After a half-century of the War on Poverty, an anti-poverty agency in Ohio has concluded that decades of assistance alone just hasn't change lives and instead, blames the ongoing breakdown of the family.
"You're seeing the same people come year after year, and in some cases generation to generation. And so then you think, why is that happening?" says Jennifer Jennette, program manager of the Community Action Commission of Erie, Huron and Richland Counties in Ohio.
The family breakdown has only intensified since the controversial Moynihan Report 50 years ago declared out-of-wedlock births to be a main cause of black poverty. Today, for all women without a college degree, more than half of births are outside marriage, and those children are five times more likely to be poor. In fact, single mothers have come to be the modern face of poverty.
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