Importance
The Moynihan Report has had long-lasting and important implications. Writing to President Lyndon Johnson, then-Assistant Secretary of Labor Patrick Moynihan argued that, without access to jobs and the means to contribute meaningful support to a family, black men would become systematically alienated from their roles as husbands and fathers. This would cause rates of divorce, abandonment and out-of-wedlock births to skyrocket in the black community (a trend that had already begun by the mid-1960s)—leading to vast increases in the numbers of female-headed households and the high rates of poverty, low educational outcomes, and inflated rates of abuse that are associated with them. Moynihan made a compelling contemporary argument for the provision of jobs, job programs, vocational training, and educational programs for the Black community. Modern scholars, including Douglas Massey, now consider the report one of the more influential in the construction of the War on Poverty.
Read more about this topic: The Negro Family: The Case For National Action
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