There has been discussion recently about marriage as a means by which women can avoid poverty. Robert VerBruggen, editor of RealClearPolicy, writes that while this may work for white women, it won't work for black women.
The reasons are threefold: black women rarely marry white men, a large fraction of black men are unemployed or incarcerated, and the skewed gender ratio leads to a male failure to commit.
The statistical plot that accompanies his brief article makes it clear that if only married black women were to have children, many black women would remain childless. In some MSAs the number might be as high as three out of four. Those are long odds.
