Poor Thinking

Not a black and white matter

Children who grow up in welfare families are likely to end up on welfare themselves as adults. Correct? Not according to a University of Michigan study of 1,391 young welfare-dependent Americans during a 14-year period beginning in 1968. Says Economist Martha S. Hill, the study's primary researcher: "The results certainly make you question the stereotype."

Hill and nine other social scientists analyzed the generational effects of poverty and discovered that 57% of children from poor families, both black and white, did not remain impoverished after leaving home. Although some do end up on the welfare rolls later, Hill found "that's not the most likely occurrence."

Among the group studied, blacks were eight times as likely as whites to have been raised in welfare families. But, said the study, "blacks from welfare-dependent families were no more likely to become welfare dependent than similar blacks from families who had never received welfare." Poverty, Hill suggests, is not necessarily, and indeed not usually, transmitted by parents. ·