# Do blacks really have 70% illigitimate births?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-blacks-really-have-70-illigitimate-births/340566>\
**Category:** Great Debates\
**Created:** [January 18, 2006, 10:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-blacks-really-have-70-illigitimate-births/340566 "2006-01-18T22:40:41Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 7

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**Author:** ![David\_God\_of\_Frogs](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/5f9b8f/32.png) [@David\_God\_of\_Frogs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/David_God_of_Frogs)\
**Post date:** [January 27, 2006, 3:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-blacks-really-have-70-illigitimate-births/340566/121 "2006-01-27T15:56:35Z")

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Yeah, that does kind of rest on the dubious assumption that people have babies to make money.

> [@Askia](#):
>
> > [@David](#):
> >
> > I think it’s one of the greatest underreported facts that a healthy marriage is as much of a predictor of economic success as an education is. (No cite, sorry, like I said, it’s underreported. I’ve heard it from two people involved in population studies, one liberal, and one conservative.)
> 
> See, I’d agree to that… but only because you qualified your statement by saying a HEALTHY marriage. Most people just throw the word “marriage” out there like it’s a cure-all panacea for the poor, when it’s not, it’s the series of successful elements that make up a healthy marriage that help ward off the debilitating effects of poverty.

Well, most unhealthy marriages do end up in divorce anyway. Nevertheless, I read something interesting yesterday on [Xinhua](http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2006-01/25/content_4098304.htm) (I know its a random source, it’s probably published elsewhere.)

> [@](#):
>
> For people who married and then divorced, there was a slow build-up of wealth during the early years of marriage and then a steady decline about four years prior to divorce.
> 
> “Many of these people may have separated before the divorce became official, which would help explain why wealth starts falling so early,” Zagorsky said. “Divorce is often a long and messy process, and you can see this in the four-year decline in wealth.”

Four years is a long time, and it suggests that wealth starts to decline as problems are brought to the surface, not later when people decide how to act on them.

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**Author:** ![Rodgers01](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/b19c9b/32.png) [@Rodgers01](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rodgers01)\
**Post date:** [January 27, 2006, 11:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-blacks-really-have-70-illigitimate-births/340566/122 "2006-01-27T23:52:18Z")

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> [@MMI](#):
>
> **Debaser**
> 
> If it is government subsidization of unwed motherhood that is the problem, then it should be trivial to demonstrate that countries that are generous with benefits for mothers have far higher out-of-wedlock/single mother birthrates than the US.

Well, Scandinavia famously has both very high social welfare and very high rates of children born out of wedlock. (According to [this](http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2004/03/10/death_of_marriage_in_scandinavia/) article, a majority of children in Scandinavia are now born out of wedlock; up to 60% of first born children in Denmark are.)

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