Papa don't preach - but family-friendly work policies would be nice

[Alfred Stevens, "The Widow," 19th c.]

"Single moms are rarer in America than France, Sweden, New Zealand, the UK, or the Netherlands" screams today's headline by Matthew Yglesias on vox.com.

"And honestly, it's no big deal," sighs an exasperated Swiss friend of mine, weary of conservative American Facebook memes. Unmarried mothers apparently do just fine in Switzerland (though admittedly the Swiss rate of 20.2% of births to unmarried women is considerably lower than the American rate of 40.7%).

Actually, though, it is a big deal in the United States, for several reasons.

1. An unmarried mother is not necessarily a single parent, and America has a higher percentage of single parents than any of those other countries.

Some couples choose not to marry, but they raise their children together. They are unmarried, but they are not single parents. Others marry briefly, but they divorce while their children are small. They become single parents.

The majority of children in France and Sweden are now born to unmarried mothers, but only about 20% live in single-parent families. Compare that to the United States, where over 40% of children are born to unmarried mothers, and about 30% live in single-parent families. America may have fewer unmarried mothers than France or Sweden, but it has half again as many single parents--and being a single parent isn't easy.

2. Single parents fare better in countries whose policies support working women than in the one developed country - the United States - whose policies don't.

And not just single parents. As Judith Warner details in an excellent New York Times piece published yesterday, women fare better in countries and states that mandate paid family leave (including maternity leave) and sick days; and that provide affordable early childhood education, child care, and workplace flexibility for all workers, not just highly paid professionals.

In other words, women in general - and single parents in particular - fare far worse in America than in any other developed country, because the United States is the only developed country that does not provide at least some of these benefits to all who need them.

3. America's haphazard family policies and programs have led to America's high rate of economic inequality.

Ms. Warner's article is titled "To Reduce Inequality, Start with Families."  We Americans, to our shame, have failed to support families, and our inequality score is 41 on the Gini scale (where 0 is perfect equality and 100 is perfect inequality)--worse than that of France (33), Sweden (25), New Zealand (36), the United Kingdom (36), the Netherlands (31), or Switzerland (34). "If we want to strike at the roots of inequality in America," Ms. Warner writes,

we’ve got to start at its source, in the family, at the very beginning of children’s lives. We have to make it possible for mothers — two-thirds of whom are now breadwinners or co-breadwinners for their families — to stay in the work force without the sort of family-related job interruptions that can greatly limit their lifetime earnings and even push some families into bankruptcy. We need to make it possible for all parents to give their kids the kind of head start that is increasingly becoming an exclusive birthright of the well-off.

4. As long as Americans refuse to provide the social supports that allow women to flourish, single- parent families - 86% of whom are headed by females - will continue to bear the brunt of economic inequality.

On April 20, the same day that Matt Yglesias listed unmarried motherhood statistics and Judith Warner's piece appeared in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal published an article headlined "Ignoring an Inequality Culprit: Single-Parent Families."  In it, Robert Maranto wrote that "the strongest statistical correlate of inequality in the United States" is "the rise of single-parent families during the past half century." If only we could persuade poor people and racial minorities to get married, he seems to think, poverty would decrease, upward mobility would increase, and we would solve all manner of emotional, psychological, educational, economic, and behavioral problems.

To be sure, growing up in a two-parent family is a child's best hedge against poverty, not only in America but in the other OECD countries as well (even Switzerland). But the reality is that a high percentage of children around the world are growing up in single-parent homes.

And the shameful reality is that if those children are American, they will suffer more than they would if they were French, Swedish, British, Swiss, Kiwi, or Dutch. In spite of the fact that many Americans think America is a Christian nation. In spite of repeated biblical admonitions to care for families without husbands and fathers.

But Americans don't have to wait for health care ... do we?

[Lovis Corinth, Self-portrait with skeleton, 1896]

The Commonwealth Fund's just-released annual report on health care in 14 developed countries shows that, once again, America spends more than anybody else on health care--50% more per capita than the next-most-expensive nation, Norway, and 182% more than the least expensive nation in this survey, Italy.

Well, yes, say some proud Americans, and we get what we pay for. We have the best health care in the world.

Maybe not. Other surveys regularly report that Americans die younger than people in other developed nations. Commonwealth reports that America leads the pack in avoidable deaths per 100,000 population: 96 in America compared with 55 (France) to 83 (U.K.) in the other nations surveyed. I was surprised to learn that America has fewer doctors per 1000 population than all the other countries except Japan.

OK, say defenders of America's health care, but people in those other countries have to wait much, much longer to see a doctor, and they wait nearly forever for elective surgery such as hip replacement.

Nope.

