Bell Curve

200 Cognitive CClass and Social Behavior Welfare Dependency 20 1DRAWING TOGETHER THE FINDINGS ON ILLEGITIMACYAND WELFAREAs social scientists often do, we have spent much effort burrowingthrough analyses that ultimately point to simple conclusions. Here ishow a great many parents around America have put it to their daughters:Having a baby without a husband is a dumb thing to do. Going onwelfare is an even dumber thing to do, if you can possibly avoid it. Andso it would seem to be among the white women in the NLSY. Whitewomen who remained childless or had babies within marriage had amean IQ of 105. Those who had an illegitimate baby but never went onwelfare had a mean IQ of 98. Those who went on welfare but did notbecome chronic recipients had a mean IQ of 94. Those who becamechronic welfare recipients had a mean IQ of 92.'15' Altogether, almost astandard deviation separated the IQs of white women who becamechronic welfare recipients from those who remained childless or hadchildren within marriage.In Chapter 8, we demonstrated that a low IQ is a factor in illegitimatebirths that cannot be explained away by the woman's socioeconomicbackground, a broken family, or poverty at the time the childwas conceived. In particular, poor women of low intelligence seemedespecially likely to have illegitimate babies, which is consistent with theidea that the prospect of welfare looms largest for women who are thinkingleast clearly about their futures. In this chapter, we have demonstratedthat even among women who are poor and even among thosewho have a baby without a husband, the less intelligent tend to he theones who use the welfare system.Two qualifications to this conclusion are that (1) we have no wayof knowing whether higher education or higher IQ explains whycollege graduates do not use welfare-all we know is that welfare isalmost unknown among college-educated whites, but that for womenwith a high school education, intelligence plays a large independentrole-and (2) for the low-IQ women without a high school educationwho become chronic welfare recipients, a low socioeconomic backgroundis a more important predictor than any further influence ofcognitive ability.The remaining issue, which we defer to the discussion of welfare policyin Chapter 22, is how to reconcile two conflicting possibilities, bothof which may have some truth to them: Going on welfare really is adumb idea, and that is why women who are low in cognitive ability endup there; but also such women have little to take to the job market, andwelfare is one of their few appropriate recourses when they have a babyto care for and no husband to help.