[kabar]

The breakdown of the family is the underlying cause of much of this. Welfare policies may have an impact, but they are less a cause than a reaction to the declining building block of human civilization, the nuclear family.

Children represent 24 percent of the population, but they comprise 34 percent of all people in poverty. Among all children under 18 years of age, 45 percent live in low-income families and approximately one in every five (22 percent) live in poor families.

[NorthMountain]

yes, quoting statistics is easy.

Welfare policies may have an impact

I think it's unquestionable that it does. You get more of what you subsidize. "Welfare" subsidizes poverty and bastardy. Anyone shocked that we have more of both than we did in the late 1960s when socialist Lyndon Johnson declared 'war' on poverty just isn't paying attention.