Commonwealth surveyed wait times in eleven of the countries, and here's where America stands:

• If you're sick and need a same-day or next-day appointment, you're more likely to get it in Australia, France, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Sweden, or the U.K.
• If you need care after hours, you're more likely to find it in Australia, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Switzerland, or the U.K.
• America has a lot of specialists, but you're still more likely to get a speedy appointment with one in Germany or Switzerland.
• America is quick to schedule elective surgery, but not quite as quick as Germany and the Netherlands. France, New Zealand, Switzerland, and the United States are all a little slower than those two, but not by much.

Ethical question: If a nation has poor access to basic health care but good access to expensive specialized health care, what does that say about its priorities?

Practical question: If Germany, which spends about half of what the U.S. spends per capita on health care, can insure nearly everybody and still maintain speedier access to all forms of health care, why can't we?

Maybe the fighting is almost over ...

[The Brooklyn Tabernacle Choir singing at
President Obama's second inauguration]

"Faith in America's Future" - that's the theme of today's inauguration activities.

Watching the prayers, the songs, the speeches, the crowd massed on the Washington Mall, I felt the faith. We don't have to hate each other. We can work together for a future that will be good for our country and for us as individuals. We can, as the President charged us to do, make the "values of life and liberty and the pursuit of happiness real for every American."

Inaugurations are times for setting aside differences and wildly celebrating.  While Richard Blanco read his inaugural poem, even John Boehner looked teary-eyed.

The political divisions will be back in full force tomorrow, of course. And yet we Americans are in the midst of some really big changes--changes that may make today's partisan squabbles look hopelessly antiquated in just a decade or two. Today's events are highlighting these changes.

This morning a Hispanic woman justice of the Supreme Court administered the oath of office. An African-American civil rights leader and a Cuban-American Episcopal priest, once a refugee, prayed. A gay Cuban-American, the son of exiles, wrote and read the inaugural poem. Music was provided by a white woman, a black woman, a white man, and the magnificent multi-colored Brooklyn Tabernacle Choir.

As a Boomer woman of mostly British descent whose paternal ancestors came to America in 1634, I felt wonderfully, happily, and mercifully irrelevant. Once people like me--well, people like my father--ran America. They did a good job of it in their day, and we honor them as war heroes, institutional founders, philanthropists, and thought leaders. But the day of white Protestant male supremacy is almost over.

It's been a rocky ride as women, people of color, gays, immigrants, and people with unusual religions have moved onto the stage. We've clashed. We've attacked. We've huddled in fear with people of our own kind. But looking at this morning's participants I couldn't help thinking: the changes are almost complete.

Non-Hispanic whites now make up less than 2/3 of the American population; in less than 30 years we will be a minority. WASPs--white Anglo-Saxon Protestants--are already a minority.

When the 113th Congress convened, 101 women took their seats. Three women sit on the Supreme Court. A woman is a serious contender for the 2016 presidential nomination.

People of both parties seriously working on immigration reform and on equal justice for non-heterosexuals. There is rising concern for those marginalized by poverty, race, gender, sexual orientation, and inadequate healthcare and educational resources.

Most of these changes have occurred during the tumultuous administrations of our three Boomer Presidents, Bill Clinton (1993-2001), George W. Bush (2001-2009), and Barack Obama (2009-present). These have been contentious years: change is never easy. It often feels dangerous. It divides people, and nations.

But looking at the people on the inaugural platform this morning, I felt renewed hope. In another decade or two, the changes that are rocking the Boomer years may have produced an America in which people are truly equal--or at least a lot more equal than we are today. "America’s possibilities are limitless," President Obama exhorted the nation, "for we possess all the qualities that this world without boundaries demands: youth and drive; diversity and openness; an endless capacity for risk and a gift for reinvention."

Step up to the plate, youngsters. It's almost your turn.

A short rant about memes and rants

We Americans managed to make it past the 2012 election without descending into civil war. We somehow made it past the fiscal cliff without armed conflict (though who knows what will  happen over the debt ceiling). But once again we are at each other's throats, this time over gun regulation.

It was with great relief that I read the title of a forthcoming book from Johns Hopkins University Press: Reducing Gun Violence in America: Informing Policy with Evidence and Analysis.

The book won't be available for another couple of weeks, so I haven't seen it yet. I don't know if it is cogently argued, balanced, or even readable. If it's really based on evidence and analysis, though, I hope it will inform policy. So far there is little evidence that today's policymakers analyze any proposed measures much beyond the Congressional bottom line: Will such-and-such a policy help or hurt my reelection chances?

