carnes@gargoyle.UUCP (Richard Carnes) (08/26/85)
In *Losing Ground*, Charles Murray claims that the liberalization in Aid to Families with Dependent Children benefits that has occurred since the mid-60s has imposed the following social "costs": High AFDC benefits: --allow single mothers to set up their own households; --allow mothers to end bad marriages; --may make divorced mothers more cautious about remarrying. Most people I know would consider these "costs" to be benefits. Is this keep'em-barefoot sexism on Murray's part, or is it just conservative dogmatism: that welfare benefits *must* have a bad effect on the recipients? Richard Carnes, ihnp4!gargoyle!carnes
berman@psuvax1.UUCP (Piotr Berman) (08/28/85)
> In *Losing Ground*, Charles Murray claims that the liberalization in > Aid to Families with Dependent Children benefits that has occurred > since the mid-60s has imposed the following social "costs": > > High AFDC benefits: > --allow single mothers to set up their own households; > --allow mothers to end bad marriages; > --may make divorced mothers more cautious about remarrying. > > Most people I know would consider these "costs" to be benefits. Is > this keep'em-barefoot sexism on Murray's part, or is it just > conservative dogmatism: that welfare benefits *must* have a bad > effect on the recipients? > > Richard Carnes, ihnp4!gargoyle!carnes There is yet another "cost" of benefits. I read the economical history of Brazil lately. In good old 19 century, the poorer a region was, the smaller was the population growth. Currently those things are upside down. The bad side of benefits is that they allow the poor to multiply. Without any, they would not. This however would work only if we would be as principled as British during the potato famine. Boy, the number of poor never decreased that much!