Reading Assignment for Thursday April 23

Has Welfare Reform Helped the Poor? WiseTo Social Issues Digest. The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved. 2007.


Topic Overview
In the United States, large-scale public assistance programs for the poor---commonly referred to as welfare---began with the Social Security Act of 1935. Responding to Americans' needs during the Great Depression, this act provided federal cash relief to the disabled, widowed, and single-parent families in a program that was later named Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC).

Throughout most of the remainder of the twentieth century, the federal government provided cash aid to the poor---mostly unemployed single mothers and their children---without setting limits on how long families could receive this assistance. Some critics argued that this approach was counterproductive because it allowed the poor to be idle, resulting in a permanent underclass of people living off of welfare checks and feeling no incentive to find work. Others maintained that AFDC provided such meager support to single mothers that it was impossible for them to acquire the education and skills necessary to find work and pull themselves out of poverty. Most policy makers agreed that welfare needed to be reformed in order to reduce---rather than sustain---poverty.

In 1996 President Bill Clinton signed the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, a reform measure intended to "end welfare as we know it." The act replaced AFDC with a program called Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF), a system that grants states a set amount of funds to distribute to the poor as well as more authority in determining welfare eligibility. In addition, most adult welfare recipients are now required to find jobs within two years after the beginning of their case, and they are limited to a maximum of five years of assistance in their lifetimes.

Now that several years have passed since the enactment of the 1996 reform, analysts have mixed reviews about its effect on poverty in the United States.

On the one hand, the mandatory work requirements spurred people to leave welfare and take jobs, cutting welfare caseloads in half. Moreover, the rates of child poverty---particularly among minority children and children of single mothers---decreased. Most significantly, reform supporters point out, former welfare recipients who work full-time at low-wage jobs can apply for noncash benefits such as child care, food stamps, and Medicaid. While they may have minimum-wage jobs, the noncash benefits subsidize their incomes and increase their standard of living.

Critics, however, point out that the 1996 welfare reform law requires no detailed reporting from states. This, they argue, results in skewed poverty statistics and inconsistently distributed benefits. Administrative and bureaucratic hassles often discourage low-income families from obtaining noncash assistance like food stamps or transportation subsidies. These families become part of the working poor---with very limited access to food, health care, and adequate housing. Many critics also predict an increase in homelessness as a growing number of poor families reach their maximum five-year welfare limit.

While supporters of welfare reform celebrate the dramatic decrease in welfare rolls, critics continue to question whether the "new welfare" has truly reduced poverty.

Welfare Should Be Eliminated Tanner, Michael. At Issue: Welfare Reform. Charles P. Cozic. Greenhaven Press 1997.


Viewpoint
From across the political and ideological spectrum, there is almost universal acknowledgment that the American social welfare system has been a failure. Since the start of the War on Poverty in 1965, the U.S. has spent more than $3.5 trillion trying to ease the plight of the poor. The result of that massive investment is, primarily, more poverty.

The welfare system is unfair to everyone: to taxpayers, who must pick up the bill for failed programs; to society, whose mediating institutions of community, church, and family increasingly are pushed aside; and, most of all, to the poor themselves, who are trapped…