Unfortunately, Congressional reelection chances depend on a public that far too often forms its opinions from Facebook memes and emailed rants rather than from evidence and analysis. Alas, many of the "quotes" turn out to be inventions, especially if they are attributed to Thomas Jefferson. Much of the "history" has little to do with what actually happened (see "The Hitler Gun Control Lie," for example). And much of the data, even when not fabricated, is used in misleading ways.

Memes and rants do not create an informed electorate. They do not help us solve big problems, and they do not help us plan for a healthy future. What they do, if we let them, is drive us to political extremes and make us pawns of special interests.

If we do Facebook or email, we can't avoid memes and rants. We should, however, do our best to keep them from eating our brain cells.

Violence : It isn't just about the guns

This is not a blog post about gun control. Everything that can possibly be said about that subject, pro or con, has already been said millions of times since Friday. We are talking too much, too soon. In the words of my rabbi, “Judaism teaches that when there is nothing to say we should say nothing….Sometimes only silence gives voice to what has happened."

We Americans should all be sitting shiva.

But when, next week, we rise from our knees and begin working – together, I hope – to reduce the terrible problem of violence in our country, we must realize that our disorder goes much deeper than simply owning too many guns, and that any effective solution will have to go much deeper too.

When they are distressed, some people clean house or do push-ups  I collect data. All week I have been amassing numbers and arranging them in rows and columns, trying to shed light on the question: Why are some nations violent while others are not?

To answer that question would take a lifetime of research and more wisdom than Solomon’s. The best I could do was to look at the homicide rates of the 34 OECD nations, which are the countries that most resemble the United States in culture and economics, and to compare them with rates in other categories. The best I can offer are correlations, not causes.* Here is what I have learned in the last four days.

1. Despite what liberals like myself would like to believe, the homicide rate does not correlate, either negatively or positively, with the gun-ownership rate per se.** South Korea, for example, has a very low gun-ownership rate but a high homicide rate. Austria, Norway, and Switzerland, on the other hand, have relatively high gun-ownership rates but low homicide rates. Japan has low rates all around – very few guns, very few homicides – while the United States has high rates of both gun ownership and homicide.

2. Despite what some preachers (and atheists) have claimed, the homicide rate does not correlate, either negatively or positively, with religiosity. The United States is highly religious and highly homicidal. Japan is barely religious and has almost no homicides. Most nations, though, are an unpredictable mixture of spirituality and savagery.

3. There appears to be some correlation between high homicide rates and a high degree of economic inequality. This seems particularly evident in Mexico, Estonia, the United States, and Chile, who all have lots of homicides and a great gap between rich and poor.

4. The homicide rate correlates most strikingly with three other rates:

• The higher a nation’s homicide rate, the more likely it is to have a high rate of military expenditures.
• The higher a nation’s homicide rate, the less likely it is to have an effective healthcare system.
• The higher a nation’s homicide rate, the less likely its students are to earn high scores in mathematics.

In other words, if you want to identify homicidal OECD nations, look for the ones with the strongest militaries and the weakest social services. 

In case you’re wondering, of the 34 OECD nations, the United States has the third-highest homicide rate. We also have the highest number of guns per 100 residents and the fourth-highest rate of military expenditures (for what is by far the most expensive military in the world). At the same time we have the third highest income-inequality rate. In healthcare outcomes we are in 24th place, and in mathematical achievement we are tied with Portugal and Ireland for 25th place.

Sixty years ago President Eisenhower warned us about the path we were taking:

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. ... Is there no other way the world may live?

Today President Obama announced that Vice-President Biden will "lead an exploration of options" regarding "the renewal of an assault weapons ban, limits on high-capacity ammunition magazines and an end to loopholes allowing gun purchases with no background checks."

Such options, if legislated and enforced, might well decrease our appalling homicide rate. They will not, however, reduce our huge military outlay. They will not make our healthcare and educational systems competitive with those of other nations. And until we prioritize people over power, we are likely to continue down our violent path.

--------------------------------------------------
* This research is about correlation, not causation. Two facts - we'll call them A and B - coexist. A may cause B. On the other hand, B may cause A. Some other fact may cause both A and B. Or A and B may have nothing to do with one another. For example, eating chocolate may cause migraine headaches. On the other hand, an incipient migraine headache may cause a person to crave chocolate. Or possibly some alteration in brain chemistry may cause a person both to crave chocolate and to get a migraine. Or maybe chocolate and migraines are totally unrelated. It takes wisdom, common sense, and often hindsight to sort out how, and if, coexisting facts are causally related.

** I have not studied OECD gun laws, so I do not know what kinds of guns are involved in these countries, who can legally purchase them, or what background checks or training are required before purchase. Nor do I know how laws may have changed over the last couple of decades, or how homicide and gun-ownership rates may have changed in response to changed legislation. Any of those factors could affect their homicide rates.

