Thanks for inviting me to testify on the important topic of challenges facing low-income families. It is an honor to testify before the Human Resources Subcommittee. I applaud your purposes and hope that I can help the Subcommittee members understand our current circumstances regarding work, benefits, and poverty by single mothers a little better.

For well over a decade, my Brookings colleague Isabel Sawhill, a Democrat and former member of the Clinton administration, and I have been analyzing data and writing about the factors that influence both poverty rates and economic mobility.[i] We long ago concluded that education, work, and marriage are major keys to reducing poverty and increasing economic opportunity. We also emphasize the role of personal responsibility in all three of these vital components of building a path to the American Dream. But government programs to help low-income American parents escape poverty and build opportunity for themselves and their children are also important.

In today’s hearing, the Subcommittee is taking testimony about marriage and work, two of these three keys to reducing poverty and increasing opportunity. Brad Wilcox from the University of Virginia will discuss the decline of married-couple families, the explosion of births outside marriage, and the consequent increase in the number of the nation’s children being reared by single (and often never-married) mothers. The increase in the proportion of children in female-headed families contributes to substantial increases in poverty by virtue of the fact that poverty rates in female-headed families are four to five times as great as poverty rates in married-couple families.[ii] If the share of the nation’s children in female-headed families continues to increase as it has been doing for four decades, policies to reduce poverty will be fighting an uphill battle because the rising rates of single-parent families will exert strong upward pressure on the poverty rate.[iii] But perhaps of even greater consequence, children reared in single-parent families are more likely to drop out of school, more likely to be arrested, less likely to go to college, more likely to be involved in a nonmarital birth, and more likely to be idle (not in school, not employed) than children from married-couple families.[iv] In this way, a disproportionate number of children from single-parent families carry poverty into the next generation and thereby minimize intergenerational mobility.

So far public and nongovernmental programs have not been able to reverse falling marriage rates or rising nonmarital birth rates, but there is a lot we have done and can do to increase work rates, especially the work rates of low-income mothers. The goal of my testimony today is to explain the government policies that have been adopted in recent decades to increase work rates and subsidize earnings, which in turn have led to substantial declines in poverty.

I make two points and a small number of recommendations. The first point is that the employment of low-income single mothers has increased over the two decades, in large part because of work requirements in federal programs, especially Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF). The recessions of 2001 and 2007-2009 caused the employment rate of single mothers to fall (as well as nearly every other demographic group), but after both recessions work rates began to rise again.

The second point is that the work-based safety net is an effective way to boost the income of working families with children that would be poor without the work supports. In my view, this combination of work requirements and work supports is the most successful approach the nation has yet developed to fight poverty in single-parent families with children. Here’s the essence of the policy approach: first, encourage or cajole single mothers to work by establishing work requirements in federal welfare programs; second, subsidize the earnings of low-income workers, both to increase their work incentive and to help them escape poverty. The primary work-based safety-net programs are the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), the Additional Child Tax Credit, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), child care, and Medicaid.

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In the long run-up to the Pennsylvania primary, there's been a good deal of candidate discussion of the state's economy and how to fix it.

But missing from the prescriptions of what the federal government would do and how it would do it has been a discussion of where it will happen.

That needs to change because place matters. For all the ink spilled on the declining fortunes of the commonwealth, there are many bright spots around the state that could be catalysts to growth and prosperity.

Recent Brookings research shows strength in varied fields across the state:

Advanced health care, pharmaceuticals, and information technology in Greater Philadelphia.

Health care, architecture and engineering, and banking in Pittsburgh.

Heavy construction, machinery and food processing in Lancaster.

Industrial gases, health care and higher education in the Lehigh Valley.

The state's economy is an amalgam of its 16 metropolitan areas that generate 92 percent of its economic output.

The top six metropolitan areas alone - Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Harrisburg-Carlisle, Allentown-Bethlehem-Easton, Scranton/Wilkes-Barre, and Lancaster - constitute 68.4 percent of the state's population and produce 80.5 percent of the state's economic output.

The research underscores that four key assets overwhelmingly located in metropolitan areas - innovation, modern infrastructure, strong human capital, and quality places - are needed today to drive productivity of firms and workers, improve the wealth and opportunities of families, and ensure sustainable growth. America's metropolitan assets - the universities, the health-care concentrations, and the skilled-labor pools - are the drivers of our national economy and the key to future American competitiveness and success.

