The Poverty Rate Declines

This was a refreshing headline:

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The nation's poverty rate dropped last year, the first significant decline since President Bush took office.
The Census Bureau reported Tuesday that 36.5 million Americans, or 12.3 percent -- were living in poverty last year. That's down from 12.6 percent in 2005.
The median household income was $48,200, a slight increase from the previous year. But the number of people without health insurance also increased, to 47 million.

Poverty rates fell during the Clinton years and the welfare rolls dropped even faster as a result of the 1996 welfare reform law that ended welfare as an entitlement. It's not entirely clear why we're seeing a decline now but it's good that we are, of course.

The causes of poverty are myriad. Family structure plays a huge role. If you're a single woman with kids your chances of winding up in poverty rise exponentially. Drugs don't help. Coming from a family in poverty doesn't either. These are cultural things that government has a hard time fiixing. But the 1996 welfare reform did help and it's amazing now that it was so controversial at the time. Now, no Democratic candidate so far as I know is talking about its repeal and a return to the old AFDC system. I don't have much faith that the more than $100 million in marriage money that the Bush administration put into the system--money designed to help the wedded poor stay wed--will do anything. But as long as society continues to send a signal to the young and vulnerable that you should wait to have children until you're married and delay getting pregnant at all until you're out of your, at least, early teens the better off we are as a culture. In an age of red and blue divides, it's nice to know that the welfare reform consensus has held.