"We're the greatest" - an empty boast or a call to action?

I believe we can seize this future together -- because we are not as divided as our politics suggest; we're not as cynical as the pundits believe; we are greater than the sum of our individual ambitions; and we remain more than a collection of red states and blue states. We are, and forever will be, the United States of America. And together, with your help, and God’s grace, we will continue our journey forward, and remind the world just why it is that we live in the greatest nation on Earth.

--President Barack Obama, 7 November 2012

Yesterday I joined a Facebook exchange about whether the United States is indeed the greatest nation on Earth. By quite a few objective criteria, I argued, we trail other nations: health care accessibility, lifespan, maternal mortality, education, infrastructure development, employment, equality of opportunity ... well, the list is frighteningly long. We are clearly not the greatest nation on earth by any standards that people from other nations would accept, and we are becoming less great every year (for a European view of America's decline, read this sobering article - in English - from Monday's Der Spiegel).

Yesterday I also told my two little dogs - Muffin the poodle mix and Tiggy-Winkle the terrier - that they are the best little dogs in the world. By quite a few objective criteria, I am deluded about my dogs. Tiggy  digs holes in upholstered furniture, and she barks so much that she was nearly kicked out of obedience school ("Just give up," the trainer advised; "she's going to bark, whatever you do"). Muffin snores, refuses to cooperate with her groomer, and bites large dogs. But I love my dogs passionately. I wouldn't trade them for any Westminster champions or obedience winners. Several friends, watching me interact with Tiggy and Muffin, have said they would like to be my dogs.

Some people who say America's the greatest really believe that we have the best health care, the best education, the highest incomes, the most liberty, the least corruption, and the most opportunities to succeed. Sadly, these people are deluded. That may have been true in the 1950s, but it is not true today.

However, I suspect that most people who say America's the greatest, including our president, aren't thinking about data at all. They are saying they love America passionately and that they wouldn't consider moving elsewhere even if they found a country that surpasses America in every quantifiable area. They are saying they believe in our founding fathers' vision of America as summarized by Abraham Lincoln: "a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal." They are saying they love the spacious skies, the amber waves of grain, the purple mountain majesties, the fruited plain - and especially the patriot dream that sees beyond the years (I really think "America the Beautiful" should be our national anthem). They are saying they are willing to work hard to make the dream the reality.

The people who truly believe America is greater than any other country need to check their data. They might also want to read Jesus' story about the Pharisee and the publican (Luke 18:10-14) or Percy Bysshe Shelley's "Ozymandias" or Carl Sandburg's "Four Preludes on Playthings in the Wind." Hubris does not make America strong. To the contrary, by blinding us to our problems, it keeps us from fixing them.

But the people who know that America has serious problems and yet love her anyway - love her so much that in their enthusiasm they sometimes say America is the greatest nation on Earth - are the people who can lead our country back to equality of opportunity, who can work to improve our schools, our health care, our roads, our businesses, our environment, our immigration policies, and our working conditions. Most important of all, these are the people who can encourage us to be concerned not only for ourselves but also for one another.

When people in other countries hear Americans say America is the greatest nation on Earth, they tend to think this is an empty boast from a nation of bullies (after all, we do have the biggest military on earth, outspending the next 13 countries combined). If, however, they understood us to mean We love America and want to make it great, I suspect they would be more indulgent toward us, even if they didn't care for our word choice. In the interest of international understanding, we would probably do well to change our diction.

In the late 1930s, as nationalism intensified and much of the world was on the brink of war, Lloyd Stone and Georgia Harkness wrote words to the tune Finlandia that express American patriotism at its best. Here are two of its verses:

This is my song, O God of all the nations,

A song of peace for lands afar and mine.

This is my home, the country where my heart is;

Here are my hopes, my dreams, my sacred shrine.

But other hearts in other lands are beating,

With hopes and dreams as true and high as mine.

My country’s skies are bluer than the ocean,

And sunlight beams on cloverleaf and pine.

But other lands have sunlight too and clover,

And skies are everywhere as blue as mine.

O hear my song, O God of all the nations,

A song of peace for their land and for mine.

This is the language of hope and love, not of bluster.

It is the language President Obama used in his victory speech:

What makes America exceptional are the bonds that hold together the most diverse nation on earth. The belief that our destiny is shared; that this country only works when we accept certain obligations to one another and to future generations. The freedom which so many Americans have fought for and died for come with responsibilities as well as rights. And among those are love and charity and duty and patriotism. That's what makes America great.

It is the language that can lead us to "crown [our] good with brotherhood / From sea to shining sea." And beyond.