So what does this mean for Greater Philadelphia? And what would a more thoughtful federal role look like?

Two realms with extensive current federal involvement are transportation infrastructure and innovation. Cogent efforts from Washington in both these areas could significantly leverage state and local efforts.

Rather than thinly spreading transportation-infrastructure dollars across the country, the federal government should spend strategically.

For Greater Philadelphia, supporting its competitive advantage as the linchpin of Amtrak's Northeast Corridor with federal dollars for more frequent and reliable service would strengthen the region as a rail hub, as has been championed by the Greater Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce.

Additionally, federal transportation policy should empower metropolitan areas with the discretion to spend funds flexibly, whether that's improving the aging SEPTA system, beginning the work of reinventing and burying Interstate 95 to increase access to the Delaware waterfront, or increasing transit access of city residents to suburban jobs.

Regarding innovation, unfortunately, the federal government currently has no unified national strategy to maximize high-quality jobs and spread their benefits throughout the Philadelphia region. Instead, it has a series of highly fragmented investments and programs.

Current programs put strong emphasis on research, but are insufficiently attentive to the commercialization of that research and blind to how innovation and jobs arise from the intense interaction of firms, industry associations, workers, universities and investors - a nexus ready to be capitalized on in Greater Philadelphia as documented by the Economy League of Philadelphia in a report for the CEO Council for Growth.

To this end, the federal government should reorganize its efforts and create a National Innovation Foundation, a nimble, lean organization whose sole purpose would be to work with industries, universities, business chambers, and local and state governments to spur innovation. Similar, successful national agencies are already up and running in competing nations, such as Britain, France, Sweden and Japan.

This effort should include R&D and support for technology-intensive industries such as information technology and pharmaceuticals, but it also must make small and medium-size manufacturers more competitive and train workers in manufacturing and low-tech services to work smarter.

Looking forward, our federal government must realize this is a "Metro Nation" and value and strengthen economic juggernauts such as Philadelphia.

Only by organizing our currently fragmented investments in transportation and innovation - and targeting them where they will provide the greatest return, metropolitan America - will the United States continue not only to compete, but also to lead.

In his wide-ranging interview with The New York Times, Republican presidential nominee Donald J. Trump stressed the importance of fighting ISIS while declaring “we are going to take care of this country first before we worry about everybody else in the world.” For counterterrorism (and I would argue for security in general), such thinking is dangerously wrong-headed: Fighting ISIS and stopping other foreign terrorist threats to the U.S. homeland requires close alliances and deep engagement abroad.

Allies may also have better access to a terrorist stronghold due to geography or historic ties. Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Jordan are within easy bombing range of ISIS’ core: the U.S. homeland is not. Although military action against ISIS’ core in Iraq and Syria is vital, it is often quiet global intelligence cooperation that does much of the day-to-day counterterrorism lifting. Given the geographic span of ISIS operations, it is not realistic for the United States to have strong unilateral capabilities in every possible country where the terrorists might operate and use as a base for anti-U.S. operations. Foreign governments fill this gap, acting as a force multiplier for the United States. Shortly after 9/11, the United States was working with over 100 countries on counterterrorism; several years into the war on terror a senior CIA official testified that virtually every capture or killing of a suspected terrorist outside Iraq involved at least some help from a foreign intelligence service. 

Many allies have skilled intelligence services, and they also use their police and their domestic intelligence services to gather information. These services of course know local languages and are culturally aware. They can also take advantage of the law in their efforts to disrupt terrorism: Terrorism, after all, is a crime. Allies, particularly less savory ones, use a government’s coercive power as well. Although people automatically think torture, governments at times threaten to jail a relative of a suspected terrorist or withhold a business permit or the right to attend university. These seemingly mundane threats are something that the United States cannot do outside its own borders. 

Many of the most basic homeland security tasks do not begin or end with the homeland.

Given these advantages, the primary role of U.S. intelligence is to cajole and strengthen allies, not replace them. The United States might provide technical assistance, as many U.S. allies are far weaker in this area. In addition, U.S. intelligence often acts as a conductor of global liaison services. In 2010, al-Qaida of the Arabian Peninsula tried to bomb two cargo planes as they approached the United States. Efforts to disrupt the plot involved not only the United States and Yemen, but also the countries in transit, including Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Germany, and the United Kingdom. And Saudi Arabia provided a key intelligence tip. 

