SFLRN

I found this article by Paul Krugman (Economist turned Partisan) rather interesting.
““Poverty in early childhood poisons the brain.” That was the opening of an article in Saturday’s Financial Times,” As the article explained, neuroscientists have found that “many children growing up in very poor families with low social status experience unhealthy levels of stress hormones, which impair their neural development.” The effect is to impair language development and memory — and hence the ability to escape poverty — for the rest of the child’s life.” http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/18/op...=1&oref=slogin
Krugman then goes on to praise President Lyndon Johnson’s “War on Poverty” for decreasing poverty in the U.S. He asserts that the result of those policies was a drop in poverty among children from 23% in 1963 to 14% in 1970. Mind you he doesn’t care to factor out other variables that would lower these rates (or mention how such policies tend to help first, and then hurt the overall economy on the whole over the course of a few years). Claiming the U.S. has lost focus on fighting poverty he notes that in 2006, 17.4% of children lived below the poverty line. Unfortunately, Krugman goes on to blame this entirely on America’s “shift to the right.” He doesn’t mention that real outlays for such programs have consistently increased, or elaborate on any possible developments that might cause this rate to increase (outside of the evil Republicans). One, perhaps overlooked, factor is the incarceration rate of males and its effect on marital structures. Excerpts from Tim Harford's new book, The Logic of Life. - By Tim Harford - Slate Magazine
“According to economists Kerwin Kofi Charles and Ming Ching Luoh, where a large number of a particular racial group is in prison, women of the same age and race in that state do not enjoy the gains from marriage, or a stable relationship, that women in a more equitable situation do.”
One should remember that it was in 1973 that the “War on Drugs” was launched. After which the prison population in the U.S. continued to climb. As more and more males were imprisoned, marriage markets would undoubtedly change as a result. This would then increase the amount of single-mothers since men would have less of an incentive to marry when the supply of men decreases. Not to mention the negative effects such drug-related incarceration has on pre-existing families. To draw this back into poverty, households headed by single mothers tend to be much more likely to be impoverished. The increase in the incarceration rate after the 1973 would increase the number of single mother households, which would also increase the number of children living in poverty (and homes that have less stability). Sorry if this was unclear, or long. Any thoughts?