Heather Mac Donald homes in on family breakdown as "the largest predictor of child and family poverty":
The cardinal rule for writing about child poverty if you are in the mainstream media is this: Never, ever mention single parenthood. This New York Times article on a study showing that one in three young families with children were living in poverty in 2010 scrupulously obeys the rule. The Times offers several possible reasons for this recent rise in child poverty, including the high-tech, high-skills economy and the greater difficulties of going on welfare following the 1996 federal welfare-reform law. It never articulates, however, what is overwhelmingly the largest predictor of child and family poverty: The family is not a two-parent household. In 2007, single-parent families were nearly six times more likely to be poor than married-parent families; that ratio has not significantly changed.
The Dish 