Many of the most basic homeland security tasks do not begin or end with the homeland. Foreign governments provide information on terrorist suspects, and there is considerable cooperation on those who might travel to the United States. Much of the screening to hinder terrorist travel and operations is done “over there,” not in the United States.

Our world is too small, and terrorists too global, to think of U.S. security narrowly. If we want to fight ISIS and other foes, we need allies. That doesn’t mean we should do whatever our allies want or support them unconditionally. But we must recognize that if we expect them to help America fight its enemies, we must stand by them as well.

In their recent blog for Social Mobility Memos, Brad Wilcox, Robert Lerman, and Joseph Price make a convincing case that a stable family structure is an important factor in increased social mobility, higher economic growth, and less poverty over time.

The interesting question is: what lies behind this relationship? Why is a rise (or a smaller decline) in the proportion of married families associated, for example, with higher growth in average family incomes or a decline in poverty? The authors suggest a number of reasons, including the positive effects of marriage for children, less crime, men’s engagement in work, and income pooling. Of these, however, income pooling is by far the most important. Individual earnings have increased very little, if at all, over the past three or four decades, so the only way for families to get ahead was to add a second earner to the household. This is only possible within marriage or some other type of income pooling arrangement like cohabitation. Marriage here is the means: income pooling is the end.

How do we encourage more people to share incomes and expenses? There are no easy answers. Wilcox and his co-authors favor reducing marriage penalties in tax and benefit programs, expanding training and apprenticeship programs, limiting divorces in cases where reconciliation is still possible, and civic efforts to convince young people to follow what I and others have called the “success sequence.” All of these ideas are fine in principle. The question is how much difference they can make in practice. Previous efforts have had at best modest results, as a number of articles in the recent issue of the Brookings-Princeton journal The Future of Children point out.      

Our success sequence, which Wilcox wants to use as the basis for a pro-marriage civic campaign, requires teens and young adults to complete their education, get established in a job, and to delay childbearing until after they are married. The message is the right one.

The problem is that many young adults are having children before marriage. Why? Early marriage is not compatible, in their view, with the need for extended education and training. They also want to spend longer finding the best life partner. These are good reasons to delay marriage. But pregnancies and births still occur, with or without marriage. For better or worse, our culture now tolerates, and often glamorizes, multiple relationships, including premarital sex and unwed parenting. This makes bringing back the success sequence difficult.

Our best bet is to help teens and young adults avoid having a child until they have completed their education, found a steady job, and most importantly, a stable partner with whom they want to raise children, and with whom they can pool their income. In many cases this means marriage; but not in all. The bottom line: teens and young adults need more access and better education and counselling on birth control, especially little-used but highly effective forms as the IUD and the implant. Contraception, not marriage, is where we should be focusing our attention.

Employment among lower-income men has declined by 11 percent since 1980 and has remained flat among lower-income women. Men and women in the top and middle of the income distribution, on the other hand, have been working as much or more since 1980, creating a growing “work gap” in labor market income between haves and have-nots.   

This paper simulates the effect of five labor market interventions (higher high school graduation rate, minimum wage increases, maintaining full employment, seeing all household heads work full time, and virtual marriages between single mothers and unattached men) on the average incomes of the poorest one-third of American households. They find that the most effective way to increase average incomes of the poorest Americans would be for household heads to work full time, whereas the least effective intervention would be increasing education.

In terms of actual impact on incomes, the simulation of all household heads working full time at their expected wage increased average household earnings by 54 percent from a baseline of $12,415 to $19,163. The research also suggests that even if all household heads worked just some—at expected wages or hours—average earnings would still increase by 16 percent.

The least effective simulation was increasing the high school graduation rate to 90 percent and having half of those “newly” graduated go on to receive some form of post-secondary education. The authors note that the low impact of increasing education on mobility is likely because only one in six of bottom-third adults live in a household in which someone gains a high school degree via the intervention.

Because single parents are disproportionately represented among low-income families, Sawhill and coauthors also explored the impact of adding a second earner to single-parent families through a simulation that pairs low-income, single-mother household heads with demographically similar but unrelated men. That simulation increased the average household earnings of the bottom-third only modestly, by $508, or about 4 percent.

Efforts to increase employment among heads of the poorest households must take into consideration why those household heads aren’t working, they note. According to data from the 2015 Census, the most cited reason for women not working is “taking care of home and family” and for men it is being “ill or disabled.”  

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