The Real Generation Gap by Mike Males

Three Decades after the start of the War on Poverty, and 26 years after the Kem- er Report challenged the nation to bring together litwo societies" divided by race, the United States now confronts even deeper rifts: divisions as much of age as of color. Statistics paint a portrait of a country split along complex demograph- ic fault lines. The ever-pre- sent racial cracks are widen- ing and spreading as new, intergenerational chasms split young from old.

In most industrial nations, poverty among youth and adults has been experienced as a "shared fate." In Western Europe, child and adult poverty rates are similar, and considerably lower than in the United States. In our country, by contrast, the youth poverty rate is nearly double that of adults: in 1990, the poverty rate for those under 18 was 21 percent; for adults, 11 percent. The generation gap holds for all races and ethnic groups. According to recent census figures, 16 percent of white youths face poverty, compared with 9 percent among white adults; among blacks, poverty afflicts a staggering 45 percent of youth and 24 percent of adults. For Latinos, the comparable fig- ures are 38 and 23 percent. These are by far the highest youth poverty rates and the widest adult-youth income gaps of any Western nation. i

This hasn't always been the case. During the '60s and early '70s, a myriad of Great Society programs, then aimed more or less equitably at all age groups, had sent child poverty plummeting from 27 percent in 1960 to 14 percent by 1973. Since then, child poverty has skyrocketed-up to 21 percent by 1991, the highest rate since 1965.

The country would hardly tolerate similar indifference toward adults. When, in the Eisenhower years, the emerging medium of television brought a national disgrace to public attentions million elderly, 35 percent of those over age 65, living below the poverty line- the country responded with a concerted, and largely successful, campaign to eradicate poverty among the elderly. Today, the cost of senior entitlement programs, from Social Security to subsidized housing, exceeds a quarter-trillion federal dollars annually.

From 1978 to 1987, spending on the elderly boomed by 52 percent while spending on children fell 4 percent. During the past decade, the elderly have seen continued declines in poverty-down to 12 percent by 1991-while poverty among young families has mushroomed. The elderly are not the only age group favored by modem public and private disbursement schemes. Today, Americans over age 35, whose average incomes are double those of younger age groups, comprise one of the wealthiest generations in American history.

The generational rift is growing. A recent report released by the California Assembly's Commission on the Status of African-American males provides evidence of the many ways divisions of age have begun to eclipse the traditional divisions of race. Among America's middle class, concentrated in older age groups, race has become a surprisingly trivial factor. In California's middle- to upper-middle- income brackets, whites are only 20 percent more likely than blacks, 10 percent more likely than Latinos and no more likely than Asians to earn $30,000 to $60,000 a year. The percentage of California's black families owning their own homes is almost as high as that for whites. And, like middle-aged and older whites, non-whites over age 40 gen- erally enjoyed rising incomes and decreasing poverty rates during the '70s and '80s.

Contrast this with the diametrically opposed conditions faced by California's mostly young, mostly non-white poor: in the eighth-richest state in the world's sixth-richest nation, one in six black males is arrested every year, four in 10 imprisoned felons are black, one in four black men has been unemployed for more than two years, and blacks' per-capita financial worth is less than one-fourth that of whites. Among California's 200,000 black males ages 15- 24, 80,000 are arrested every year, half for felonies. Furthermore, unemployment and poverty rates approach 50 percent among young black males in the state. For California's young Latino men, the situation is nearly as desperate: one-third arrested every year, poverty and job- lessness affecting similar numbers.

At the bottom of California's income scale, comprised overwhelmingly of youths and young families, the same racial inequities found 30 and 50 years ago still apply more than ever: blacks remain twice as likely, and Latinos 60 percent more likely, than whites to earn less than $15,000 a year. The gap is widest among the young: black youth are three times more likely, and Latino youth 2.5 times more likely, to live in families with incomes below federal poverty guidelines than are white youth. Given that young people make up a higher percentage of the minority population than they do of the white population, anti-youth policies have magnified penalties for non- whites; anti-minority and anti-poor measures, in turn, have their worst effects on youth.

Having for more than a decade legislatively appropriated hundreds of billions of public dollars for their own enrichment, older Americans now demand that the millions of youths impoverished in the process behave and stop generating "social costs." But many among the young are not cooperating with attempts to marginalize them. Rather than passively submitting to increasingly draconian age- targeted coercions-ranging from "subminimum training wages" to tightened curfews-millions of young people are detaching from their elders in a more fundamental, violent and irreparable manner than even the "drop out" '60s saw.

Yet Washington and state capitals remain officially oblivious to this menacing new generational disconnection. The political wrangling today is not about whether young people should have the same educational and employment opportunities afforded generations before them. Instead, politicians are focusing on mythical schemes of youth management-so that (mostly middle-aged and older) Americans can be spared threats of violence and higher taxes. But today's streets generate more violence than even the most punitive caging scheme can contain.

Though one would hardly know it from reading the headlines, a strategy to defuse the "youth crisis" lies right before our eyes.- a real national commitment of the kind that modem adults have found resources to fund

when their own generational interests were at stake. Consider: In California in 1992, 1 million white youths between the ages of 12 and 17 accounted for just 82 murders, a rate so low that if observed by all age groups nationwide, 10,000 lives would have been spared. In affluent, racially diverse San Mateo County, Calif., fewer than 1 percent of girls between the ages of 12 and 17 give birth each year--a rate that would cut national school-age births by 50 percent.

The implications are clear: if poverty among youth were reduced to the level experienced by adults, the "youth crisis" would disappear. But, given rising poverty figures and record federal debt, the president-to the extent that he endorses current wisdom-is boxed in. Though Clinton and his advisers surely must recognize the dead-end failure of present policies, his administration is not even trying to build a case for reform. Rather, Democrats, with their anti-youth rhetoric, are confessing final defeat in the 30- year-old War on Poverty, offering us the sorry spectacle of a political leadership with no better solution to a growing crisis than to blame 15-year-olds for conditions they had no part in creating