Magic Statistics

In the past seven years, the number of single-parent families in Scotland has risen by over 17%; such families now comprise more than 10% of all Scottish families.  An EU study shows that only Northern Ireland and Wales have greater proportions of lone parents.

According to Scottish executive statistics, the number of one-parent households has risen to 11,260 in Edinburgh, 6,630 in Aberdeen and 5,550 in Dundee. More than 40% of families in Glasgow are now headed by single parents.

Some are attributing the lion’s share of the upsurge to rising government benefits.

The latest Scottish figures appear to support the findings of the European study by Libertad Gonzalez, a Barcelona academic, who concluded that the number of single-parent households is directly related to the level of state benefits. She claimed that for every £675 in benefits offered to lone parents by the state, the number of single mothers rises by 2%.

In 1994 a single mother in Britain with two children who worked for about 18 hours a week could expect to receive more than £2,000 a year in benefits. By 2001 the figure had risen to £3,500. Scotland’s teenage pregnancy rate, the highest in Europe, and its liberal divorce laws are also believed to have fuelled the trend.

The Conservative Party’s shadow Scottish secretary said generous benefits had contributed to growing dependency on state welfare.  Indeed, he suggested, by failing to take into account marital or co-habitation status of recipients, the system actually encourages family breakdown.

The Sunday Times of London rails against the benefits system as irresponsible and negligent and calls for fundamental changes to encourage parents to stay together.

Benefits breed disaster

The evidence is compelling, the conclusion unavoidable. Political willingness to subsidise single parents is creating a social disaster in Scotland. The number of lone parent households in this country has increased by 17% in seven years. One in ten Scottish households is now headed by a single adult. A state benefit system designed to draw no distinction between cohabiting parents and solitary ones has had appalling consequences. Scotland is now close to the top of the European league table for children brought up without male and female role models.

While acknowledging that single parenthood is to some extent inevitable, the editorialist insists that the system must avoid promoting it.  Children raised without two parents (and, especially, without fathers) are at far greater risk of a host of personal and social problems, including poor performance in school, difficulty holding jobs, and getting into trouble with the law.  All of these impose costs, not only on individuals and families, but also on society as a whole.

A decent and humane state benefits system should foster family cohesiveness.  Scotland’s present system does not.

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The Ukrainian official investigating allegations that healthy newborns were killed for their stem cells says she has been removed from the case.  This happened shortly after she insisted that the probe be expanded to include all of Ukraine’s hospitals with maternity facilities.

Irina Bogomolova, who works in the chief prosecutor's office in the capital, Kiev, claims she was taken off the case because she came too close to the truth while investigating allegations made by women who claim their babies were taken away from them immediately after birth.

She said: "I was sacked for political reasons. I demanded an investigation into all maternity wings in hospitals across Ukraine and I was relieved of duty after making that demand.

"A trade in stem cells exists here… I suspect there is a lot of bribery going on, right up to highest levels.

"Pregnant women, especially from rural areas, are very vulnerable targets as they will obviously believe whatever the doctors tell them. It's easy to take their babies from them and tell them they died or were born dead due to complications."

Earlier this week, the BBC received video footage substantiating allegations that healthy newborn infants were taken from their mothers and killed for stem cells and other body parts.

Previous related post: Healthy newborns killed for stem cells?

Last month the government of Eritrea ordered international relief agency Samaritan’s Purse out of the country.  It has now emerged that, on 4 December, nine truck drivers working for the Christian charity were arrested as they drove toward the Eritrean-Sudanese border.

A U.S.-based evangelical Christian organization, Samaritan’s Purse is the 11th international aid group expelled from Eritrea this year. Officials in Asmara insist that these expulsions are simply protecting the country from the aid dependency rife across Africa.

The detained drivers, most of them known to be evangelical Christians, remain under arrest in Police Station No. 6 in Asmara.

“Aid dependency” is typically associated with government-to-government foreign aid, not aid originating from private charitable donations.  Be that as it may, why arrest and detain the workers if they were on their way out of the country, as per the government's order?  Is this an attempt to foster greater aid dependency extort bribes from Samaritan’s Purse for their release?

Previous related post: Gospel singer released from Eritrean prison

Yes indeed, says an article in yesterday’s National Post.

We [Canadians] are very, very cheap.

Americans give US$900 per person to charitable causes each year, while in Canada, the average is $400. In Quebec, the average is $176, the lowest amount of any province or territory.

Is it just coincidental that relatively uncharitable Quebecers live in the jurisdiction with the most generous and highly developed welfare state in North America?  Probably not, according to the controversial research of philanthropy expert Arthur Brooks, who found that small-government conservatives give more to charity than do liberals who favour higher taxes and spending.  Says a colleague of Dr Brooks:

"When you compare the giving rates between Quebec and Alberta [where average donor rates are $500 a year, the highest in Canada], they look like two very different countries," says David Van Slyke, a professor in the department of public administration at Syracuse University's Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, who studied at McGill University in the late 1980s.

"Alberta very much has a small-government philosophy, pro-market, pro-individual action, supporting those in need through private-sector dollars."
. . .
"In contrast, Quebec has a larger, more established public-sector presence and a much larger and stronger union environment, and each of these contributes to the expectation that it is government's role and responsibility to serve the poor, treat the unhealthy and provide some level of income security among the most fragile of individuals."

Beyond the views on government's role in society, a far more influential factor on patterns of giving is religion.

The Canada Survey of Giving, Volunteering, and Participating has found that Canadians actively involved in their religion are more likely to donate and, on average, donate far more than other Canadians.

Dr Brooks’s research also indicates that those who donate generously to the less fortunate are healthier, happier, and experience more personal fulfillment than those who do not.

h/t: Covenant Zone

Previous related posts:

• Republicans are more charitable than Democrats
• Religious conservatives donate far more than secular liberals
• Small group of Canadians provides lion’s share of charitable giving

The collect for today, the 3rd Sunday in Advent, from the 1662 Book of Common Prayer:

O Lord Jesu Christ, who at thy first coming didst send thy messenger to prepare thy way before thee; Grant that the ministers and stewards of thy mysteries may likewise so prepare and make ready thy way, by turning the hearts of the disobedient to the wisdom of the just, that at thy second coming to judge the world we may be found an acceptable people in thy sight, who livest and reignest with the Father and the Holy Spirit, ever one God, world without end. Amen.

The Epistle: 1 Corinthians 4:1-5
The Gospel: St Matthew 11:2-10