It’s simple economics: if you subsidize something, you’ll get more of it. Make something more affordable through subsidies and more people will buy into it. Government loves to subsidize things to encourage us citizens to act in certain ways. Government gives (or has given) tax credits — free money — to people preserving historic buildings, people who install solar water heaters, people who buy energy-efficient homes or cars and so on. As a result of subsidies, we have more historic buildings being preserved, more solar water heaters and more energy efficient homes and vehicles. If government wants to encourage certain socially desirable behaviors, throwing money around is a proven technique.
Apparently, there must have been a shortage of out-of-wedlock births, so government has been subsidizing these for decades. As a “head of household” the single mother is eligible for subsidies for food, housing and a variety of things designed to make it easier to be a single mother.
Naturally, there has been a vast increase in the number of unmarried women (often minor children) having babies. This subsidy program has been a huge success, whether you measure success in the raw number of single mothers, the increased number of families living below the poverty level or the huge increase in the number of kids growing up fatherless, who are more likely than kids from two-parent households to end up in jail.
Curiously, despite what I perceive to be a surplus — a glut really — of single mothers, the subsidies of single motherhood go on. Apparently, whatever goals our government had when it began subsidizing single motherhood have not yet been reached. I’m not too worried though. I’m sure government knows what it’s doing.