'Doing Something' To Help the Poor Is Often Impoverishing

The desire to help the poor is an understandable one. Almost all of us want to do so, and even those with the most negative views about the welfare state probably agree that there is a strong moral duty to help the poor.

The problem, of course, is that as soon as we shift from "We ought to do something" to the practical problem of "What should we do?", the going gets tough. Despite the admirable and understandable goals of the people wanting to fight poverty, many big-hearted social programs have resulted in a lot more harm than good.

The harm we have done through our anti-poverty programs is sometimes direct in that welfare for the poor sometimes has the effect of making the recipients themselves worse off. But, the costs of our bad policies often don't show up until long after the cure was first introduced.

One of the most obvious areas where our welfare programs have caused far more unintended, undesirable harm than good is in the area of the family. As my former professor at George Mason University, Walter Williams, put it when talking about the black family a few years ago, "The welfare state has done to black Americans what slavery couldn't do, what Jim Crow couldn't do, what the harshest racism couldn't do. And that is to destroy the black family."

The point Williams makes about black families in his Wall Street Journal interview extends to all poor families leaning on the welfare state for help: Over the last 50 years, the welfare state has completely undermined the family unit in America, and there's no easy way to undo the damage that has been done.

The CDC reports that 40 percent of all births in the US involved unmarried women, and that total is 19 times higher than 1940. And, despite the exceptional Murphy Brown stories of unmarried women who have kids and seemingly have it all, the data are unambiguous on the link between marriage and poverty: A large fraction of our poor in America live in single-female households, and 31 percent of all single-female households are living below the poverty line. And, there are many other indicators suggesting the pattern we've seen in family destruction is not a random or cultural one, but, rather, driven by the levers of bad social policy.

The welfare state has created a set of incentives for the poor that encourage failure, rather than success. Thanks to the welfare state, we've made it easier for people to be unemployed, easier for men to ditch their obligations as fathers, easier to get by without an education, and easier to get goods, services, and "free" healthcare without any kind of judgment or ostracism for being poor. The end result for a poor person when he looks back at 30 or 40 years on welfare is that it's too late, and there's no easy way out.

But the 30-50+ years of failed programs are, for society and the poor person, what we call in economics, sunk costs: We can only look ahead from here, so what should we do to address the harm being done by the welfare state to the family?

Shifting to cash transfers to the poor, reforming our schools so that there is more choice, and lowering occupational barriers are all obvious ways to improve lives in America in a hurry. And, there are many other good ideas in the policy arena that could help millions of Americans.

But, our poverty problem is, in some sense, not really a policy problem at all. Many smart people know the incentives currently in place aren't working, and many good ideas have been developed to make welfare as a whole better. The right policies are out there, and they could be implemented if there were a desire to do so.

Our problem when it comes to poverty--the problem that is antecedent to any policy fixes--is a cultural one. It is a problem that has arisen from not wanting to judge anyone and from not wanting to say that some ways of living--finishing school, marrying and staying married, getting a job, getting off of Facebook and reading a Bookbook--are better ways of living than others. It's a problem of relativism and political correctness, and it's the first domino that must fall if we have any long-term hope of truly doing more for the poor.

The chances for cultural change in the short-run are not good. Instead, many more "do something" programs will pop up, and...they will do something. Every now and then, there might even be a sensible policy, such as the work requirement for welfare, that leads to an uptick in responsible behavior. But, real reform of American welfare policy is out of the question until we settle our cultural problems, and these problems run deep and have largely been wished away by the poor, policymakers, and the people wanting to "just do something" for way too long.