Wages of reform

Christian Century, May 8, 2002 by Barbara Howell, Leon Howell

SIX YEARS AFTER Bill Clinton signed into law a controversial bill ending "welfare as we know it," Congress is debating how to extend or revise the welfare program. Funding guidelines must be reauthorized by October 1. In February President Bush surprised allies and opponents by proposing to increase the welfare work requirement from 30 to 40 hours per week (the average for private payrolls is a 34-hour work week). He also wants to require states to put 70 percent (up from 50 percent) of their welfare recipients into jobs.

The 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act eliminated a federal guarantee of aid to the poor; provided for a $16.5 billion "block grant" to states for each of six years; set a five-year lifetime limit on receiving aid; and mandated work requirements. It also eliminated food stamps and Medicaid for almost 1 million tax-paying legal immigrants. The legislation also shifted welfare programs from the federal government to the states, which have responded in 50 disparate ways.

Some welfare advocates howled at Bush's recent proposals, calling them punitive. The nation's governors were not pleased either. They called the proposal unworkable, since it would call for funding many more hours of child care but provide no additional funds for that service. (Only one in seven mothers who have left welfare for work has adequate child care now.) States also face the prospect of spending more money on transportation, job training and drug and alcohol rehabilitation at a time when many are struggling to balance their budgets.

The debate on the next chapter in welfare policy naturally rests on perceptions of how successful the 1996 experiment was. Many observers, including Clinton, call it a success. Dennis Hastert (R., Ill.), speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, declares that since work requirements went into effect "millions of Americans have left welfare for paying jobs. The number of families on welfare peaked in March 1994 at 5.1 million; by September 2001, the figure was 2.1 million. Low-income mothers, especially, have made tremendous progress" (New York Times, April 11).

Welfare caseloads are down dramatically across the nation--59 percent on average. A significant number of former welfare recipients have found jobs and many are happy and proud to be off welfare. Elizabeth Jones, a Washington, D.C., policewoman, the subject of a powerful New Yorker profile (April 9, 2001), told a Brookings Institution forum in August that her struggle from welfare to work has been demanding--she has three small children and works two jobs--but "I make the tradeoff because I want my children to grow up with dignity and a sense of security."

But Jones also voiced a lament heard from many working mothers. "My children are raising themselves. I see them ... in passing." She worries particularly about her unsupervised 12-year-old daughter. "I don't want her to wind up the same way I did ... having children at a young age."

One benefit of new welfare laws is an altered climate of debate. With work requirements in place, poor people are less often demonized ("alligators and wolves," one member of Congress called them in the angry 1996 debate). Bush refers to welfare recipients as "our neighbors." And with putting people to work more clearly the goal of welfare programs, it is politically possible, within limits, to ask whether jobs are paying a living wage.

A good bit of the qualified success of the welfare experiment must be attributed to good fortune, however. The major shakeup of the welfare system, which ended a 60-year federal commitment to providing a safety net, came in the midst of an economic boom. The fertile economy accounted for about 70 percent of the decline in welfare caseloads, according to some estimates. Record high employment through 2000 not only meant more jobs than usual but jobs at higher wages.

These developments helped move Lois Ann Cataneo of New York City off the dole. She proudly called herself "a poster child for the welfare-to-work movement" at a Washington meeting in August. But in September she lost her job as a concierge after her hotel near the World Trade Center was badly damaged. In the past five years more than one-third of those who left welfare for work also lost their jobs. Some got new jobs. Some did not.

Whatever the success of welfare reform, the decisive question is not whether the nation is reducing caseloads but whether it is reducing poverty.

Senator John Breaux (D., La.) has raised precisely this question. His state of Louisiana cut its welfare roles by 74 percent between 1994 and 2001. But in a public forum ill late 2001 Breaux groaned that Louisiana has a higher percentage of citizens (875,000 people, 20 percent of its population) and children (319,000 children, 27 percent) living in poverty than any other state in the union. Breaux agreed with a welfare study done in 2000 by Southern University in Baton Rouge. "If success is defined as families being better off or experiencing fewer problems, or less poverty," Breaux paraphrased, "the work of welfare reform has much to do to demonstrate its effectiveness."