WHO'S THE LATEST PUBLIC ENEMY NO. 1? THE unwed mom. "The epidemic of illegitimacy is our most serious social problem," says Bill Clinton. "It drives everything else," says Charles Murray, the conservative sociologist--"crime, drugs, poverty, illiteracy, welfare, homelessness."
What to do? Most everyone, it seems, has the same answer: cut off payments to mothers who have additional kids while on welfare. "There's no question," the President said in 1993, that reducing welfare benefits "would be some incentive for people not to have dependent children out of wedlock."
"Nonsense," says Daniel Moynihan, the New York Senator and a leading expert on social decay. "We really don't know what to do, and anyone who thinks that cutting benefits can affect sexual behavior doesn't know human nature."
Guess who's won this argument so far. Ten states have already slashed payments to welfare moms who bear more kids, and Congress may soon mandate the same measure nationwide. Yet Moynihan is right, as a new study proves.
The rush to judgment on this issue began in 1992, when New Jersey enacted its "family-cap" law. Since Aug. 1, 1993, women on welfare who have another child are denied additional cash assistance, an amount that varies from $64 to $102 a month depending on family size. Profound "positive" effects were claimed for the new law almost immediately. The key analysis was conducted by June O'Neill, who now directs the Congressional Budget Office. O'Neill, who had been hired by New Jersey to defend a lawsuit aimed at overturning the law, found "strong evidence that the family cap ... generated a significant change in the decision of single mothers to have an additional child." How significant? The reduction in births among women aware that their benefits would decrease ranged up to 29%, she said.
Other social scientists were incredulous. "Her work contradicted everything that had come before," says Sheldon Danziger, a public-policy professor at the University of Michigan. As experts scratched their head, most politicians salivated. O'Neill had confirmed a "silver bullet" solution to a vexing social problem. Only New Jersey's Republican Governor, Christine Whitman, courageously refused to endorse O'Neill's conclusions, preferring to wait for the results of a larger and more objective investigation.