Whatever Happened to Welfare Reform?

From Whitehouse.gov:

The Child Tax Credit in the American Rescue Plan provides the largest Child Tax Credit ever and historic relief to the most working families ever – and most families will automatically receive monthly payments without having to take any action.For those with children, the American Rescue Plan increased the Child Tax Credit from $2,000 per child to $3,000 per child for children over the age of six and from $2,000 to $3,600 for children under the age of six, and raised the age limit from 16 to 17. All working families will get the full credit if they make up to $150,000 for a couple or $112,500 for a family with a single parent (also called Head of Household).

So . . . it's not actually a credit on taxes paid. It's just a government welfare program whose eligibility extends through the upper middle class.

Which reminds me: whatever happened to bastardy (a.k.a. "illegitimacy", a.k.a. "non-marital births")? This was an issue that was a very big deal, especially on the "neoconservative" Right, back in the 1980s and 1990s. The realization that the perverse incentives created by AFDC were driving an increase in un-wed motherhood animated first the "War on Poverty" of the 1960s and then Welfare Reform of the 1990s. But I haven't heard much commentary about it in a long time.

A quick glance at the stats show that illegitimacy rates stabilized for blacks at 70+% around 2004, and for whites at 30% around 2009. But weirdly, those same stats pretty much dry up around 2014. Does the government even track it anymore?

Back in the 1990s (IIRC), elements of the Left strove to drive a wedge between opposition to abortion and opposition to illegitimacy. Their argument went thus: if you want to reduce abortion, then stop stigmatizing illegitimacy, such stigmatization being a motivation for young women to abort embarrassing babies. I remember this line of reasoning having some effect at the time, but I missed the formal surrender by the Right on the issue.

The pace at which yesterday's perversity has become today's "New Normal" has accelerated over the last few years, but the disappearance of bastardy from our political dialog seems to antedate the Current Year. Any thoughts?