Strayan,
I would think the type of family has a very big bearing on poverty rates.

EG
“In Australia, Canada and the United States, over 50% of children in solo-mother families are living below the Luxembourg Income Study poverty line. In Australia, Norway and the US, such children account for over half the children in poverty. In other countries, government policies mitigate the effects. Denmark, Finland, and Sweden also have a high percentage of children in solo-mother families, yet fewer than 10% live below the poverty line”. http://www.unicef.org/pon96/insolo.htm

The vast majority of single parent families occur from divorce, and of course this affects the parents as well as the children. I can remember reading of a study in the US that found that always married couples would have combined assets of about US $400,000 upon retirement, which was enough for a house, a car, some money in the bank etc. However a divorced mother or father would have average assets of about US $160,000 each, which was hardly enough for a house.

So if someone wants to have a caste society, with many more “have nots” than “haves”, they would advocate wide scale divorce to add to the list mentioned previously (eg no estate tax, reduced tax rates on corporate profits and high income earners, tax shelters for the rich, reduce spending on healthcare and education, reduced power of unions etc)

Timkins, I am curious, are you married? All your posts indicate your concern at the rate of divorce being an underlying cause of many of our society's ills. Therefore, I was wondering if you were married yourself. You have revealed in other posts that you have a daughter, yet you never talk about a spouse.

Would appreciate your response. Thank you.

Trinity
I would think that “Timkins” has nothing to do with the topic, but I would think that CIS is well aware of how wide-scale divorce adversely affects society, (both economically and socially), because CIS staff such as Bary Maley have researched and written extensively on the subject.

Organisations such as Saint Vincent de Paul would see first hand the adverse affects of divorce and separation, and I have known individuals within St Vincent de Paul speak about it, although I don’t know if St Vincent de Paul have made public announcements on the matter.

Perhaps this is an area that both CIS and St Vinnies can agree on, and work together to reduce the problem. If left only to the government, then I don’t see much change occurring, and the generational affects of divorce and separation will likely continue, together with welfare cycles, child poverty etc.

So Timkins, you think if we counteract irresponsible parenting, then bam! No more poverty.

QUOTE: So Terje, you really think poor parenting is the root cause of poverty?

RESPONSE: No. It is certainly a significant factor however. My comment was made in the context of intergenerational wealth and the factors involved. I think that what people leave for their kids in material terms is significant in only a small percentage of cases. More significant is what people leave their kids in terms of attitude, outlook, work ethic, character etc. However people can't entirely control how their kids turn out

What is more important – equality or actual living standards? And equal with whom? One of the drivers of economic reform since 1983 was an understanding that Australian incomes were going backwards in comparison with many other countries, that productivity here was very low compared to most other industrialised countries, and that if the rigidities in our economy weren’t addressed, we might become the “poor white trash” of the Asia-Pacific..

The Weekend Australian had an article on income equalities (Disputed value of a fair day’s pay, 9-10/7). The article (and the Vinnies) seem to overlook three crucial points in the debate about rising income inequalities.

First, such inequalities are inevitable from economic reforms designed to remove rigidities and encourage enterprise, innovation and higher productivity.

Second, such reform has been, and is, vital to generate rising employment and business opportunities and incomes and to underpin government spending. The success of reforms since the 1980s is well documented.

Without those reforms, real income increases for the poorest in our community would have been far lower than they have been, and government expenditure on health, education and other social services would have grown much more slowly than they have done. We might be more equal, but everyone, including the poorest, would be worse off than they are in terms of income and social services.

Third, The Australian quoted employment income figures relating to the bottom tenth of wage and salary earners. Leaving aside that, of course, people grow up, retire and die, the people in the bottom tenth now will not be the same people as they were 15 or 20 years ago. Many will have moved up from this bracket because of increased opportunities and higher productivity, and with relatively rapid growth in employment, the bottom tenth will include people who under the old regime would not have had jobs. That is, many individuals who were formerly in that bottom tenth or not working will have increased their employment incomes by more than the 5 per cent figure for the group quoted in The Australian article. (More follows)