Ravenwood - 09/14/05 06:45 AM
The Washington Post reports that the income needed to provide even the most basic needs has skyrocketed in the D.C. Metro area. Their first example:
A single parent with an infant and one preschooler needs to earn $67,849 to meet basic costs in Fairfax County, the region's most expensive suburb, the study found. Those earnings are 50 percent more than the same family would have needed in 1999, the first year the study was conducted.Far be it for me to judge, but a single parent with a preschooler and an infant needs a husband... er spouse. Assuming they aren't taking one or more kids to work with them every day, a huge expense is probably day care. And it's hard to go out and earn that extra money, put in more time, and focus on your career when you're pumping out illegitimate kids.
And 1999 was 6 years ago. Wouldn't that infant and preschooler have grown up by now?
While it is probable that most single parents with two small children are having illegitimate children, it is not always the case.
For example, one of my students had a three year old and was two months pregnant when her oldest daughter died of a long and complicated illness and her husband left. So she had two children under 4 and was a single parent.
Posted by: Suzi at September 14, 2005 1:31 PMThis is all a lead up to a 'constitutional right' to day care from day one.
Posted by: mikem at September 14, 2005 3:03 PMIf the cost of living is so high in that area then why are single mothers staying there? It doesn't make any sense to try to live in an area with such high living costs.
Posted by: Wesley at September 14, 2005 4:58 PMWesley: Probably because welfare pays better, too. The absolute worst thing the Democrats did in expanding welfare programs back in the 60's was to make the urban welfare so much better than the rural that millions of rural poor moved from where they could live healthily on very little to crowded slums. It wasn't the increased cost of living in the city that made this the worst thing, it was the sociological effects. Rural poor have middle-class neighbors to serve as an example to their kids of what going to school, working hard, and keeping out of trouble leads to. Now in the cities, they are raising their kids where the only neighborhood examples of "success" are pimps and drugrunners.
Posted by: markm at September 15, 2005 2:31 PM(c) Ravenwood and Associates, 1990 - 2014
