All posts tagged: economic progress

The Nation Still Needs a New Birth in Liberty

Published by skeptic

[ad_1] To Reconstruct the Nation In the December 2023 issue, The Atlantic revisited Reconstruction, America’s most radical experiment. Explore the March 2024 Issue Check out more from this issue and find your next story to read. View More I’ve just finished reading “To Reconstruct the Nation” from cover to cover. I found it poignant, inspiring, and a necessary corrective to the 1901 series, which drowned out the sagacious words of Frederick Douglass with those of Woodrow Wilson and the naysayer historians of the Dunning School. The articles illuminate a side of American history not covered in many contemporary textbooks; they detail the pernicious aftereffects of slavery and the creation of so-called Black Codes. Anna Deavere Smith’s This Ghost of Slavery made a compelling case about the racist roots of America’s juvenile-justice system. Few know the history of how Elizabeth Turner was taken from her mother through legal means, or how the Orphans’ Court favored slavers and often found emancipated Black parents incapable of taking care of their children. This issue should be read in schools. …

Why Marriage Should Be a National Priority

Published by skeptic

[ad_1] Earlier this year, I was at a conference on fighting poverty, and a member of the audience asked a question that made the experts visibly uncomfortable. “What about family structure?” he asked. “Single-parent families are more likely to be poor than two-parent ones. Does family structure play a role in poverty?” The scholar to whom the question was directed looked annoyed and struggled to formulate an answer. The panelists shifted in their seats. The moderator stepped in, quickly pointing out that poverty makes it harder for people to form stable marriages. She promptly called on someone else. I sighed. As an economist who studies inequality and families, I have often found myself in the same position as the questioner. I have suggested in similar settings that we need to consider how marriage and household structure affect children’s life outcomes, only to be met with annoyance or evasion. Academics like me tend to be uncomfortable discussing these issues in policy conversations, because we don’t want to come across as shaming anyone, particularly single mothers. We …