Vanishing act - welfare reform has severely hurt poor families in the US

Progressive, The, May, 1998

Almost two years into the post-welfare era, we are beginning to get a picture of what is happening to the poor. Many states have seen steep declines in their caseloads. By requiring that everyone on welfare go to work, states from New York to Wisconsin to Utah have purged the rolls.

Since the states are not required to keep track of people once they leave the rolls, the temptation is strong for politicians to simply cut people off and declare victory. Many have announced that they've put an end to the problem of welfare dependency, even as hunger, homelessness, and misery increase.

Recent studies confirm what advocates for the poor suspected--that many of the people dumped from the welfare rolls are not finding jobs that support them. In a large number of cases, the poor are worse off, thanks to welfare reform.

The University of Wisconsin's Employment and Training Institute in Milwaukee discovered that only 34 percent of Milwaukee welfare recipients found full-time jobs after they were kicked off the rolls in 1996. Only one in six of these families had incomes above the poverty level.

In New York, things look even worse. MOST DROPPED FROM WELFARE DON'T GET JOBS, a March headline in The New York Times declared. The Times quoted state government data leaked to the paper showing that only 29 percent of people cut off welfare in New York City in 1996 found full- or part-time jobs. Anyone who managed to earn a mere $100 over a three-month period was counted as employed. Yet around the state only about a third of welfare recipients who left the rolls in 1996 made the cut.

Like most states, New York and Wisconsin are running programs that get people off of welfare but don't get them out of poverty.

Tufts University released a study in February entitled "Are States Improving the Lives of Poor Families?" The answer to that question is a resounding no.

"The majority of states have created welfare programs that ultimately will worsen the economic circumstances of the poor," the study's authors report. Thirty-five states, using the broad discretion given to them under the new federal welfare law, have come up with programs that exacerbate the misery and hopelessness of their poorest citizens, say the researchers at Tufts. On the other side, the study found that fourteen states, led by Vermont, have committed themselves to provide adequate child care, transportation, and job training. These states are giving poor families the tools to improve their lot. They are bucking a powerful trend.

The tragedy of the current kick-'em-off attitude in most states is that many welfare recipients could benefit enormously from a more thoughtful and humane approach.

Take the case of Gwendolynne Moore, a state senator in Wisconsin. Moore is particularly sensitive to the plight of poor women since she herself used to be a single mother on welfare.

Under the old welfare system, Moore was allowed to collect benefits while attending college. "Education pulled me out of poverty," she says. "But instead of seeing my experience as a model, now people seem to want to say, 'Why should she go to school at the taxpayers' expense?"'

Moore has fought the new system in Wisconsin, which emphasizes employment--no matter how marginal--over education and training. Some of Moore's constituents have been kicked off welfare by caseworkers who declared them "job-ready" even though they had no jobs lined up. Moore calls this the "you-go-girl" approach to welfare reform. "If you once worked at Taco Bell for ten hours a week, you're declared job-ready and kicked off," she explains.

This is particularly short-sighted since most welfare recipients move in and out of low-wage jobs throughout their lives. If they are going to earn family-supporting wages and benefits, they need schooling.

The hardship confronted by poor people struggling to get by under welfare reform is appalling. Last year, The Wall Street Journal followed a group of former welfare recipients on their daily commute to work in South Carolina.

One of the women, Georgeann Campfield, begins the ninety-minute car-pool to the Winn-Dixie supermarket at 4:30 each morning. She leaves her sleeping toddlers with her mother for the day, picking them up again at 10 P.M.

Like other poor people in this rural area, Campfield faces an enormous problem with transportation. She does not own a car, and there are no jobs close to her home. Nonetheless, she is making a heroic effort.

She works her shift at the Winn-Dixie until 1 P.M., then waits until her car-pool companions finish their entire seven-hour day, so she can catch a ride home.

"For her fifteen-plus hours away, six of them paid, Ms. Campfield will gross $30.90, but take home less than $20.90 after paying for babysitting and related costs," The Wall Street Journal reports.

She also never sees her children awake. With all the political attention our society is focusing on people like Campfield, surely we can do better.

Even in the best of all possible worlds, if education, decent child care, and family-supporting jobs were available to everyone, there would still be people who are simply unable or unwilling to work. In most states, the trend has been to abandon these people to homelessness and hunger in the name of teaching people a lesson in the work ethic.