Many of our welfare policies, too, have an antifamily design. Supplemental Security Income checks are docked if recipients live with relatives. A mother can lose her rental assistance or public housing unit if she allows the father of her children to live with her in violation of her lease. Households receive a higher total allotment of food stamps

She found that the NIT didn’t reduce employment nearly as much as people feared, but there was a very unexpected spike in divorce. Poor families that were randomly selected to receive the NIT were more likely to split up.

But the sex-education program, because it discourages extramarital sex and promotes marriage, focuses the girls on finding a husband (who more or less has to be a sugar daddy), undoing the effect of the uniforms.