Politifact Fact-Checks Rubio On His Child Poverty Remark

[Rapunzel]

http://www.breitbart.com/InstaBlog/2014/01/10/Politifact-Fact-Checks-Rubio-On-His-Child-Poverty-Remark

Politifact Fact-Checks Rubio On His Child Poverty Remark
by Javier Manjarres 10 Jan 2014, 2:39 PM PDT


Florida Senator Marco Rubio’s recent “Income Mobility and the American Dream” speech has thrown the media into a bit of a frenzy, as left-leaning publications have been quick to come out and describe Rubio as being out of touch with poverty issue in the United States.

Rubio’s remarks that sent the left into full-meltdown was his assertion that marriage decreased the “probability of child poverty by 82 percent.”

Enter Politifact.

“Until at least a few decades ago, our economy proved sufficiently dynamic and innovative to replace old jobs with new ones, but that hasn’t been happening in recent years,” Rubio said. “Social factorsalso play a major role in denying equal opportunity. The truth is that the greatest tool to lift people, to lift children and families from poverty, is one that decreases the probability of child poverty by 82 percent. But it isn’t a government program. It’s called marriage.”

He continued, “Fifty years ago today, when the War on Poverty was launched, 93 percent of children born in the United States were born to married parents. By 2010, that number had plummeted to 60 percent. It shouldn’t surprise us that 71 percent of poor families with children are families that are not headed by a married couple.”-Politifact

With out getting into the factual weeds of Politifact’s build up to their ruling on Rubio’s claim, we offer the short and sweet ruling.


Our ruling
Rubio said that marriage “decreases the probability of child poverty by 82 percent.” Our research suggests that a more current and more accurate statistic to back up his claim would be a decrease of 71 percent. That’s lower, but not dramatically so. We rate his claim Mostly True.

[truth_seeker]

Not a surprise. Let me guess the couple is older, better educated, possibly two breadwinners. Came from two parent homes, themselves.

The "average" rate of single parenthood overall, obscures the dismal rate for blacks. Fifty years after the launch of the War on Poverty, black people rarely marry.

Programs for permanent poverty enable irresponsible lifestyles. The penalize earnings, which teaches people to not work.

[jmyrlefuller]

The flip side is the correlation-vs-causation problem. Poor people are less likely to be financially secure enough for a partner to be willing to marry them and risk tethering themselves to a money pit. Sex drive, on the other hand, stays constant.