overall while focusing on the African American family:
In the early 1960s 1 of 5 Black children were born outside of marriage as compared to one out of every 50 white children. Now 3 of 4 black children and 3 of 10 whit children are born out of wedlock
- In the 1960s 1 of 5 black children and grew up with their biological mother without their biological father. Now more than half of Black children and 1 in 5 white children are raised in fatherless or step-father environments
- Half (52%) of white women 43% of Latino and 25% of Black Women (down from 53% in the 1960s) are married and live with their husbands
- Mr. Acs noted, “The very numbers that alarmed Moynihan in the 60s have only grown worse over time and not just for Blacks…White families today are looking like Black families did 50 years ago” “It leads to the questions: Why have we lost ground and why have we not closed any of these gaps?”
“The answers lie outside of our families with the our labor markets, our schools and our justice system”
Labor :
“Men are working far less than in the past”
- Black men dropped from 80% to 57%
- White men dropped from 84% to 68%
- Consistently black men have far higher unemployment rate than white men
- 1 out of every six Black men who wants to work cannot find work
Education:
“There has been progress”, he surmised.
Some gaps in education have closed as overall about 80-85% of students of all races graduate high school
“But the experience is school is very different depending on race and gender”, he said.
- Black boys are more likely to be left back, suspended than any other race or gender
- Black males have gone from 7% to 12% college educated
- Black Females from 4% to 20% college educated
- White males 17% to 26% college educated
- White females from 10% to 37% college educated
Criminal Justice System (The Moynihan Report did not address)
- 1 out of every 6 Black men have spent some time in prison
- 1 out of every 33 white men
- In 2000 there was an larming statistic – there were more black men in prison than in college: 791,600 to 603,000
- The trend seemed to reverse but it did not…the college attendance increased to 1,006,000 in 2010, while the prison population remained the about same
- Poverty rates have reduced since the 1960s primarily based on the improvements women have made
- The poverty rate between Black kids and White kids is about 3 to 1
What do you think? If things have improved, how has it? The questions haven't changed but the answers should
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