So, what does the research really tell us about family structure and race? One of the least understood areas of research is the so-called “neighbourhood effect”. This refers to everything from racial segregation to concentrated poverty, and here family structure is a big part of the story — on outcomes ranging from economic mobility to incarceration.

In fact, new research by Harvard economist Raj Chetty and his colleagues find that one of the strongest predictors of a big racial gap in adult income between black and white men traces back to the absence of black fathers in the wider neighbourhood where they grew up.

By contrast, black boys who grew up in neighbourhoods with lots of black fathers (and, the study finds, married adults) are much more likely to earn about as much as white men when they grow up. “That is a pathbreaking finding,” William Julius Wilson, a Harvard sociologist, told The Times. “They’re talking about the presence of fathers in a given census tract.”

In other words, more black fathers in the village translates into less racial economic inequality for black men.

To talk then, about, the “myth of two-parent home” when it comes to thinking about “black kids’ success” does a profound disservice to confronting racial inequality in America. While family structure is not the only factor implicated in this divide, it is a central factor when it comes to racial gaps on outcomes as varied as school suspensions, poverty, and affluence.

If we wish to close the racial gap, it will not be enough to address the structural barriers in the path of black kids. We must also figure out new ways to increase the share of black children being raised in intact families and in neighbourhoods with lots of father-present families.

W. Bradford Wilcox is a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and director of the National Marriage Project. Additional writing by Ian Rowe, CEO of Public Prep, a charter school network based in New York, NY, and a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.