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In 1965, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, an assistant secretary in the Department of Labor wrote the Moynihan Report, which made a moral case for significant federal involvement designed to combat the poverty & segregation experienced by many African Americans. Moynihan wrote about the correlation between that the lack of widespread access to good, reliable jobs, decent wages, & significant forms of socially rewarded status & the increase in single parenthood & a weakening family structure. This article discusses the history & controversy surrounding the Moynihan Report, which was never published, & the lessons it offers for today. References. C. Goger

In 1965, Daniel Patrick Moynihan argued that the black family was nearing "complete breakdown" due to high rates of out-of-wedlock childbearing. In subsequent decades, nonmarital childbearing rose dramatically for all racial groups and unwed fathers were often portrayed as being absent from their children's lives. The authors examine contemporary nonmarital father involvement using quantitative evidence from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study and qualitative evidence from in-depth interviews with 150 unmarried fathers. The authors find that father involvement drops sharply after parents' relationships end, especially when they enter subsequent relationships and have children with new partners. These declines are less dramatic for African American fathers, suggesting that fathers' roles outside of conjugal relationships may be more strongly institutionalized in the black community. The challenges Moynihan described among black families some forty years ago now extend to a significant minority of all American children.

This article reviews Daniel Patrick Moynihan's views on employment and young black men in his 1965 report. The author then updates the evidence on their employment status and reviews the causes and policy implications of these trends. Moynihan was extremely insightful and even prescient in arguing that the employment situation of young black men was a "crisis . . . that would only grow worse." He understood that these trends involve both limits on labor market opportunities that these young men face as well as skill deficits of and behavioral responses by the young men themselves. Policies that deal with a wide range of disadvantages and behaviors are needed to reverse these trends.

This article reports on a sample of 538 African American and Hispanic women who were receiving Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) in 1999, 416 of whom left the program by 2005. The Hispanic women consisted of a Mexican-origin group and a second group that was primarily Puerto Rican and Dominican. Combining the experiences of the employed and the non-employed welfare leavers, the authors find at best a modest decline in the average poverty rate among African American welfare leavers between 1999 and 2005. Hispanic leavers showed larger average declines in poverty. Among just the welfare leavers who were employed in 2005, the averages for women in all racial-ethnic groups showed increases in household income and declines in poverty. Among those who were not employed, African Americans had experienced a decline in household income and were further below the poverty line than in 1999, whereas Hispanic women had experienced modest declines or slight increases in their household incomes.

In 1965, Daniel Patrick Moynihan predicted that the exposure of so many black children, especially males, to fatherless families would prevent many from seizing new opportunities through the civil rights revolution. Although Moynihan was excoriated in the academic world and beyond, subsequent events have proven him correct. Today, in part because of the continuing demise of married-couple families, the average black is far behind the average white in educational achievement, employment rates, and earnings; blacks also have much higher crime and incarceration rates. These outcomes have led to growing recognition that the promise of the civil rights revolution will not be achieved until the black family is repaired. This article proposes a series of policies intended to increase and reward work, reduce nonmarital births and increase marriage rates, expand preschool education, and reduce incarceration rates and integrate former prisoners back into society—all designed to reduce lone parenting or deal with its effects.